Why are Benguet people

crazy about American

country music?

Fascinating. On the mountains separating La Trinidad and Baguio City, there is a scenic grassy hilltop known as Marlboro Country, where horse and cattle would graze. In a Baguio sidestreet, there's a country-folk music bar popular among locals called Wild West. Roomy yet dingy, air thick with smoke and alcohol, a honkytonk where daggers and bullets were known to have pierced flesh, it is nonetheless a crowd-drawer. Showbands, made up of musicians from any of the Cordillera provinces, strike up the latest Dwight Yoakam, Garth Brooks and Lee Ann Rimes or the reliable John Denver, Oak Ridge Boys and Merle Haggard, with dropdead mimicry.

Leather boots embellished Texas-style, sometimes with spurs, is common gear for strutting menfolk (otherwise its rubber sandals), topped by a denim jacket and preferably a cowboy hat or what comes closest to a Stetson. The neckerchief completes the look. Ibaloi historian Morr Pungayan told of a most cinematic sight he couldn't forget: An urban cowboy in full John Wayne regalia strode from nowhere in a busy section of Baguio City. On horseback, right smack in the middle of the market district of Magsaysay Avenue. He galloped down a sidestreet and, perhaps noting the startled looks, rode away after making a seemingly indelible impression. Folks looking for a similar but less spectacular version will have to be content with the Wright Park pony boys.

Certainly the partiality for American country ways is not incongruous to the landscape and weather. "Benguets" (as we refer to ourselves sometimes) plunged into the country-western pool, well, like ducks to water. Could it be the terrain and weather? Is it the cultural premium on cattle and livestock and centuries of horseback-riding, glamorized by memories of swashbuckling American colonial agents?

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