Quiapo!
Gregorio Brilliantes
The exclamation point in the title of Gregorio Brillantes’ essay on Quiapo resonates the searing soundscapes of one of Manila’s most throbbing districts. The shout of drivers and conductors, “Quiapo!” also echoes the cry of the faithful who troop to the Basilika ng Hesus Nazareno every January 9 to worship at the feet of the Nuestro Padre Jesus Nazareno. “Worship at the feet” sounds out of tune a description of the “part ritual, part riot” devotion that Brillantes writes so masterfully about:
The carroza of the Black Christ is borne on the shoulders of the most privileged members of the Nazareno brotherhood. The chief of the Hijos de Nazareno himself, a large, sinewy character named Aling Enriquez, rides shotgun, as it were, together with a couple of lieutenants, to push back or knock down the overzealous trying to clamber aboard. The men push and charge toward the Image, scramble up and step on the heads and shoulders of the crowd around the swaying platform, reaching out with towel or handkerchief to touch the Black Christ, to wipe and comfort their suffering Lord, then driving away in a sort of swoon and rolling back over the surface of bobbing heads. Others meanwhile fight for a handhold on the two lengths of rope tied to pull the carriage forward (14).
Quiapo, however, is both the church and the marketplace, the sacred and the profane, and so, a different kind of frenzy arises from this mix. The opening paragraph, the overture, if you may, of Brillantes’ essay captures this cacophony of voices in brisk and brawny language:
Quiapo is a memory, a fevered dream, a marketplace, a concentration of priceless real estate; a dusty, clamorous bus stop, and halo-halo displayed behind cracked plate glass in the Peacetime Café at the foot of Quezon Bridge. It is the Samar housemaid’s introduction to the city, the loneliness of the Ilocano student boarders around Recto and Morayta, the bluster and banter of beer drinkers in Cebuano-accented Tagalog in the bright afternoon that does not burn away the smell of stale pancit on P. Paterno (11).
The place pulsates with the rhythms of living speech (“…waitresses with sensual mouths and intonations formed in distant provinces…”), moving objects (“swinging panels,” “drop[ping]… peso coins on a child beggar’s palm”), and music (“a Chopin nocturne on the piano”). At times, Brillantes conducts a surreal symphony of sound-images, as in these sentences:
… and right where the vendors of herbs and anting-anting medallions and urine-yellow cure-alls in San Miguel beer bottles clutter the patio beneath the statues of Saints Phillip, Simon, Stephen, James the Great and James the Minor gazing blindly out at the traffic of Manila’s busiest thoroughfare (12-13).
Urban Soundscapes: Gregorio Brillantes’ “Quiapo!”
Michael Carlo C. Villas | November 8, 2017
WORK CITED
Brillantes, Gregorio. “Quiapo!” Looking for Jose Rizal in Madrid: Journeys, Latitudes, Perspectives, Destinations. University of the Philippines Press, 2004, pp. 11-19.
Aside from its craftsmanship, the essay is, of course, well-researched. The Nazareno, for instance, one learns from the essay, was “carved and painted dark by an Aztec artist in Mexico” and was brought through galleon by the Recoletos. Complementing the historical research are interviews with Roger Lomibao, jeepney driver and Hijos de Nazareno member, and Deogracias Recto Marquez, Free Press contributor and devotee, which makes for a fuller, more complete story of Quiapo and its urban soundscapes.
Preview/Header Photo: PLAZA MIRANDA Quiapo 1930s, http://manilablog.com/old-manila-photos/