Ang Bahal Nga Tuba / MABUHAY SINGERS Sing while the heart is drinking! Dance as the drinking becomes the singing! And we all sing one, and we all drink one, and we all dance one. So that we become a oneness of many. So that we are the many in the oneness of being happy. To the Ilocanos of the North, to be singing happy means the warmth of “basi” or rice wine. To the mid-South of Luzon, in Laguna, it is “lambanog”, the white wine derived from the coconut palm whose flavor and potency can be matched with the best of Scotch. Down there in the sugarland provinces comes the tropical sun torrid in rushing down your throat in what we know as rum. But come now to the South where coco palms do not only sway to Visayan winds but, too, unwind from out of their fronts this Southern wine which when drunk can stimulate one to burst out a wisdom of songs and happy dance. For “tuba” – this reddish thick wine sapped out in the early morning from the palm-tops of coconuts by tuba-gatherers in Samar, Leyte, Cebu islands of the Visayas – is more than a native brew of potency, becoming to be hailed more as a celebration. A toast of tuba, then a camaraderie of singing together or a spontaneity of jumping up to the dance – that happens, that becomes the celebration for this folks down South, whose language may be “Waray or Cebuano”, but whose liquor of lovely, lavish life is the tuba wine. Especially if it is “bahal nga tuba”, or tuba that has the right aging, the fulsome flavoring. And this can only mean, “paglipay kita!” Or let’s all be happy. Celebration! Through happy times and heartaches. That has been the way of being Visayan. Or “Ma-upay an taga Bisaya”. Drink to the Visayan song ways then with your ears and your country’s famed MABUHAY Singers bringing all the Philippines to the world, your world!