advance on us waving spears and bashing bass drums. Screaming, “I gotta get this sound; we may not hear it again,” Matt, a CBC correspondent, shoves past me down the stairs. Blunt fingers jabbing at the black piano-key controls of his Sony portable tape recorder, he marches towards the wild, shuffling band, his mike held forward like a bayonet. But the natives are friendly, here to greet junketing politicians from Manila, a jet hour to the northwest. The occasion is the annual January Ati-Atihan Festival in Kalibo, Atlan district, the biggest and best in a land of festivals. But Matt need not fear missing the sound. For the next two days we can’t escape it. It drives him over the edge, until he buries his head under a pillow at night screaming, “The drums, the drums,” like a melodramatic colonial officer in a 1930s adventure movie. We learned of the festival a few days earlier while lounging pool side at the Manila Hilton, sampling exotic fruit juices and baking ourselves to the toasty brown of the Filipinos.
What do You think about The Peace Correspondent (2009)?
