There’s a different ring to the loud screams of “Hala Bira!” in this year’s celebration of Dinagyang, held over the weekend, from Jan. 26 to Jan. 28, in Iloilo.

The Hiligaynon phrase, which means “dispense all,” is now an urging—loud and clear and repetitive—that has resulted in a better Iloilo not only in the eyes of the Ilonggo who call it home, but also the world at large, including UNESCO, which named it Creative City of Gastronomy last year, the first to receive such an honor in the Philippines. 

Iloilo City is among the 55 new cities around the world to join the UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN) last year, among them, for gastronomy alone, Battambang in Cambodia, Chaozhou in China, Fribourg in Switzerland, Gangneung in South Korea, Herakleion in Greece, and Nkongsamba in western Cameroon. The other cities on the 2023 list were given the recognition for other fields of creativity, such as crafts and folk arts, design, film, literature, media arts, and music. 

But Iloilo has been screaming “Hala Bira” for decades. The expression traces its origins alongside Dinagyang, a deep devotion to the Infant Jesus, the Sto. Niño, first introduced in Iloilo by Rev. Fr. Ambrosio Galindez, parish priest of San Jose Parish, in November 1967. Impressed by the Ati-Atihan Festival in Aklan, he organized a similar observance of the Feast of the Holy Child as a parish activity. The following year, the Parish of San Jose received a replica of the Santo Niño de Cebu as a gift from Cebuano priest Fr. Sulpicio Enderez. The parishioners welcomed the gift with a street parade and that was how Dinagyang started.

The veneration of the Sto. Nino is central to the celebration, but the festival also has myriad pagan and animist references, the worship, for instance, of sun, moon, wind, birds and beasts, and other natural forces of the universe.
Dinagyang is the most awarded festival in the Philippines. It was, for instance, the grand champion at the Aliwan Fiesta Street Dance Competition last year, as well as the Best Cultural Festival (City Category), as proclaimed by the prestigious Association of Tourism Officers of the Philippines (Atop) Pearl Awards, which, in 2021, while social distancing was still in place, gave its digital version the Best Tourism Practice during the Pandemic award. The following year, it was proclaimed by Atop as the Best Tourism Event in the contemporary/non-traditional expression category. It has also earned the nod of the United Nations and the Asian Development Bank for its for its positive economic impact on the communities.

But Dinagyang 2024 was something else. “Dinagyang gets better and better every year!” said Iloilo City Mayor Jerry Treñas and it’s true, especially with practically all sectors doing their bit and doing it better every year to make the Dinagyang scream “Hala Bira!” louder and clearer. 
I was a guest of SM Supermalls president Steven Tan who, along with me, brought in party peeps Nicole Andersson, Nicole Borromeo, Michelle Dee, Bea Ledesma, Tessa Prieto, Tim Yap, and more to show us Dinagyang, of which he has been a staunch supporter. 

Over the weekend, as a result of the AweSM Iloilo 2024 campaign, SM Iloilo was a core venue of activities, such as the Grand Iloilo Food Festival and Batchoy Festival, the Dinagyang Festival Costumes Exhibit, the Dinagyang Warriors Parade, and the One Visayas Creative Expo 2024, a joint activity of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry Western Visayas and the Regional Development Council 6, which showcased the best products, destinations, and festivals of Region 6, 7, and 8.  There was also the two-day Viva Music Festival with Ron Poe and JK Labajo, which raised the Dinagyang party mood to a fever pitch. While the fireworks display over SM was breathtaking enough last year, this time it was complemented by a drone show, where the drones were magically coordinated to produce among other things the image of a warrior head, replete with an elaborate headdress, in the night sky.

As if there weren’t enough activities to keep up the frenzy, SM Supermalls also organized the launch of the coffeetable book Houses that Sugar Built - An Intimate Portrait of Philippine Ancestral Homes by Gina Consing McAdam and Siobhan Doran at a charming Ilonggo dinner on the front lawn of the Molo Mansion, more formally known as the Yusay-Consing Mansion, just in front of the town plaza and the town church in the Molo District of Iloilo City.  

Built in 1926, the heritage house, quite the spectacle best known for its high ceilings, Neoclassical balustrades, decorative carvings, and subtle Art Deco features, is now under the stewardship of the SM Group, which has converted it into a museum, replete with a souvenir shop. The book, thick with over 250 pages of stories and photographs, is literally a tour of these houses in Iloilo, Negros Occidental, and Pampanga back in the heyday of sugar production in the Philippines.  

SM Iloilo left no stone unturned to make sure there was something for everyone during the festival. After all, Hala Bira, the Dinagyang catchphrase, is a call to “give it everything you’ve got.” It’s quite an epiphany when you think of it in terms of devotions, ardent, fervent, unflinching, sometimes even blind. 
How does Hala Bira, always expressed with urging, apply to life and love? Just do it. Just go. Give it your all. And if it comes to nothing? Well, there’s always a supreme force to which—or to whom, such as the Sto. Niño—to offer it all up. Or, if you’re not religious, well, there’s always an opportunity to find something or someone new to direct your attention to. As the Dinagyang warriors would tell you, “Hala Bira!”

Shout out to my friends Chef Tibong Jardeleza and Allan Tan, now president of the Iloilo Festivals Foundation, Inc. (IFFI), who gave me a few hours of Dinagyang break at the Waterfront Seafood and Cocktails right on the bank of the Iloilo River.