A Festival is Born in Sta. Rita

STA. RITA, in colonial times, was a town in search of its place in the sun.  It used to be known as Sta. Rita de Lele, due to its proximity to the capital town of Bacolor, which eclipsed it.  Some historians think that it was merely carved out of the larger and older Porac town.  Gradually its residents built its reputation; pioneer Kapampangan historian Mariano Henson wrote that Sta. Rita farmers are the best in the province, and the first to adopt simberga, a plowing technique named after Simeon Vergara.     

And then there's the turrones de kasoy, probably an adaptation of (and an improvement on) European nougats brought in by the Spaniards; the sans rival, the yema and other confectionary delights that have contributed to the fame of Kapampangans as culinary masters.   

And of course Sta. Rita has always been known for its duman, that flattened, sticky and greenish rice that we love mixing with carabao's milk for breakfast and snacks.  There's no English word for it but the closest thing would be the breakfast cereal.  When I was a kid my mother bought me duman from the market; those memories are among the few that made my childhood happy.  I still see the same duman in markets today but I recently heard that this kind of duman is only artificially colored and hastily prepared; while it tastes good enough, it's nothing compared to the Sta. Rita duman.

The Sta. Rita duman comes from the red malagkit variety, planted during the monsoon season (July), harvested around the fiesta of Sta. Catalina, patron saint of Porac (November 25) and pounded until around the fiesta of Sta. Lucia, patron saint of Sasmuan (January 6).  (The traditional way of marking seasons, by town fiestas, is still practiced among Sta. Rita folks.)   

Last Saturday, I went to the duman fiesta in Sta. Monica, a barrio of Sta. Rita, upon the invitation of Andy Alviz, director of the Arti Sta. Rita, a local theatre group.  My team from the Center for Kapampangan Studies, including friend Tonette Orejas of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, missed the first part of the show which started at 7 PM; we caught Abong Tayag dancing with a costumed Arti member, on the street in front of a house where the traditional bayú was held (one of last remaining houses in Sta. Rita where duman is made).  What Arti Sta. Rita did was they applied their repertoire of Kapampangan songs and dances to liven up the folk practice--an idea that works wonderfully.   It's probably a better tourism strategy to simply dress up an already existing folk festival instead of inventing new ones that hardly resonate with authentic Kapampangan spirit.

Some of the guests tried their hand at the bayú, which turned out to be harder than it looked, because they could not synchronize with their partners (it takes three to pound the rice) and they broke into profuse sweating after only a couple of minutes.  To think that the Sta. Rita menfolk pound duman till after midnight non-stop, their pounding speeding up or slowing down depending on the beat of the music.   

The whole process, starting from threshing to heating (singlé) to cooling to pounding, takes at least four days.  After pounding, the womenfolk gather the rice on an igu to separate the grain from the chaff, then they put it back on the bayú for another round of pounding.  There are seven rounds of pounding, each round for a specific purpose (to break the husk, to flatten the grain, etc.).  This is the reason one small bag of Sta. Rita duman, which you can consume in one sitting, costs P2000.  What some people do is wrap it in a foil and freeze it and take out small quantities at a time.  It is said that frozen Sta. Rita duman can last a year.

You will never find Sta. Rita duman sold anywhere outside the town.  This is both good and bad; good because it makes the product extremely rare and sought after, as well as secures its integrity; but bad because production stagnates and even recedes.   Now that Arti Sta. Rita has reintroduced the duman fiesta to Kapampangan consciousness, art just might succeed where commerce has failed. 

Please send your comments or suggestions to rptmt@yahoo.com.

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