Bacolod Masskara Festival at Night: Electric Masskara Parade & Lacson Street Party!

The 30th Masskara Festival in Bacolod City reached its peak during the weekend, from October 16-18, Friday to Sunday, highlighting an elaborate Electric Masskara Parade and street party at Bacolod's main Lacson Street. That's 3 nights of non-stop partying, festivities and overflowing food and drinks at the bars, restaurants and in the streets!

Food kiosks lined up along Lacson Street

A portion of Lacson Street was closed to vehicles and it became one massive party place. Lacson Street from the 6th Street and the Bacolod Lagoon area all the way up to the intersection of B.S. Aquino Drive was closed off. That's about 23 street blocks and yet all of it was swarming and packed with people! It seemed the whole of Bacolod, plus several foreigners, tourists and out-of-towners, were there to join the fun and revelry.

A sea of people in front of Cafe Bob's

There were 3 stages each with a party band playing, set up in different key area along the party street or what some call the "Tourism Strip" which is Lacson Street. Different bands played the whole night, some bands even came from Cebu and Iloilo. The night was filled with "live entertainment", with some bars having their own entertainment such as local DJ's plus those coming from Manila.

Live band at the "Tourism Strip"

A unique part of the Masskara Festival in recent years is the Electric Parade. This year, the Electric Parade opened with a special "unveiling" and launch of the "Majica Masskara" float. It is a collaborative work of 18 Bacolod artists to "Celebrate 30 Years of Smiles" and to showcase how the Masskara Festival has evolved to what it is today. The result is an original and very ilonggo masterpiece mounted on a 30-foot trailer.

The Majica Masskara Float - artistic, original and first of its kind in the Philippines

So much partying and fun happened in the 3 days and 3 nights during the Masskara weekend that it cannot be documented in this blog. There's nothing quite like it and you need to experience it yourself. If you missed this year's Masskara Festival, be sure to join the fun next year!

Bacolod Masskara "masks" on display at Robinsons Place

During the week long festival of Masskara, several "Masskara Masks" were on display in a Masskara exhibit at Robinsons Place.

Masskara Street Dancing Kicks Off!

The 30th MassKara Festival four-day Street Dancing Competitions kick off today with 11 contingents joining the schools category contest at 3 p.m. at the Bacolod public plaza which is being ran in cooperation with the Department of Education in Bacolod City.


The barangay category will be at 2 p.m. Saturday and the open category on Sunday. The Electric MassKara streetdance, which has been transformed into a Ledge Dancing competition, on the other hand, will take centerstage 8 p.m. Friday at the Lacson Tourism Strip.

“To mark the third decade of the festival with the theme, ‘30 Years of Smiles', we hope to highlight the elements that have made it a very popular festival: happiness, cheerfulness and optimism as captured in our smiling masks, faces and costumes in bright and bold colors,” festival director Eli Tajanlangit said. The costumes and masks of the competing groups are now at Robinson's Place Bacolod.

The schools, barangay and open category contests will have Libertad-Araneta streets as starting point for the dancers, and to follow the Araneta parade route up to the public plaza. Two areas of competition will be the street dance and arena performance. Judges will be stationed along the parade routes.

Each contingent will have a minimum of 35 dancers and a maximum of 60.
Cash prizes for the schools category are P50,000, P30,000 and P20,000 for first, second and third, while for both the open and barangay category, the prizes are P100,000, P75,000 and P50,000 for first, second and third places.

For the street dance, the groups will be judged on their choreography, performance and production design for their mask, costume and props. For the arena performance, the criteria are concept, choreography, performance, and production design.

Special awards will be given for the Best Mask and Best Costume which have been pre-judged.
For the first Electric MassKara Ledge Dance Competition, seven contingents are joining with each group to have a minimum of 15, and maximum of 20 dancers.

Source: Visayan Daily Star

Masskara 2009!

The Bacolod Masskara Festival - A Celebration of Life!

The annual Masskara Festival held in Bacolod City every October is a celebration which has earned for Bacolod the title “City of Smiles”. The Festival was conceived in 1980 by a group of city officials, Arts Association of Bacolod members and some concerned citizens with full support from the city government and the Department of Tourism Field Office to enliven the usual City Charter Anniversary celebration which, at the time consisted of the routine flag ceremony, employees program and the afternoon civic military parade.


The word “Masskara” was coined by the late AAB president Ely Santiago from the two works “mass” which means “many or a multitude of the people” and the Spanish “kara” meaning “face”. The masks worn by the participants during the parade are always smiling. Masskara thus means a multitude of smiling faces.


Since its inception, the Masskara Festival is held every third weekend of October nearest the Charter Anniversary. It features a Masskara Street Dance competition where people from all walks of life troop to the streets to see colorful masked dancers gyrate to the infectious rhythm of the Latin musical beat in a stunning display of mastery, gaiety, coordination and stamina.

Major activities are the beauty pageant, carnivals, drums and bugle corps competitions, food festivals, sports events, musical concert, agri-trade fair, garden show, to name few.

For a brief history on the Masskara Festival, check this out:
http://bacolodphilippines.blogspot.com/2009/01/masskara-history-and-information.html

Masskara 2009 Schedule of Activities

Bacolod Tourist Destination: The Ruins

A rather new, but actually very ‘old’, Bacolod tourist site is The Ruins. Situated amongst the farmlands in Talisay City, this heritage site is fast become a very popular Bacolod tourist attraction.

The structure of The Ruins is of Italianate architecture with neo-Romanesque columns, having a very close semblance to the façade of Carnegie Hall in New York City. In New England, they often were homes to ship’s captains. A belvedere on the 2nd floor, facing west, affords a beautiful view of the sunset in a glassed-in sunroom with bay windows.

The Belvedere

The view from the Belvedere at twilight

A brief history of the Bacolod Ruins

The mansion was built in the early 1900’s by the sugar baron, Don Mariano Ledesma Lacson (1865-1948) and was home to his unmarried children with his first wife, Maria Braga Lacson (+1911), a Portuguese from Macau. The mansion was the largest residential structure ever built at that time and had in it one of the finest furniture, chinaware, and decorative items, as the father of Maria Braga was a captain of a ship that sailed across Europe and Asia and would cart with him these items. One of their daughters maintained a beautiful garden of lilies in and around the 4-tiered fountain fronting the mansion, all brought in from abroad.

Don Mariano Ledesma Lacson

One of the sons supervised the construction of the mansion making certain that the A-grade mixture of concrete and its pouring was precisely followed. The mansion met its sad fate in the early part of World War II when the USAFFE (United States Armed Forces in the Far East), then guerilla fighters in the Philippines, burnt the mansion to prevent the Japanese forces from utilizing it as their headquarters. It took days of inferno to bring down the roof and the 2-inch wooden floors.


To this day, the structure still stands tall amidst sugar plantations and continues to awe both local and foreign tourists. Truly, a picture-perfect backdrop and a magnificent sight to see.


How The Ruins became a tourist destination

After literally being in ruins and practically abandoned, the mansion was left to the elements for several years. It wasn’t until last year, when some of the Lacson great grandchildren who inherited the land where The Ruins sits, decided to develop it. They fixed the surroundings and put up a café where they serve tapas, pasta, beef and lamb dishes and more. They also serve ice cold beer and wine.

View of the Garden

Since they opened last year, a lot of tourists and locals visit this tourist site which is so close to Bacolod. It is only about a 15-minute drive from the center of Bacolod City. It also a favorite venue for photo shoots as the remaining structure and its unique architecture and design details serve as a beautiful and magnificent backdrop.

The fountain and garden which has become a venue for events

The Bacolod Ruins, or Talisay Ruins as it is also called by some, has been a popular venue for Bacolod weddings, special events and parties. The most recent addition to this tourist spot is a mini-golf within the grounds of the site. The owners are continuously developing the area and adding new stuff to do so it will remain a top tourist attraction. Even for the Bacolod and Talisay residents and locals, it has become a place for family bonding activities and fun.


How to get to The Ruins

Option 1: Take the turn at Honda Cars in Talisay City towards the mountains. It’s a 2.4km stretch of farm road from the national highway. (You’ll need an off-road or SUV because the roads are rather rough and unpaved)

Option 2: Take the turn at the PEPSI bottling plant in Bata Subdivision towards the mountains. Enter the narrow road leading to Rose Lawn Memorial Garden, then, turn right and navigate the main road of Goldcrest and Octagon Villages. This will lead you all the way to The Ruins. (Follow the signs going to The Ruins starting from the road you turn into at the Pepsi plant corner)