A FORGOTTEN CUSTOM

 

OLD PHOTO OF SAN FRANCISCO DE BORJA CHURCH

Songsong, Luta

A very Chamorro thing to do in the old days was to COMPOSE SONGS for just about any special occasion.

When a dignitary arrived on island, they composed a song to sing in his or her honor when getting off the ship or plane.

When someone celebrated a milestone or an anniversary, someone put words to music to tell the story.

When a new building, school or church was begun or finished, they wrote a song for everybody to sing to celebrate the project.

Here is Ray Barcinas singing something he learned from his mañaina (elders) in Luta (Rota) about the start of the building of the new church there after the war.

Ray was born a long, long time after the church in Luta was built. But here he is telling a bit of the story, how the plans were done in 1951; how the Chief Commissioner (who would be called a Mayor now), Tomás Camacho Mendiola, who held that position from 1947 to 1952, led the project; how the community was called together to make the plans a reality. The song bridges the long gap between the building of the church and Ray's own life many decades later.

The words Ray sings are :

Mit nobesientos singkuentai uno munhåyan i plåno

(1951 the plans were done)

para u ma håtsa i nuebo na guma'yu'os-ta.

(to build our new church.)

Chief Commissioner Tomás yan i man ga'chong-ña.

(Chief Commissioner Tomás and his team)

Ha kombida i taotao songsong, ayo suena mås.

(He invited the people of the village, as was fitting.)

TOMÁS CAMACHO MENDIOLA

Chief Commissioner of Luta 1947-1952

The song also helps us not forget the Chief Commissioner of Luta at the time, Tomás Camacho Mendiola. Those of us not from Luta or too young to have known him may never even hear his name, except that this song keeps his name alive.

In 1935, the US Secretary of War paid a visit to Guam. Our people composed a song to welcome him, and sang it in Chamorro, a language the American official didn't understand.

When the Northern Marianas was made into its own diocese in 1984, on the occasion of Bishop Tomás Camacho's ordination as bishop and elevation of Chalan Kanoa's church to a cathedral, Juan Sánchez of Saipan composed two dozen verses in Chamorro telling the tale.

It goes to show, the instinct of our people in those days was to write a song, even if they used familiar melodies, to memorialize the event.

Sadly, we don't do that much at all today. Once in a blue moon I've seen it done at celebrations. But sadder still, fewer people today could compose such a song in Chamorro, for an audience that increasingly doesn't understand their native language.