Drenched in colour and culture: Yorkton celebrates Philippines and India

Indian culture was celebrated in Yorkton this week as part of CultureFest. (Fruzsina de Cloedt / CTV News)

Downtown CultureFest returned for its third week in Yorkton, celebrating two cultures prominent in the community: Filipino and Indian.

Philippines Cultural Showcase

Around 5 p.m. on Thursday, O Canada began playing from the speakers, followed by Lupang Hinirang, the national anthem of the Philippines. On stage, a group of young children lined up in an orderly fashion, hand on their hearts. After a prayer, the festivities began.

“We are comprised of more than 7,000 islands, and each island has its own culture and different dances. So, we’re just showcasing all of those and different delicacies,” Jonathan Rosas told CTV News.

Rosas is the president of the Parkland Filipino-Canadian Association Corporation (PFCAC), the organization behind the event.

He said his community recently wrapped up its Pinoy celebration, a vibrant gathering dedicated to their culture. This is what he hoped to bring to Yorkton’s Downtown CultureFest on Thursday.

“[Pinoy] means celebrating the life of a saint, but it’s also a celebration of harvest during June. That’s mostly when the harvest takes place. So, it’s a combination of both,” he explained, adding that harvest in the Philippines is mostly rice.

Despite the thousands of different cultures that make up his home country, he said there is one thing they all share: hospitality.

“At the different stores [at CultureFest], they will be very welcoming, all the smiles you can see... Because we are a very hospitable nation, right? We take it seriously. We mean business when it comes to hospitality,” he said.

To drive his message further, he added, “that’s why we have a lot of nurses too, because we like hospitality.”

At a nearby tent, with wide smiles, delicacies were served to a long, serpent-like queue: kwek kwek, pork skewers, fried chicken, ube ice cream, and hopia. A sweet scent lingered as people took their meals to the benches under City Centre Park’s landmark teepee.

Rosas also told CTV News what the emcee had announced on stage a few minutes earlier: that the Philippines is a very conservative country.

“We’re a conservative country, we were colonized by the Spaniards,” Rosas said.

This heritage was reflected in the dance performances. Young women dressed modestly, fan in hand, danced on stage. They were followed by a group of young men, looking polished and ready to mingle. It was a dance about courtship.

“The first dance talks about how it was hard to court a girl before, you had to do a lot of different stuff,” Rosas explained with a grin. “Like house chores. You go to their house and help; you draw water from the well.”

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When asked whether these practices still exist, Rosas said there are still rural areas in the Philippines where they may occur, but not in urban areas.

As he was speaking, Bon Jovi began blasting from the speakers behind him, a stark contrast to the conservative performances.

“Oh, we’re a big karaoke nation!” Rosas exclaimed. “It normally happens when there’s a fiesta. Even when somebody dies, on the last day you’re celebrated with either a band or karaoke. Also, during birthdays, all occasions. There’s always karaoke.”

This year, the Filipino community also brought ukuleles.

“[It is] the first time that the audience will be able to appreciate the use of the ukulele, and the kids will play some Filipino folk songs that depict rural life in the Philippines,” Melinda Amaya Montebon told CTV News a few weeks prior to CultureFest.

Vibrant India

Around 7 p.m. the Philippines stepped aside, allowing space for another large Yorkton community: India.

Just like the Philippines, Indian culture is not singular. There are well over 100 distinct languages spoken in the South Asian country, along with several religions practiced. It is not a small feat to summarize Indian culture.

“India is just like the colours of Holi,” Abanti Banerjee explained to CTV News. “Each state in India has a different language, a different culture, a different cuisine, and a history. But we come together to celebrate Holi.”

Holi was the final program of the evening. Preceding it, the audience learned about the many faces of Indian culture, featuring two kinds of performances.

Banerjee herself was dressed in a distinct attire, part of the Indian classical dance form Kathak. Her outfit was made of three parts: the angaraksha and the kurta on top; and a churidar on the bottom. Her feet were bare and painted red.

“It’s a semi-classical or classical kind of dance we did,” Banerjee told CTV News. “We use different gestures, facial expressions, and leg movements to tell stories.”

The second story her group performed was about femininity.

Aside from classical forms, the Indian community also showcased fusion dance styles inspired by Bollywood.

“There are different kinds of pop movements that make up these dance forms,” Banerjee said. “It’s mostly from the movies, because we love movies a lot. Each state has its own kind of movie industry.”

She added there was a playful clash when classical and pop culture met.

“We had a bit of a face-off with the person who influenced our pop culture and brought it to India, which is Michael Jackson himself,” she said with a giggle.

While there was also a dance-off on stage between the two schools of culture, all rivalry came to an end when organizers began folding the chairs, making room for the moment many had been waiting for: the Holi colour festival.

“We [Indians] kept Holi because it’s one of our celebrations where we forget all the provincial barriers or communication barriers we ever had and come together in a field,” Banerjee said.

Banerjee explained the origins of the crowd-favourite spring festival.

“When Holi was first placed [in the calendar], it was marking the end of a demon called Holika. When Holika disappeared, everybody was very happy, so they came together with one colour, the colour of a flower: yellow. That is how Holi started,” she said.

The festival evolved over time into a broader celebration of colours.

Today, the colours are not chosen randomly, they carry meaning during the spring celebration. As Banerjee explained, red represents love, green stands for honesty, saffron symbolizes courage, and yellow marks spring.

As these values filled City Centre Park on Thursday, participants from various cultures enjoyed drenching one another in water and vibrant pigments. Strangers painted each other’s faces, some people began dancing spontaneously to the blasting music, and the Holi festival fulfilled its purpose of bringing everyone together, despite any barriers.