Where it still survives: Sasmuan, Lubao, Macabebe, Betis

When it occurs: While Sasmuan marks its town fiesta on the feast of its patron saint, St. Lucy, on December 13, kuraldal is held with great fervor in the week starting January 6, which used to be the feast of the Three Kings (recently stricken out from the reformed Church calendar). The only plausible explanation for the date is the connection between light, which is the meaning of the saint’s name, and the Star of Bethlehem which guided the Three Kings.

In Sta. Cruz, Lubao, the residents dance the kuraldal on the barrio’s fiesta on May 3, towards the end of the procession in front of the chapel along the Olongapo-Gapan Road.

In Macabebe, barrios and sitios celebrating their respective fiestas in May perform their small-scale kuraldal. In Betis, a group of 24 dancers and 2 instructors, all residents of Sta. Ursula, dance their own version of kuraldal with swordfights on July 25 (feast of St. James) and for 9 consecutive days before the feast day, when devotees fetch the saint’s image from the hermana’s residence.

What it is: Kuraldal is a dance in honor of St. Lucy (although in other places, Kapampangans do the kuraldal in honor of their respective saints). It is performed by devotees who make a pilgrimage to Sasmuan during the town’s fiesta (December 13) and with increasing intensity all the way to kuraldal season in January. Dancers cry “Viva Santa Lucia! Puera sakit!” (“Away with ailments!”); petitions range from pregnancy to winning the lotto to passing the board exams.

The mother of all kuraldal, the Sasmuan kuraldal, starts in the morning of January 6, after the 8 AM Mass. A short-distance procession of the image of St. Lucy, between the parish church and the Sta. Lucia barangay chapel, along the narrow portion of the dalan paglimbunan (procession route), is marked by street dancing. The next day, January 7, a group of women devotees, wearing buri hats and dresses with pink-and-white floral designs, dance door-to-door for donations. The climax is on the evening of January 10, when the Archbishop of San Fernando, the Sasmuan parish priest and several other priests concelebrate Mass on a makeshift stage in a square behind the Sta. Lucia barangay chapel. After the Mass, two brass bands, one in front of the makeshift stage and the other in front of the chapel, signal the start of the kuraldal.

The crowd is sometimes so thick that devotees only manage to sway or jump instead of dance. The dancing lasts until after midnight. Meanwhile, devotees clamber up the makeshift stage to pick up flowers and leaves from the bouquets and rub their handkerchiefs on the image of St. Lucy. This wooden image is a smaller version of the January 6 image, but probably much older and definitely not made in Spain, judging from the elongated earlobes similar to Buddha statues, according to church heritage expert Prof. Regalado Trota Jose.

Kuraldal may be the Kapampangans’ answer to Obando, but it is wilder. Some dancers have been observed to dance non-stop for several hours, bathed in sweat, with faces white as sheet and eyes rolling up as if in a trance.

In Betis, the 24 dancers are expected to pass on the duty of performing the kuraldal to their children, in the same way that they inherited it from their respective fathers.

How it began: Spanish chronicler Gaspar de San Agustin wrote in 1698 that an image of St. Lucy had been venerated in Sasmuan “since long ago.” More research is needed to determine if kuraldal may have originated in the tribal dances of pre-Hispanic Kapampangans and if the Spanish friars who could not stop the practice may have merely replaced an unknown pagan idol with the image of the Catholic saint. Or, kuraldal may have been a para-liturgical ritual begun by the Augustinians or the secular priests, which, over the years, was moved out from inside the church to the church patio and later, farther into the streets of the community. The timing of kuraldal coincides with the end of the duman season in nearby Sta. Rita town, which raises the possibility that it may have been part of the natives’ harvest rituals in pre-Hispanic times.

What it means: More research should also be made on why only the communities along riverbanks practice kuraldal. Kapampangans, as their name suggests, are river people; the Kapampangan civilization began on the riverbanks and merely radiated towards the interior of Luzon island. Thus the river towns in the south are older than the towns in the northern uplands; many traditions found in southern towns are unheard of in the northern towns; in fact, going from southern towns to northern towns in Pampanga is like moving from a cultural feast to a cultural famine; Kapampangans seem to lose their cultural foothold the farther they wander away from their birthplace, the Pampanga River.

Kapampangans in Apalit, Masantol, Macabebe, Sasmuan and Lubao dance at the drop of a hat, even in the middle of the street and in broad daylight; their cosmopolitan counterparts in Angeles, Magalang, Mabalacat and San Fernando have to dress up first and create artificial inducements like tigtigan terakan king dalan (street disco) to bring themselves to dance in public.

What the future holds: Unless organizers impose a liquor ban, devotees will one day stop coming to Sasmuan for the annual kuraldal, which is gradually being taken over by inebriated teenagers who are clueless about the cultural and religious significance of the event. Local juveniles probably mistake kuraldal for a rave party so they convert the chapel into a disco, dancing wildly and irreverently on pews and on the altar table itself. Kuraldal is unique to Pampanga; it is probably a hint to how musical, how carefree, and how hedonistic our Kapampangan ancestors were; kuraldal should therefore be promoted and positioned as the Kapampangan festival, with the kuraldal dance steps adopted as the basic dance steps in other Kapampangan festivals, e.g. the Sinukuan Festival in the City of San Fernando and the Baguis Festival in Angeles City, two well-funded cultural inventions in search of a theme and a rhythm that resonates with the Kapampangan spirit.

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