April 21, 1985-San Antonio Express-News

Fiesta for the mind as well as stomach

Festival fever is invading the city, and, so it seems, the nation. Many people do anticipate the coming weeks, for there will be foods, drinks and entertainment galore.

In other quarters, some artists will hope for a different kind of festivity to coincide with the entertainment and commercial arts pervading San Antonio.

What kind of festival could be hoped for? One type being spoken about by such noted poets as Nephtalí de León and Jose Montalvo would be a poetical encounter. The kind that would implicate the city in the furtherance of the literary arts.

Perhaps a canto popular de artes - a poetical song for all persons. One that would attract leading serious artists in poetry, fiction and criticism.

Other area poets, such as Jack Tusin, would like to stage a comprehensive, all-inclusive theatrical work that would be crosscultural and representative of the many facets of this city and area.

A different fiesta

To be sure, this city already boasts cultural centers that focus on blacks, Chicanos, German-Americans, Polish-Americarns and other cultural perspectives.

And, yes, there are such festivals as the Israeli and conjunto festivals. Many fiestas and festivals permeate the calendar year

But those are commercialized programs, designed to make money and provide easy entertainment. Theirs is a message of eat, drink, dance and enjoy. Listen to music and just sway with it.

What has been talked about is that kind of celebration wherein people participate and interact with the activiy itself. A humanizing celebration that speaks of aesthetics as being part and parcel of the human and social condition.

The late 1960s and early '70s rekindled the spark of poetry as a "canto al pueblo," - a song to, for and with the community. Added to these poetical cantos were serious works of theater, music, dance, film, painting, murals and photography.

These were thematic celebrations of the human condition, and they were designed to foster an air of questioning. An artistic quest for self-and-community-realization.

In the main, the cantos strove to bring about a reflective consciousness toward the human questions and issues afflicting certain groups of people within the nation.

Entertainment was incidental to it all and it surely did thrive within the cantos. The main thing was human/cultural regeneration: mental, spiritual, intellectual, communal and personal.

Folklorical pale

This is a culturally enriched state. It boasts a number of culturally different communities that do have their serious artists doing experimental works in different idioms and from different culturally based techniques and philosophical understandings that are unique.

It would be intriguing to see and hear something beyond the folklorical pale of institutional frameworks. A deeper definition of our differently perceived humanity through the sensibilities of novelists, poets, composers, dancers and visual artists.

More than just intriguing, it might give area residents a better handle on their neighbors and in the process create an image of art that is aesthetic and of lasting value.

There just might be some poets out there who have the power of a Whitman or a García-Lorca...a waiting-to-be-read Emily Dickinson or Langston Hughes.

Such a canto, involving all the arts, taken from a culturally pluralistic perspective could conceivably undergird a more mature understanding of each other.

It would also serve young persons by underpinning their own sense-of-selves. It might just underscore the notion that all human beings are worthy and spiritual creatures who merely use different cultural vehicles to arrive at the same human questions in our quest for meaning and understanding.

Coalition of artists

The city has enough centers where performances and readings could be staged. There is no need for extravaganzas, but all societies do need to periodically come to grips with their collective sense of themselves.

This nation, as well as its constituent components, is a composite being. A linguistic flux of many faces and hues. Each element is vital and has its own particularities. More than its commercially honed and popular commodities, there is a need to plumb our aesthetic beings.

A coalition of artists could get together to begin implementing such an event. It could find housing somewhere, just some office space, a phone and a skeletal staff.

Area centers might donate use of space for events. The colleges and university could underwrite some poets and other artists.

Artists could visit non-traditional places to perform, i.e., the senior citizen centers, jail, libraries and schools.

A central location would provide logistical stability, while a traveling group could tour the different parts of the city. The celebration would project another image for the city, one that is the accumulation of the power of art to reach out to the human spirit.

I will attend the festivals and fiestas on the city's agenda. My body and feelings will be fed. Hopefully, a celebration will someday be staged that will feed my intellect and spirit while energizing my sensibilities.

A human celebration should provoke questions not just soothe feelings. We do live in an age and place that can foster creativity and human accountability. The creative arts can supply much needed fuel.