NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

This year for the Inachaigen Fino' CHamoru or Chamorro Language Competition we tried out a new category, Kantan Chamorrita. This style is something unfamiliar to most on Guam today, but was an integral, constant and always oppan part of Chamorro life before the war and even for a few years afterwards. Kantan Chamorrita or Chamorrita refers to a style of social improvisational singing. A verse is started with a familiar tune, and another takes up the song by adding on a verse of their own. Each verse is supposed to be four lines. The tune is simple and doesn't move to fast, but each singer is expected to rhyme the last part of the 2nd and 4th line. In the days before radio was commonplace and stereos, walkmans or iPods existed, this was how people filled the gaps in the air and in time. Singing familiar songs, but making up your own songs with others was something you did while fishing, weaving, farming, partying and so on. But as audio distractions and diversions became eas

In terms of situating Chamorro pasts and giving a founding meaning to their history and identity, Fu'una and Puntan, the two siblings who created Guam and Chamorros are generally given that great honor. They are thought of more and more as being the founding spirits, whether you see them as Gods, historical figures, metaphors or fantasies. They are taking a key place of meaning in terms of rooting Chamorro identity today, not as a spirit that was created in 1521 or 1668, but as something longer and having its own distinct origin. Even those who refuse to believe in Fu'una and Puntan as being spirits, but see them as possible historical figures, who may have been the ones to lead a voyage to Guam long ago, nonetheless reinforce their primacy. In one of the earliest references that we have to Fu'una and Puntan, Fu'una herself is not even mentioned. Puntan is mentioned and so is his "sister," but she is hardly given a role. In this passag