By Robert Maico
NAGCARLAN, Laguna April 16 (PNA) — The municipality of Nagcarlan is celebrating Ana Kalang Festival which started on April 12 and culminates on Sunday (April 19).
Tourism Officer Rino Umali said that Nagcarlan showcases its unique folk arts whose leitmotif is the use of dried indigenous materials and displays its great potentials as the Vegetable Basket of Laguna.
“Throughout the celebration, oversized statues called kalang-kalang –symbolizing fertile soil and bountiful harvest, all beautifully crafted from indigenous materials, are put up on display around the municipal compound,”Umali said.
” Every nook and corner is decorated with fresh farm produce, while in front of the Municipal Building lies a row of trade fair booths whose façades, known as arko-tekto, are decorated with dried indigenous materials designed to simulate old structures which local and foreign tourists delighted until Sunday April 19,” Umali added.
Various organizations participate in this festival including 52 barangays, 35 schools, people’s organizations, commercial establishments, and local artists of the municipality in a five-day fair which includes an agro-trade fair, cultural presentation, craft and talent competitions, beauty pageant, fashion design competition, grand parade and a whole lot more of revelries and merrymaking.
Umali narrated , “Ana Kalang Festival is celebrated every third Wednesday of April to the ensuing Sunday after originally held in the first week of October to coincide with the peak of lanzones harvest.”
“This 28-year old festival traces its beginnings in 1987 with the successful holding of the first Lanzones Festival, which was replicated in October 1988,” he added.
Umali concluded that ,”In 1989, however, the sudden drop in lanzones harvest necessitated the renaming of the celebration, and the organizers’ unanimous choice was Ana Kalang Festival – in honor of the woman who figures in the legend that tells how the town of Nagcarlan got its name. Because October has become a stormy month in recent years, the local government, upon consultation with stakeholders, has decided since 2008 to move the celebration to April, when local fruits and vegetable are most abundant and weather conditions are most favorable.” (PNA)