Читать книгу Secrets of Giron Arnis Escrima - Antonio Somera - Страница 10

▲ Introduction ▲

In the late 1960s, Guro Daniel Inosanto, one of Grandmaster Leo Giron’s early students, set out on a quest to learn about one of the hidden treasures of his heritage, the low-profile existence of an elite number of Filipino-Americans known as masters in the fighting arts of the Philippines. These early escrima masters had long ago migrated to the United States and, under the cover of secrecy, had shared their wisdom with only a select few. From the rare opportunity to meet, observe, and interview these individuals in both California and Hawaii came a published series of articles and, later, a book titled The Filipino Martial Arts. This was groundbreaking research, in some cases revealing the identities, styles, and methods of escrima “play” for the first time to the outside world.

In 1997, Mark Wiley’s Filipino Martial Culture appeared, featuring the complete history, weapons, systems, and masters of the Filipino martial arts in the United States and the Philippines. Grandmaster Giron proudly stands as one of only eighteen masters to have an entire chapter of the book dedicated to him and his art form.

Now at the age of eighty-six years, Grandmaster Leo M. Giron, a native son of Bayambang, Pangasinsn, Philippines, stands virtually alone among his generation as an active teacher of these arts, imparting history and knowledge to his close knit family of students. The time has now arrived to cast light on the substance and depth of the art which the grandmaster has scrupulously held in trust for so many generations.

After meeting Grandmaster Giron for the first time, many people comment on the professorial manner of a man whose skills and knowledge are rooted in deadly combat. Any contradiction is quickly dispelled, however, when Grandmaster Giron deftly demonstrates both in words and deed the direct connections between the beauty and effectiveness of his art and its basis in actual use. “Combat proven” is the operative term as the Grandmaster in a very real sense serves as a professor of living history, reaching into his own past and that of his predecessors to illuminate the present. Such light guides us through the following pages, as we view two of the twenty styles of Giron arnis escrima.