SAN DIEGO, CA -- San Diego State University’s Andres Bonifacio (AB) Samahan student organization will host its 30th annual Filipino Culture Night (FCN) on March 7 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. and March 8 from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m., showcasing a variety of dances and an original student-written play.
The event will be held in Montezuma Hall for an audience of 500 people for each night, perfect for AB Samahan to once more, allow audiences to delve deeper into what it means to be Filipino-American. And to Casey Chin, coordinator of this year’s Filipino Culture Night, this couldn’t be truer.
“There are a lot of events in Samahan that cover the surface of being Filipino-American,” she said. “But FCN really gets down to the foreground of why we do this.”
Like the first Filipino Culture Night, this year’s goal is to preserve the traditions that many could not get in touch with or have been lost – to give a better understanding of the Filipino-American identity.
This notion of returning to one’s roots is seen in the event’s play, “Sayaw ni Maria,” where upon his homecoming, Jan-Patrick Cagayan notices that his childhood dance troupe has lost its touch with its roots in Filipino culture and that the group has strayed too far from the traditions that it was founded on. Seeing this, he works with his childhood friend, Marisol Liwanag to bring the cultural perspective back to the Sayaw ni Maria dance troupe (named in memory of Marisol’s late mother).
Jan-Patrick’s story in the play parallels that of AB Samahan, where there just aren’t many outlets dedicated to preserving and showcasing the Filipino identity. This makes the student organization’s production all the more important, according to the organization’s Cultural Affairs Coordinator Jessica Santos.
“This is one of the main things I feel that is really important,” she said. “If our organization is here to preserve Filipino culture, FCN is the perfect venue for it. This is what we’re about.”
Chin adds that this year’s production will be carried out differently than past culture nights. Whereas in previous years the cultural dances would be held between scenes, Chin plans to have the dances merge in and out of the play’s scenes, intersecting the two in order to weave the Philippines’ many cultures into the play itself. It’s through these dances that we can better understand the history behind the Philippines and its peoples.
And it’s through addressing these issues within the Filipino-American community can we reconnect with our roots, according to Erin Nicole Vedar, vice chairperson of Andres Bonifacio Samahan.
“We need to come back to our roots and appreciate it before creating our own story,” Vedar said. “And at the core of everything, that’s what will keep us grounded.”
For more information on the Filipino Culture Night event, contact Casey Chin at fcn@absamahan. org. For more information on the Andres Bonifacio Samahan student organization, visit http://www. absamahan.org/
Andres Bonifacio Samahan is the Filipino-American student organization at San Diego State University that supports educational enrichment and advancement through organized leadership, learning, and raising awareness of the Filipino culture in and around SDSU. AB Samahan was established at San Diego State University in 1971 to support the school’s Filipino-American community. We were founded based on the ideas of the Filipino national hero Andres Bonifacio, whose notion of “kagalanggalangan” translated into the “most high and most venerable sons of the people.” In the same way Bonifacio led the Philippines’ independence movement in the late 19th century, we as the members of AB Samahan continue the same struggle to maintain the Filipino-American identity
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