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National Living Treasures

In April 1992, the Gawad sa Manlilikha ng Bayan or the National Living Treasures Award was
institutionalized through Republic Act No. 7355. Tasked with the administration and implementation of
the Award is the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), the highest policy-making and
coordinating body for culture and the arts of the State. The NCCA, through the Gawad sa Manlilikha ng
Bayan Committee and an Ad Hoc Panel of Experts, conducts the search for the finest traditional artists of
the land, adopts a program that will ensure the transfer of their skills to others and undertakes measures
to promote a genuine appreciation of and instill pride among our people about the genius of the
Manlilikha ng Bayan.

First awarded in 1993 to three outstanding artists in music and poetry, the Gawad sa Manlilikha ng Bayan
has its roots in the 1988 National Folk Artists Award organized by the Rotary Club of Makati-Ayala. As a
group, these folk and traditional artists reflect the diverse heritage and cultural traditions that transcend
their beginnings to become part of our national character. As Filipinos, they bring age-old customs, crafts
and ways of living to the attention and appreciation of Filipino life. They provide us with a vision of
ourselves and of our nation, a vision we might be able to realize someday, once we are given the
opportunity to be true to ourselves a s these artists have remained truthful to their art.

As envisioned under R.A. 7355, “Manlilikha ng Bayan” shall mean a citizen engaged in any traditional art
uniquely Filipino whose distinctive skills have reached such a high level of technical and artistic excellence
and have been passed on to and widely practiced by the present generation in his/her community with
the same degree of technical and artistic competence.

1.GINAW BILOG (+ 2003)


Poet
Hanunuo Mangyan
Panaytayan, Oriental Mindoro
1993
A common cultural aspect among cultural communities nationwide is the oral tradition characterized by
poetic verses which are either sung or chanted. However, what distinguishes the rich Mangyan literary
tradition from others is the ambahan, a poetic literary form composed of seven-syllable lines used to
convey messages through metaphors and images. The ambahan is sung and its messages range from
courtship, giving advice to the young, asking for a place to stay, saying goodbye to a dear friend and so on.
Such an oral tradition is commonplace among indigenous cultural groups but the ambahan has remained
in existence today chiefly because it is etched on bamboo tubes using ancient Southeast Asian, pre-
colonial script called surat Mangyan.

Ginaw Bilog, Hanunoo Mangyan from Mansalay, Mindoro, grew up in such a cultural environment.
Already steeped in the wisdom that the ambahan is a key to the understanding of the Mangyan soul,
Ginaw took it upon himself to continually keep scores of ambahan poetry recorded, not only on bamboo
tubes but on old, dog-eared notebooks passed on to him by friends.
Most treasured of his collection are those inherited from his father and grandfather, sources of inspiration
and guidance for his creative endeavors. To this day, Ginaw shares old and new ambahans with his fellow
Mangyans and promotes this poetic form in every occasion.

Through the dedication of individuals like Ginaw, the ambahan poetry and other traditional art forms from
our indigenous peoples will continue to live.

The Filipinos are grateful to the Hanunoo Mangyan for having preserved a distinctive heritage form our
ancient civilization that colonial rule had nearly succeeded in destroying. The nation is justifiably proud of
Ginaw Bilog for vigorously promoting the elegantly poetic art of the surat Mangyan and the ambahan.
(Prof. Felipe M. de Leon, Jr.)

2.MASINO INTARAY (+ 2013)


Musician and Storyteller
Pala’wan
Brookes Point, Palawan
1993
Living in the highlands of southern Palawan are the Palawan people, who, together with the Batak and
Tagbanwa, are the major indigenous cultural communities of Palawan.

The Palawan possess a rich, intense yet highly refined culture encompassing both the visible and invisible
worlds. They may not exhibit the ornate splendor of the Maranaw nor the striking elegance of the Yakan,
but their elaborate conemology, extensive poetic and literary traditions, multi-level architecture, musical
concepts, social ethic and rituals reveal a deeply spiritual sensibility and subtle inner life of a people
attuned to the myriad energies and forms of luxurious mountain universe that is their abode, a forest
environment of great trees, countless species of plants and animals, and a magnificent firmament.

The Palawan have no notion of property. To them, the earth, sea, sky and nature’s elements belong to no
one. Their basic social ethic is one sharing. Their most important rituals such as the tambilaw and the
tinapay are forms of vast and lavish sharing, particularly of food and drinks, skills and ideas.

The tambilaw is a collective cooking and sharing of rice which is a ritual offering to the Lord of Rice,
Ampo’t Paray, while the tinapay is the rice wine drinking ceremony. It is during such occasions that the
basal, or gong music ensemble, plays a vital role in the life of the community. For it is the music of the
basal that collectively and spiritually connects the Palawan with the Great Lord, Ampo and the Master
Rice, Ampo’t Paray. The basal enlivens the night long fast of the drinking of the rice wine, bringing
together about one hundred guests under the roof of the kolon banwa (big house).

The gimbal (tubular drum) begins the music with a basic rhythm, then enter the sanang ( pair of small
gongs with boss and narrow rims) and one to three agungs (gongs with high bossed and wide turned – in
rims).

Basal ensemble playing is an accurate and wonderful metaphor for the basic custom of sharing among the
Palawan . For in this music no one instrument predominates. The techniques of interlocking, counterpoint,
alternation and colotomy ensure a collective oneness. The two sanang play in alternative dynamics. When
one plays loudly, the other plays softly. Contrapuntal patterns govern the interaction of the agung with
the sanang and gimbal. It is the music of “punctuation, rhythm and color rather than melody”. Its very
essence is creative cooperation and togetherness.

A non-musical instrumental element of the basal are the young women’s rapid stamping rhythm of their
foot as they move back and forth on the bamboo slatted floor of the kolon banwa, carrying taro leaves on
both hands at their sides. This percussion dance is called tarak.

Further highlighting the intensely poetic and subtle harmony of human beings with each other and with
nature among the palawan are the kulilal and bagit traditions. The kulilal is a highly lyrical poem
expressing passionate love sang with the accompaniment of the kusyapi (two-stringed lute), played by a
man, and pagang (bamboo zither), played by a woman. The bagit, also played on the kusyapi, is strictly
instrumental music depicting the rhythms, movements and sounds of nature, birds, monkeys, snakes,
chirping of insects, rustling of leaves, the elements and the like.

An outstanding master of the basal, kulilal and bagit is Masino, a gifted poet, bard artist, and musician
who was born near the head of the river in Makagwa valley on the foothill of Mantalingayan mountain.
Masino is not only well-versed in the instruments and traditions of the basal, kulilal and bagit but also
plays the aroding (mouth harp) and babarak (ring flute) and above all is a prolific and pre-eminent epic
chanter and story teller.

He has the creative memory, endurance, clarity of intellect and spiritual purpose that enable him to chant
all through the night, for successive nights, countless tultul (epics), sudsungit (narratives), and tuturan
(myths of origin and teachings of ancestors).

Masino and the basal and kulilal ensemble of Makagwa valley are creative, traditional artists of the
highest order of merit. (Prof. Felipe M. de Leon, Jr.)

3. SAMAON SULAIMAN (+ 2011)


Musician
Magindanao
Mama sa Pano, Maguindanao
1993
The Magindanaon, who are among the largest of Filipino Islamic groups, are concentrated in the towns of
Dinaig, Datu Piang, Maganoy and Buluan in Magindanao province. Highly sophisticated in weaving, okir
designs, jewelry, metalwork and brassware, their art is Southeast Asian yet distinct in character.

In the field of music, the Magindanaon has few peers among Filipino cultural communities. Their masters
on the kulintang (gong-chime) and kutyapi (two-stringed plucked lute) are comparable to any instrumental
virtuoso in the East or West.

The kutyapi is a favorite solo instrument among both Muslim and non-Muslim Filipinos and is also played
in combination with other instruments. It exists in a great variety of designs, shapes, and sizes and known
by such names as kotapi (Subanon), fegereng (Tiruray), faglong (B’laan), hegelong (T’boli) and kuglong or
kudlong (Manobo).
The Magindanao kutyapi is one of the most technically demanding and difficult to master among Filipino
traditional instruments, which is one reason why the younger generation is not too keen to learn it. Of its
two strings, one provides the rhythmic drone, while the other has movable frets that allow melodies to be
played in two sets of pentatonic scales, one containing semitones, the other containing none.

Magindanao kutyapi music is rich in melodic and rhythmic invention, explores a wide range of timbres and
sound phenomena – both human and natural, possesses a subtle and variable tuning system, and is
deeply poetic in inspiration.

Though it is the kulintang that is most popular among the Magindanaon, it is the kutyapi that captivates
with its intimate, meditative, almost mystical charm. It retains a delicate, quiet temper even at its most
celebrative and ebullient mood.

Samaon Sulaiman achieved the highest level of excellence in the art of kutyapi playing. His extensive
repertoire of dinaladay, linapu, minuna, binalig, and other forms and styles interpreted with refinement
and sensitivity fully demonstrate and creative and expressive possibilities of his instrument.

Learning to play the kutyapi from his uncle when he was about 13 years old, he has since, at 35 become
the most acclaimed kutyapi master and teacher of his instrument in Libutan and other barangays of
Maganoy town, deeply influencing the other acknowledged experts in kutyapi in the area, such as Esmael
Ahmad, Bitul Sulaiman, Nguda Latip, Ali Ahmad and Tukal Nanalon.

Aside from kutyapi, Samaon is also proficient in kulintang, agong (suspended bossed gong with wide rim),
gandingan (bossed gong with narrow rim), palendag (lip-valley flute), and tambul.

Samaon was a popular barber in his community and serve as an Imam in the Libutan mosque.

For his exemplary artistry and dedication to his chosen instrument, for his unwavering commitment to the
music of the kutyapi at a time when this instrument no longer exists in many parts of Mindanao, Samaon
Sulaiman is worthy of emulation and the highest honors. (Prof. Felipe M. de Leon, Jr.)

4. LANG DULAY (+2015)


Textile Weaver
T’boli
Lake Sebu, South Cotabato
1998

Using abaca fibers as fine as hair, Lang Dulay speaks more eloquently than words can. Images from the
distant past of her people, the Tbolis, are recreated by her nimble hands – the crocodiles, butterflies, and
flowers, along with mountains and streams, of Lake Sebu, South Cotabato, where she and her ancestors
were born – fill the fabric with their longing to be remembered. Through her weaving, Lang Dulay does
what she can to keep her people’s traditions alive.

There are a few of them left, the traditional weavers of the tnalak or Tboli cloth. It is not hard to see why:
weaving tnalak is a tedious process that begins with stripping the stem of the abaca plant to get the fibers,
to coaxing even finer fibers for the textile, then drying the threads and tying each strand by hand.
Afterward, there is the delicate task of setting the strands on the “bed-tying” frame made of bamboo, with
an eye towards deciding which strands should be tied to resist the dye. It is the bud or tying of the abaca
fibers that define the design.

A roll of tnalak must be individually set on a back strap loom, so called because of the broad band the
weaver sets against her back to provide tension to the work. There is great strain on the weaver’s back
and eyes, particularly since Tboli women are required to help out in the fields to augment the family
income. It is only after the farm work is done that the weaver can sit down to her designs. Also, due to the
peculiarity of the fiber, of its getting brittle under the noon day sun, working on it is preferred during the
cool evenings or early morn.

Lang Dulay knows a hundred designs, including the bulinglangit (clouds), the bankiring (hair bangs), and
the kabangi (butterfly), each one special for the stories it tells. Using red and black dyes, she spins her
stories with grace. Her textiles reflect the wisdom and the visions of her people.

Before the 1960s, the Tboli bartered tnalak for horses, which played an important role in their work. Upon
the establishment of the St. Cruz Mission, which encouraged the community to weave and provided them
with a means to market their produce, the tnalak designs gained widespread popularity and enable
weavers like Lang to earn a steady income from their art. However, the demand also resulted in the
commercialization of the tnalak industry, with outsiders coming in to impose their own designs on the
Tboli weavers.

Ironically modern designs get a better price than the traditional ones. Despite this, and the fact that those
modern designs are easier to weave, Lang persists in doing things the old, if harder, way, to give voice, in
effect, to the songs that were her elders’ before her. Her textiles are judged excellent because of the “fine
even quality of the yarn, the close interweaving of the warp and weft, the precision in the forms and
patterns, the chromatic integrity of the dye, and the consistency of the finish.”

She was only 12 when she first learned how to weave. Through the years, she has dreamed that, someday
she could pass on her talent and skills to the young in her community. Four of her grandchildren have
themselves picked up the shuttle and are learning to weave.

With the art comes certain taboos that Tboli weavers are careful to observe, such as passing a single
abaca thread all over the body before weaving so as not to get sick. Lang Dulay never washes the tnalak
with soap, and avoids using soap when she is dyeing the threads in order to maintain the pureness of the
abaca.

Upon learning that she was being considered to be one of the Gawad sa Manlilikha ng Bayan awardees,
tears of joy fell from her eyes. She thought of the school that she wanted to build, a school where the
women of her community could go to perfect their art. (Maricris Jan Tobias)

5. SALINTA MONON (+ 2009)


Textile Weaver
Tagabawa Bagobo
Bansalan, Davao del Sur
1998
Practically, since she was born, Salinta Monon had watched her mother’s nimble hands glide over the
loom, weaving traditional Bagobo textiles. At 12 she presented herself to her mother, to be taught how to
weave herself. Her ardent desire to excel in the art of her ancestors enabled her to learn quickly. She
developed a keen eye for the traditional designs, and now, at the age of 65, she can identify the design as
well as the author of a woven piece just by a glance.

All her life she has woven continuously, through her marriage and six pregnancies, and even after her
husband’s death 20 years ago. She and her sister are the only remaining Bagobo weavers in her
community.

Her husband paid her parents a higher bride price because of her weaving skills. However, he left all the
abaca gathering and stripping to her. Instead, he concentrated on making their small farm holding
productive. Life was such that she was obliged to help out in the farm, often putting her own work aside
to make sure the planting got done and the harvest were brought in. When her husband died, she was left
alone with a farm and six children, but she continued with her weaving, as a source of income as well as
pride.

Salinta has built a solid reputation for the quality of her work and the intricacies of her designs. There is a
continuing demand for her fabrics. She has reached the stage where she is able to set her own price, but
she admits to a nagging sense of being underpaid nevertheless, considering the time she puts into her
work. It takes her three to four months to finish a fabric 3.5 m x 42 cm in length, or one abaca tube skirt
per month.

She used to wear the traditional hand-woven tube skirt of the Bagobo, of which the sinukla and the
bandira were two of the most common types until the market began to be flooded with cheap machine-
made fabrics. Now, she wears her traditional clothes only on special occasions. Of the many designs she
weaves, her favorite is the binuwaya (crocodile), which is one of the hardest to make.

Today, she has her son to strip the abaca fibers for her. Abaca was once plentiful in their area, but an
unexpected scourge has devastated the wild abaca crops. Now, they are starting to domesticate their own
plants to keep up with the steady demand for the fabric.

When she has work to finish, Salinta isolates herself from her family to ensure privacy and concentration
in her art. At the moment, she does her weaving in her own home, but she wants nothing better than to
build a structure just for weaving, a place exclusively for the use of weavers. She looks forward to teaching
young wives in her community the art of weaving, for, despite the increasing pressures of modern society,
Bagobo women are still interested in learning the art.

Few women in the 1990s have the inclination, patience or perseverance to undergo the strict training and
discipline to become a weaver. Salinta maintains a pragmatic attitude towards the fact that she and her
younger sister may be the only Bagobo weavers left, the last links to a colorful tradition among their
ancestors that had endured throughout the Spanish and American colonization periods, and survived with
a certain vigor up to the late 1950s. (by Maricris Jan Tobias)
6. ALONZO SACLAG
Musician and Dancer, Kalinga
Lubuagan, Kalinga
2000
History, they say, is always written from the perspective of the dominant class. It is not as objective an
account as we were led to believe when, as elementary schoolchildren, we were made to memorize the
details of the lives of Jose Rizal and the other notable ilustrados. History is about as impartial as the
editorials we eagerly devour today, the ones that extol and chastise the exploits and the foibles of
government, but with a distinct advantage: by virtue of its form, it takes on an aura of authority. And this
authority is one ordinary schoolchildren and adults alike are hardly likely to challenge.

Seemingly maligned by both history and popular media are the people of the Kalinga. Even in the earliest
Spanish Chronicles, they were depicted as so hostile that Dominican missionaries were forced to abandon
their plans to build Christian missions in the area. Their more recent battle against the Marcos
administration’s plans to build a series of hydroelectric dams along the Chico River only added to their
notoriety. The very name they have taken on was a label tagged on to them by the neighboring Ibanag
and Gaddang. It meant “enemy” – a throwback, no doubt, to the days when head taking was a common
and noble practice, intended not only to demonstrate bravery but, more importantly, to safeguard lives
and property.

Such was the emphasis placed on the fierceness of the Kalinga that, except for scholars, researchers, and
cultural workers, very few know about their rich culture and heritage. Which is why the efforts of Alonzo
Saclag, declared Manlilikha ng Bayan for 2000, become all the more significant. A Kalinga master of dance
and the performing arts, he has made it his mission to create and nurture a greater consciousness and
appreciation of Kalinga culture, among the Kalinga themselves and beyond their borders.

As a young boy in Lubuagan, Kalinga, Alonzo Saclag found endless fascination in the sights and sounds of
day-to-day village life and ritual. According to his son, Robinson, he received no instruction, formal or
otherwise, in the performing arts. Yet he has mastered not only the Kalinga musical instruments but also
the dance patterns and movements associated with his people’s rituals. His tool was observation, his
teacher, experience. Coupled with these was a keen interest in – a passion, if you would – the culture that
was his inheritance.

This passion he clearly intends to pass on to the other members of his community, particularly to the
younger generation which, he notes, needs to understand and value the nuances of their traditional laws
and beliefs. Although Kalinga life and culture have remained generally unchanged partly due to their
relative isolation, he observes that some of them are tempted by the illusion of city life. He actively
advocates the documentation of their philosophies before they become completely eroded by foreign
influences – whether cultural, political, or economic – and are completely forgotten by his people.

He cites as an example the budong or the peace-pact, an established remedy for the tribal wars that
continue to rack their region. He notes sadly that some fail to grasp the true meaning of the pact and the
lives that are lost in a tribal war. These he sees as akin to a sacrifice made to keep the peace intact. His
attitude towards the present-day institution is one of uncertainty. His disillusionment stems from bitter
experience. Notwithstanding the many tribal wars and peace-pacts he and his people have fought and
sworn to, lasting peace stays elusive.

Much of his energy is channeled towards different preservation efforts. He has for years urged the
members of his community to preserve their artifacts and archaeological sites. While the unwritten laws
and epics chronicle their victories as a people, their artifacts afford us a glimpse into their day-to-day
existence. One such artifact is the Kalinga gong or the gangsa, the making of which is a disappearing trade.
He has endeavored to revive this dying craft. And to hold these and other treasures, he lobbied for two
years with the provincial government to grant funds to convert the abandoned Capitol Building into a
museum. His persistence was finally rewarded when, with support from the provincial government and
other patrons, the Lubuagan branch of the National Museum was established.

His campaigns have brought him to schools where he discusses various issues with administrators. One
striking result of these efforts is the children’s practice of donning the Kalinga costume for important
school events such as graduation and First Communion. To celebrate indigenous values, he puts up skits
and other creative presentations in various schools. At his cue, the mountains seem to resound as
elementary schoolchildren learn the folk songs their parents and grandparents once sang. He has even
argued for the broadcast of traditional Kalinga music alongside contemporary music in the local radio
station.

To guarantee that his knowledge in the performing arts is passed on to others, he formed the Kalinga
Budong Dance Troupe. He takes the young men and women who come to him under his charge and they
learn about the music and dance of their ancestors. While many have expressed a genuine desire to
represent and promote Kalinga performing arts, he admits that a handful have other, more personal,
motives. Because the troupe occasionally goes on tour, joining it is perceived by some as a chance to see
places other than mountains they call home. Who can resist the lure of foreign places, he concedes.

His own wife and children have joined him in his travels and performances, and though they match his
commitment and his dedication, he acknowledges, with a playful grin, that his nine children have yet to
equal his graceful movements.

While his young charges dream of visiting other places, he hopes to recreate a Kalinga village comparable
to those he remembers from his youth. In it, he hopes to build a traditional structure that will house the
art and artifacts of his people, a showcase of Kalinga artistry and genius and a source of pride for his
community. He remembers with fondness the Kalinga House in the grounds of the Expo Filipino in
Pampanga. Cool even in the midday heat, he says it served as a retreat not only for the Kalinga
participants but also for some of the students who had visited the Expo.

Already he has purchased a piece of land where his village is to take root. To the people of his community,
he has entrusted the task of planting a shelter of trees and other plants, providing the seedling himself,
just as he did years before to counter the threat of erosion. In this village, he imagines waking up to a
symphony of bird song, a rare occurrence of late yet one he zealously sought through his call for a
prohibition on hunting.

But so far, the village remains a picture that he sees only in his mind’s eye. The house remains a vision on
paper, peopled only by the folk of his imagination. The seedlings of wild fruit trees fill his house, like
sentinels, waiting to be transplanted. One, in fact, has already begun to flower and bear fruit, proof of the
long wait he has had to endure.

Waiting, however, is a small difficulty. The greater obstacle appears to be gaining the support of those
who continue to question and challenge his motives. One would think that with such a noble purpose, one
would have no trouble finding allies, not the least among the Kalinga themselves. Reality, though, suggests
the contrary.

But Alonzo Saclag remains unfazed. With characteristic generosity, he does not, for instance, begrudge
nor fear the efforts others take to put up a group similar to his much-celebrated Kalinga Budong Dance
Troupe. Moreover, he welcomes the idea of collaborating with them, should the opportunity present
itself.

In the meantime, he perseveres in his work, braving long hours of travel even in the face of a tribal war.
His wife, Rebecca, who faithfully follows him wherever his travels take him, says this is his mission: to
continue to nurture and uphold the Kalinga culture, the birthright of his children. (Salve de la Paz)

7. FEDERICO CABALLERO
Epic Chanter
Sulod-Bukidnon
Calinog, Iloilo
2000
Stories are the lifeblood of a people. In the stories people tell lies a window to what they think, believe,
and desire. In truth, people’s stories soundly encapsulate the essence of their humanity. And this
circumstance is not peculiar to any one group. It is as a thread that weaves through the civilizations of the
ancient East and the cultures of the industrial West.

So significant is the role they play that to poison a people’s stories, says African writer Ben Okri, is to
poison their lives. This truth resonates in the experience of many. In the folklore of the Tagalog people,
tales abound of a mythical hero who, once freed from imprisonment in a sacred mountain, would come to
liberate the nation. The crafty Spaniards seized upon this myth and used it as a tool for further
subjugation. They harped on it, enshrining it in the consciousness of every Tagalog, dangling this legendary
champion in front of their eyes as one would the proverbial carrot. So insidious was this myth that
suffering in silence and waiting for deliverance became a virtue. And for a time, it lulled the people into a
false sense of hope, smothering all desire to rise up in arms.

Yet stories can also stir up a people long asleep, awaken senses that have lain dormant or been dulled by
the neglect of many centuries. Throughout history, not a few have expressed the belief that the pen is
more powerful than any sword, double-edged though it may be. Nonetheless, the purpose of stories is to
change lives may not be immediately self-evident. But history, or more significantly individual insight,
stands witness to this truth. And perhaps it is partly this realization that compels Federico Caballero, a
Panay-Bukidnon from the mountains of Central Panay to ceaselessly work for the documentation of the
oral literature, particularly the epics, of his people. These ten epics, rendered in a language that, although
related to Kiniray-a, is no longer spoken, constitute an encyclopedic folklore one only the most
persevering and the most gifted of disciples can learn. Together with scholars, artists, and advocates of
culture, he painstakingly pieces together the elements of this oral tradition nearly lost.

His own love for his people’s folklore began when he was a small child. His mother would lull his brothers
and sister to sleep, chanting an episode in time to the gentle swaying of the hammock. Sometimes it was
his great-great-grandmother, his Anggoy Omil, who would chant the epics. Nong Pedring remembers how
he would press against them as they cuddled his younger siblings, his imagination recreating the heroes
and beautiful maidens of their tales. In his mind, Labaw Dunggon and Humadapnon grew into mythical
proportions, heroes as real as the earth on which their hut stood and the river that nourished it. Each
night, he learned more about where their adventures brought them, be it to enchanted caves peopled by
charmed folk or the underworld to rescue an unwitting prisoner from the clutches of an evil being. And
the more he learned, the greater his fascination became. When his mother or his Anggoy would
inadvertently nod off, he would beg them to stay awake and finish the tale.

His fascination naturally grew into a desire to learn to chant the epics himself. Spurred on by this, he
showed an almost enterprising facet: when asked by his Anggoy to fetch water from the river, pound rice,
or pull grass from the kaingin, he would agree to do so on the condition that he be taught to chant an
epic. Such audacity could very well have earned him a scolding. But it was his earnestness that clearly
shone through. Not long after, he conquered all ten epics and other forms of oral literature, besides.

When both his Anggoy and his mother had passed on, Nong Pedring continued the tradition, collaborating
with researchers to document what is customarily referred to as Humadapnon and Labaw Dunggon epics.
Although his siblings also share the gift of their forebears, he alone persevered in the task, unmindful of
the disapproval of his three children. He explains that like a number of people in their community, they
find no pride in claiming their Panay-Bukidnon heritage. In the Light of things, such an attitude is
completely understandable. Clearly experience has not been kind. Even history is rife with instances of
intolerance. Prejudice, after all, has always been the recourse of those who cannot look beyond
differences in speech and clothing.

Nong Pedring takes upon himself the task of setting things right. He works with the Bureau of Nonformal
Education, traveling from barangay to barangay, trying to convince the older folk of the necessity and
benefits of learning to read and write. Although he is warmly received in these places, he has an
admittedly difficult assignment. The older people generally no longer feel up to the challenge of learning a
new skill. Besides, they see little use in it. He appeals to them by saying their help is needed to put into
writing their indigenous beliefs, traditions, and literature. Once documentation is completed, teaching the
younger people, especially those who have expressed interest, becomes simple and uncomplicated.

In the epics of his ancestors, he finds the root of many of the convictions they adhere to even today. And
the concerns addressed by the epics are diverse, from human and family relations to matters that affect
the environment. In the epic Tikung Kadlum, a man incurs the wrath of a man-eating witch for cutting
down a tree without permission. To make matters worse, the tree happens to be one that the witch
particularly held in regard. In exchange for the tree, she demands the life of his two daughters. This in her
mind is a truly fair exchange. The lesson is clear, universal, and enduring, one every person would do well
to heed: at all times, justice must be meted out.

In his own way, Nong Pedring strives to dispense justice in the community through his work as a
manughusay – an arbiter of conflicts. In the days before the advent of the local government system,
arbiters like him were consulted on matters concerning family, neighbor relations, and property. Even
today, the barangay officials in his home in Garangan call for him to help in resolving these affairs. Nong
Pedring willingly assists, believing this to be the better way. He feels disputes need to be discussed by
those concerned at the level of the local government. He disagrees with the rashness of immediately
going to the courts without attempting any resolution. Apart from being expensive, it has the tendency of
alienating people further, threatening to destroy the very fabric of the community he, as manughusay, has
sworn to safeguard.

And his influence extends far beyond the bounds of his community. He is considered bantugan, a person
who has attained distinction. Dr. Alicia Magos a respected folklorist from the University of the Philippines
in the Visayas who has worked with him on the documentation project, says Nong Pedring has the heart
of a scholar. He understood her vision for the culture of the Panay-Bukidnon. Perhaps even to say that he
shares her vision is not an overstatement.

For his part, Nong Pedring stays resolute in his purpose. Unlike the hammock that has played so important
a role in his story, he is swayed neither by the criticism of some nor the adulation of others. He continues
to travel form his home in the mountains of Calinog to the busy district of Iloilo City, patiently doing his
share in the work that has spanned nearly a decade. Dr. Magos credits him with opening the eyes of
academicians, advocates, and artists to the beauty of Panay-Bukidnon oral tradition. Yet the greater
triumph is one nearer to Nong Pedring’s heart. His children and family have of late rediscovered pride in
their heritage. They are no longer ashamed of their roots as they once were. To Nong Pedring, there is
perhaps no better reason than this to carry on with his work.

8. UWANG AHADAS
Musician
Yakan
Lamitan, Basilan
2000

Much mystery surrounds life. And when confronted with such, it is but natural to attempt some form of
hypothesizing. In the days when hard science was nonexistent, people sought to explain away many of
these enigmas by attributing them to the work of the gods or the spirits. In this way, rain and thunder
became the lamentations of a deity abandoned by his capricious wife, and night and day, the compromise
reached by a brother and sister who both wanted to rule the world upon the death of their father.

Many of these heavenly beings hold sway over the earth and all that dwell within its bounds. In the
folklore of a northern people, a story explains why, in the three-kilometer stretch of the highest peak of
Binaratan, a mountain in the region, there is a silence so complete it borders on the eerie. Legend has it
that the great Kaboniyan went hunting with some men to teach them how to train and use hounds. When
they reached the peak of Binaratan, however, they could no longer hear their hounds as the song of the
birds drowned their barking. One of the hunters begged Kaboniyan to stop the birds’ singing, lest the hunt
fail and they return home empty-handed. So Kaboniyan commanded the creatures of Binaratan to be
silent in a voice so loud and frightful that they kept their peace in fear. Since then, a strange unbroken
silence reigns at the top of the mountain, in spite of the multitudes of birds that flit from tree to tree.

And because they belong to this sphere, it is believed that mortal men are as vulnerable to the powers
and the whims of these gods and spirits as the beasts that roam the land and the birds that sail the sky.
Though they are hidden behind dark glasses, the eyes of Uwang Ahadas speak of such a tale, one that
came to pass more than half a century before. They tell story of a young boy who unknowingly incurred
the ire of the nature spirits through his childish play. The people of his community believe Uwang’s near-
blindness is a form of retribution from the nature spirits that dwelled in Bohe Libaken, a brook near the
place where he was born and where, as a child, he often bathed. His father, Imam Ahadas, recalls that the
five-year-old Uwang quietly endured the pain in his eyes, waiting out a month before finally telling his
parents.

Music was to become his constant companion. Uwang Ahadas is a Yakan, a people to whom instrumental
music is of much significance, connected as it is with both the agricultural cycle and the social realm. One
old agricultural tradition involves the kwintangan kayu, an instrument consisting of five wooden logs hung
horizontally, from the shortest to the longest, with the shortest being nearest the ground. After the
planting of the rice, an unroofed platform is built high in the branches of a tree. Then the kwintangan kayu
is played to serenade the palay, as a lover woos his beloved. Its resonance is believed to gently caress the
plants, rousing them from their deep sleep, encouraging them to grow and yield more fruit.

With this heritage, as rich as it is steeped in music, it is no wonder that even as a young child, Uwang
joyously embraced the demands and the discipline necessitated by his art. His training began with the
ardent observation of the older, more knowledgeable players in his community. His own family, gifted
with a strong tradition in music, complemented the instruction he received. He and his siblings were all
encouraged to learn how to play the different Yakan instruments, as these were part of the legacy of his
ancestors. Not all Yakan children have such privilege. Maintaining the instruments is very expensive work
and sadly, there is always the temptation presented by antique dealers and other collectors who rarely, if
at all, appreciate the history embodied in these artifacts.

From the gabbang, a bamboo xylophone, his skills gradually allowed him to progress to the agung, the
kwintangan kayu, and later the other instruments. Even musical tradition failed to be a deterrent to his
will. Or perhaps it only served to fuel his determination to demonstrate his gift. Yakan tradition sets the
kwintangan as a woman’s instrument and the agung, a man’s. His genius and his resolve, however, broke
through this tradition. By the age of twenty, he had mastered the most important of the Yakan musical
instruments, the kwintangan among them.

Uwang, however, is not content with merely his own expertise. He dreams that many more of his people
will discover and study his art. With missionary fervor, he strives to pass on his knowledge to others. His
own experience serves as a guide. He believes it is best for children to commence training young, when
interest is at its peak and flexibility of the hands and the wrists is assured. His own children were the first
to benefit from his instruction. One of his daughters, Darna, has become quite proficient in the art that
like her father, she too has begun to train others.

His purpose carries him beyond the borders of Lamitan to the other towns of Basilan where Uwang always
finds a warm welcome from students, young and old, who eagerly await his coming. His many travels have
blessed him with close and enduring ties with these people. Many of his onetime apprentices have come
into their own have gained individual renown in the Yakan community. He declares, with great pride, that
they are frequently invited to perform during the many rituals and festivals that mark the community
calendar.

Similar to his mentors before him, Uwang’s teaching style is essentially hands-on. He teaches by showing;
his students learn by doing. His hands constantly keep a firm hold on those of his students, the gentle
pressure encouraging them to tap out music from the silent bamboo blades and the splendid brass gongs.
His soft voice sings praises when merited and lightly censures when necessary. And each student receives
his full attention while the others persevere in learning and perfecting the art.

His younger brother, Rohas, worries about how best to preserve his techniques so that they can be passed
on to others even after he is gone. For his part, he has started documenting his brother’s instruction,
creating a notation system that will simplify instruction. Already he has begun using this method for
training students and declares that it shows promise. However, this is only the beginning and much work
is still called for if the hills of Basilan are to continue to resound with ancestral music.

Foremost among these is to give Uwang back the kind of mobility that will permit him to continue his
mission to educate. He admits his dimmed eyesight makes him slightly wary of travel, as it would compel
him to be constantly dependent on others. Of late, he has found it more difficult to walk, particularly
when it is extremely bright and even his dark glasses afford little protection. To a man of his stature, this
admission is certainly one that is very difficult to make.

Yet when asked how he felt about treatment to correct his condition, he smiles and nods his head. With
possibly the same tranquil with which he faced up to both his fate and his people’s tradition, he expresses
a willingness to endure whatever is necessary. And strangely, even through his dark glasses, one can
almost imagine seeing a not so faint glimmer in his eyes. (Salve de la Paz)

9. DARHATA SAWABI (+ 2005)


Textile Weaver
Tausug
Parang, Jolo, Sulu
2004

In Barangay Parang, in the island of Jolo, Sulu province, women weavers are hard at work weaving the pis
syabit, the traditional cloth tapestry worn as a head covering by the Tausug of Jolo. “This is what we’ve
grown up with,” say the weavers. “It is something we’ve learned from our mothers.” Darhata Sawabi is one
of those who took the art of pis syabit making to heart.

The families in her native Parang still depend on subsistence farming as their main source of income. But
farming does not bring in enough money to support a family, and is not even an option for someone like
Darhata Sawabi who was raised from birth to do only household chores. She has never married. Thus,
weaving is her only possible source of income. The money she earns from making the colorful squares of
cloth has enabled her to become self-sufficient and less dependent on her nephews and nieces. A hand-
woven square measuring 39 by 40 inches, which takes her some three months to weave, brings her about
P2,000. These squares are purchased by Tausug for headpieces, as well as to adorn native attire, bags, and
other accessories. Her remarkable proficiency with the art and the intricacy of her designs allows her to
price her creations a little higher than others. Her own community of weavers recognizes her expertise in
the craft, her bold contrasting colors, evenness of her weave and her faithfulness to traditional designs.

Pis syabit weaving is a difficult art. Preparing the warp alone already takes three days. It is a very
mechanical task, consisting of stringing black and red threads across a banana and bamboo frame to form
the base of the tapestry. At 48, and burdened by years of hard work, Sawabi no longer has the strength or
the stamina for this. Instead, she hires one of the neighboring children or apprentice weavers to do it at
the cost of P300. It is a substantial amount, considering the fact that she still has to spend for thread.
Sawabi’s typical creations feature several colors, including the basic black and red that form the warp, and
a particular color can require up to eight cones, depending on the role it plays in the design. All in all, it
comes up to considerable capital which she can only recover after much time and effort.

Sawabi faces other challenges to her art as well. In the 1970s, when Jolo was torn apart by armed struggle,
Sawabi and her family were often forced to abandon their home in search of safer habitats. The first time
she was forced to abandon her weaving was very painful experience as it was impossible for her to bring
the loom along with her to the forest where they sought refuge. They returned to their home to see the
pis she had been working on for nearly a month destroyed by the fighting. There was nothing for her to do
except pick up the pieces of her loom and start again. Because of the conflict, she and her family had been
forced to relocate twice finally establishing their residence in Parang. During this time, Sawabi supported
her family by weaving and selling her pieces to the participants in the conflict who passed through her
village. Because of her dedication to her art, generations of traditional Tausug designs have been
preserved and are available for contemporary appreciation and future study. She continues to weave at
home, while teaching the other women of her community. In recent years, she has had several
apprentices, and more and more people have bought her work.

Sawabi remains faithful to the art of pis syabit weaving. Her strokes are firm and sure, her color sensitivity
acute, and her dedication to the quality of her products unwavering. She recognizes the need for her to
remain in the community and continue with her mission to teach the art of pis syabit weaving. She had,
after all, already been teaching the young women of Parang how to make a living from their woven
fabrics. Some of her students are already teachers themselves. She looks forward to sharing the tradition
of pis syabit weaving to the younger generations. (Maricris Jan Tobias)

10. EDUARDO MUTUC


Metalsmith
Kapampangan
Apalit Pampanga
2004
Eduardo Mutuc is an artist who has dedicated his life to creating religious and secular art in silver, bronze,
and wood. His intricately detailed retablos, mirrors, altars, and carosas are in churches and private
collections. A number of these works are quite large, some exceeding forty feet, while some are very small
and feature very fine and delicate craftsmanship.

For an artist whose work graces cathedrals and churches, Mutuc works in humble surroundings. His studio
occupies a corner of his yard and shares space with a tailoring shop. During the recent rains, the river
beside his lot overflowed and water flooded his studio in Apalit, Pampanga, drenching his woodblocks.
Mutuc takes it all in stride.
He discovered his talents in sculpture and metalwork quite late. He was 29 when he decided to
supplement his income from farming for the relatively more secure job of woodcarving. He spent his first
year as an apprentice to carvers of household furniture. It was difficult at the beginning, but thanks to his
mentors, he was able to develop valuable skills that would serve him in good stead later on. The hardest
challenge for him was learning a profession that he had no prior knowledge about, but poverty was a
powerful motivation. Although his daily wage of P3.00 didn’t go far to support his wife and the first three
of nine children (one of whom has already died), choices were limited for a man who only finished
elementary school.

Things began to change after his fifth or sixth year as a furniture maker when a colleague taught him the
art of silver plating. This technique is often used to emulate gold and silver leaf in the decoration of saints
and religious screens found in colonial churches. He left the furniture shop and struck out on his own with
another friend. One of his first commissions came from Monsignor Fidelis Limcauco, who asked him to
create a tabernacle for the parish of Fairview, Quezon City. Clients began to commission him to create
other pieces, many of which are based on Spanish colonial designs. Peak seasons are before Holy Week
and Christmas. He derives inspiration from traditional religious designs and infuses his own ideas into the
finished product.

While he finds meaning in making pieces for the church, orders for commissioned pieces have become
fewer because of the economic slump. But even for his secular pieces, he finds inspiration in church art.

When he is working on metalwork, he begins with a detailed drawing. He then transfers the design on a
block of wood by chiseling out the details. He then covers the wood with a metal sheet, and then coaxes
out the design through careful hammering with a mallet and an old rubber slipper. Afterward, he dips the
solid metal sheet in molten silver, a dangerous task that must be done in the open air lest the poisonous
fumes overcome him. He then proceeds to do more hammering and polishing to bring out the details of
the piece.

Each piece has its own demands. Many times the size of the subject demands larger and more expansive
designs to make a statement from afar. Other times it may best be expressed through careful detailing
that needs close observation before it becomes evident. Mistakes are costly, as brass and silver are
expensive. While small tears or mistakes in cutting out the design could be easily remedied, an error in
measurement or carving might require him to do it over. He acknowledges that he makes fewer mistakes
now that he has become more expert in his craft.

Mutuc’s works are more than merely decorative. They add character and splendor to their setting. His
spectacular shiny retablos that decorate an apse or chapel provide focus for contemplation and devotion
while the faithful commune with the Divine in regular church celebrations.

He notes that handmade pieces are finer and more delicate than machine pressed pieces, particularly
when commissioned pieces involve human representations. “Facial expressions are among the hardest to
do,” says Mutuc who uses different molds for each cherub to ensure their individuality. His cherubin are
engaging creatures, whose strikingly lifelike quality comes through the silverplate. They look out at the
worshippers with a concerned, kindly air, seemingly on the alert to guide their prayers upward.
According to him, craftsmanship begins with respect for one’s tools and the medium. The first thing he
teaches his students is how to hold the chisel and hammer properly to promote ease of use and prevent
fatigue and mistakes because of improper handling. He also cautions against working with an eye towards
easy money. The only way to improve one’s skills, he says, is to immerse oneself, learn the technique, and
to practice. Only in perfecting one’s craft can there be real reward. (Maricris Jan Tobias)

11. HAJA AMINA APPI (+ 2013)


Mat Weaver
Sama
Tandubas, Tawi-Tawi
2004

Haja Amina Appi of Ungos Matata, Tandubas, Tawi-Tawi, is recognized as the master mat weaver among
the Sama indigenous community of Ungos Matata. Her colorful mats with their complex geometric
patterns exhibit her precise sense of design, proportion and symmetry and sensitivity to color. Her unique
multi-colored mats are protected by a plain white outer mat that serves as the mat’s backing. Her
functional and artistic creations take up to three months to make.

The art of mat weaving is handed down the matrilateral line, as men in the Sama culture do not take up
the craft. The whole process, from harvesting and stripping down the pandan leaves to the actual
execution of the design, is exclusive to women. It is a long and tedious process, and requires much
patience and stamina. It also requires an eye for detail, an unerring color instinct, and a genius for applied
mathematics.

The process starts with the harvesting of wild pandan leaves from the forest. The Sama weavers prefer the
thorny leaf variety because it produces stronger and sturdier matting strips. Although the thorns are huge
and unrelenting, Haja Amina does not hesitate from gathering the leaves. First, she removes the thorns
using a small knife. Then, she strips the leaves with a jangat deyum or stripper to make long and even
strips. These strips are sun-dried, then pressed (pinaggos) beneath a large log. She then dyes the strips by
boiling them for a few minutes in hot water mixed with anjibi or commercial dye. As an artist, she has
refused to limit herself to the traditional plain white mats of her forebears but experimented with the use
of anjibi in creating her designs. And because commercial dyes are often not bold or striking enough for
her taste, she has taken to experimenting with color and developing her own tints to obtain the desired
hues. Her favorite colors are red, purple and yellow but her mats sometimes feature up to eight colors at a
time. Her complicated designs gain power from the interplay of various shades.

Upon obtaining several sets of differently-colored matting strips, she then sun dries them for three or four
days, and presses them again until they are pliant. Finally, she weaves them into a colorful geometric
design. Instead of beginning at the outermost edges of the mat, she instead weaves a central strip to form
the mat’s backbone, then works to expand the mat from within. Although the techniques used to make
the mats are traditional, she has come up with some of her own modern designs. According to Haja
Amina, what is more difficult than the mixing of the colors is the visualization and execution of the design
itself. It is high precision work, requiring a mastery of the medium and an instinctive sense of symmetry
and proportion. Despite the number of calculations involved to ensure that the geometric patterns will
mirror, or at least complement, each other, she is not armed with any list or any mathematical formula
other than working on a base of ten and twenty strips. Instead, she only has her amazing memory, an
instinct and a lifetime of experience.
Haja Amina is respected throughout her community for her unique designs, the straightness of her edging
(tabig) and the fineness of her sasa and kima-kima. Her hands are thick and callused from years of
harvesting, stained by dye. But her hands are still steady, and her eye for color still unerring. She feels
pride in the fact that people often borrow her mats to learn from her and copy her designs.

Happily, mat weaving does not seem to be a lost art as all of Haja Amina’s female children and
grandchildren from her female descendants have taken it up. Although they characterize her as a patient
and gentle teacher, Haja Amina’s passion for perfection shows itself as she runs a finger alongside the
uneven stitching and obvious patchwork on her apprentices’ work. She is eager to teach, and looks
forward to sharing the art with other weavers. (Maricris Jan Tobias)

12. TEOFILO GARCIA


Casque Maker
Ilocano
San Quintin, Abra
2012

Each time Teofilo Garcia leaves his farm in San Quintin, Abra, he makes it a point to wear a tabungaw.
People in the nearby towns of the province, in neighboring Sta. Maria and Vigan in Ilocos Sur, and as far as
Laoag in Ilocos Norte sit up and take notice of his unique, functional and elegant headpiece that shields
him from the rain and the sun. A closer look would reveal that it is made of the native gourd, hollowed
out, polished, and varnished to a bright orange sheen to improve its weather resistance. The inside is lined
with finely woven rattan matting, and the brim sports a subtle bamboo weave for accent.

Because he takes pride in wearing his creations, Teofilo has gotten many orders as a result. Through his
own efforts, through word of mouth, and through his own participation in an annual harvest festival in his
local Abra, a lot of people have discovered about the wonders of the tabungaw as a practical alternative.
Hundreds have sought him out at his home to order their own native all-weather headgear. His clients
have worn his work, sent them as gifts to their relatives abroad, and showed them off as a masterpiece of
Filipino craftsmanship. With the proper care, a well-made tabungaw can last up to three to four
generations, and the ones created by Teofilo are among the best there are. They are so sturdy that
generally, farmers need to own only one at a time. Even Teofilo and his son only own one tabungaw each.

Although he has been a master artisan since he learned how to make gourd casques and weave baskets
from his grandfather at the age of 15, Teofilo is still principally a farmer. Most of the year is spent working
the land to coax a good harvest to enable him to send his five children to school. But during the months
that his land is not planted to rice and tobacco, or caring for his herd of cows, he devotes his land to
planting upo (family Cucurbitaceae), which he then transforms into the traditional tabungaw. Crafting the
tabungaw from planting and harvesting the upo, refining the uway (rattan) that make up the lining of the
tabungaw, weaving the puser (bamboo) that serves as the accent for the work, and finishing the work
takes up a lot of time. It takes at least seven days to finish one tabungaw, assuming that all the materials
are available. He uses only simple hand tools that he designed himself and he is involved in each stage of
the production.

His craft demands a lot of personal input from him because there is hardly any way for him to source the
materials he needs for his work unless he makes them himself. He has had to turn down large orders
because he has no one to help him, and in any case, there is no one who matches his level of skill.
Sometimes, he wants to give up because it’s hard work, but he doesn’t do it, for fear that the art will end
with him.

His output is also limited by his harvest of gourds. In a good year and blessed with good weather, he can
make up to 100 pieces. This year, inspired by increasing orders, he plans to increase the area of his farm
dedicated to gourd planting. His increased visibility is also partly the result of the local agricultural fairs
organized by the local government where he takes out a booth every year to showcase his work.

Since he learned the craft, he has not stopped innovating. Each handcrafted tabungaw is the product of
years of study and careful attention to the elements that make up the entire piece. Previously, he used
nito (vine trimmings) to decorate the outside of the headgear and sourced it from Cagayan, but when his
relative who supplied him with the raw materials passed away, he decided to experiment with more
locally accessible materials. His training in weaving baskets served him in good stead, and he was able to
apply that skill when he turned to bamboo as an alternative to nito.

He has developed a feel for each component, and engages in a lot of experimentation to determine why
this particular variety of upo is more resistant to decay, why this particular species of rattan is unsuitable
because it is less pliant to his touch. He has been looking for other varieties of upo to use as raw materials,
but it has proven difficult since he does not have access to a plant database that would make his work
easier. He had been interested in certain varieties that showed promise but he has been unable to track
them down and now they are no longer available in his area.

It would be to his advantage if he could outsource the preparation of the raw materials so that he can
focus on the more technical aspects of production. But it’s not that easy to develop in others the same
feel for materials with which he has been gifted.

He rues the fact that there is very little interest by other people to make tabungaws even though it has
potential as an export product. Now that his children are grown up, he has time to teach others the craft
and is looking forward to the possibility. He is also eager to explore new designs, and he has been
innovating on his traditional designs based on inspirations from his trips to the nearby provinces. He has
developed many patterns and built on the traditional patterns that he learned when he was young. He is
interested in developing new ways to show contrast between the shades of matting, and how to keep the
tabungaw colorfast regardless of the weather. Years after he first learned how to make a tabungaw, it still
takes him a long time to perfect the casque because he is still perfecting his art. (Maricris Jan Tobias)

13. MAGDALENA GAMAYO


Textile Weaver
Ilocano
Pinili, Ilocos Norte
2012
The Ilocos Norte that Magdalena Gamayo knows is only a couple of hours drive away from the capital of
Laoag, but is far removed from the quickening pulse of the emergent city. Instead, it remains a quiet rural
enclave dedicated to rice, cotton and tobacco crops. 2012 Gawad sa Manlilikha ng Bayan awardee,
Magdalena Gamayo still owes a lot to the land and the annual harvest. Despite her status as a master
weaver, weaving alone is not enough.
Also, even though the roads are much improved, sourcing quality cotton threads for her abel is still a
challenge. Even though the North is known for its cotton, it does not have thread factories to spin bales of
cotton into spools of thread. Instead, Magdalena has to rely on local merchants with their limited supplies.
She used to spin her own cotton and brushed it with beeswax to make it stronger, but after the Second
World War, she now relies on a market-bought thread. She still remembers trading rice for thread,
although those bartering days are over. A thread is more expensive nowadays and of poorer quality.
Often, she has had to reject samples but often she has little choice in the matter. There are less local
suppliers of thread nowadays, a sign that there is less demand for their wares, but nonetheless, the abel-
weaving tradition in Ilocos remains strong, and there are no better artists who exemplify the best of
Filipino abel weaving tradition than Magdalena Gamayo.

She says good thread has to be resilient, able to withstand several passes through the loom. It should have
a good weight and color, its fibers should not be loose, and it should endure years of use. Magdalena
prefers to work with linen because it is obedient to the master weaver’s touch. In her personal
collection are abel that has been in use for generations, gradually getting softer from handling, but
retaining their structural integrity and intricate designs. Evident is the handiwork that went into
painstakingly arranging bolts of different-colored threads on the four-pedal loom and the math that went
with it to ensure that the patterns are sharp and crisp and evenly spaced.

There is more to weaving than knowing how to choose a quality thread and how to intuit thread
placements on the loom. One must also know the proper tension to the threads so that the warp, or the
lengthwise threads that make up the frame of the cloth, can sustain the punishing over-and-under
insertion of the crosswise threads, known as the weft. To tie the warp threads too tightly to the anchoring
pins would cause them to break easily and result in unsightly bumps in the fabric where the threads were
knotted together; to tie the warp threads too loosely would result in the pattern coming apart. There is
also a matter of keeping a steady rhythm so that the shuttle bearing the weft threads passes through the
warp evenly to ensure a smooth finish. This complicated process is no big deal for computerized machines
but imagine recreating the same process every day manually, relying only on instinct, practice, and innate
skill.

Magdalena has been relying on her instincts, practiced hands, and innate skills for years, starting at the
age 16 when she learned the art of weaving from her aunt. She was never formally taught but picked up
the art on her own by copying the patterns. At that time, every girl in her village knew how to weave, and
there would be an informal competition among her cousins and friends as to who could weave the finest,
who could be more consistent. Her father bought her her first loom at the age of 19; he obtained the
sag’gat or hardwood himself and gave the task to a local craftsman. Her first loom lasted her at least 30
years, sustaining her through years of marriage and motherhood. When it was beyond repair, she
considers herself lucky to have been able to buy a secondhand one. Today, there are few locals who
have the skills to put together a loom similar to the ones Magdalena uses: a sturdy wooden frame with
three-foot pedals with wide horizontal beams to support the warp and an even longer lengthwise frame
to keep the threads in place. It is different from the backstrap loom traditionally used in the Cordillera,
where the warp is anchored to a stationary object on one end and to the weaver’s body on the other end.
Today, Magdalena has two students: her cousin’s daughter-in-law, who moved to Magdalena’s
community after marrying into Magdalena’s family; and her sister-in-law, who learned how to weave
relatively late, at the age of 38. She has had other students before. She starts them on the triple-toned
warp binakol, and only when she is satisfied with the quality of their work does she teach them other
designs.

Even though Magdalena is already 88 years old, her eyesight still holds true and she still takes care of
arranging the threads on the loom. Weavers agree that in weaving, it is the hardest task of all. The
slightest miscalculation can result in a misaligned design that doesn’t reveal itself until it’s too late.

Magdalena has taught herself the traditional patterns of binakol, inuritan (geometric design), kusikos
(spiral forms similar to oranges), and sinan-sabong (flowers), which is the most challenging pattern. She
has also taught herself to recreate designs, which is a useful skill particularly when she is only able to see
the design but does not have a sample of how it is done.

Threading the shuttle through the warp, over and under the strands to tease out the pattern, while
expertly manipulating the foot pedals to ensure that the right column of fibers is raised or lowered at the
exact instant to make way for the onrushing shuttle, is also a challenge for the dexterous. It is punishing
work, hard on the back and leg muscles, demanding on the eyes, resulting in rough calluses on the hands.
Still, when a master weaver is done with her work, what results is a thing of beauty.

Magdalena’s handiworks are finer than most abel –her blankets have a very high thread count and her
designs are the most intricate and can sometimes take up to five colors. Making sure the right colored
threads are spaced evenly and keeping accurate count is a challenge that Magdalena has always
unerringly met. The beauty of her designs lies in how delicate the patterns are, and yet how uniform the
weave. Magdalena’s calloused hands breathe life to her work and her unique products are testament to
how machines can never hope to equal the human art. (Maricris Jan Tobias)

14. AMBALANG AUSALIN


Textile Weaver, 2016
(born 4 March 1943)
By Earl Francis C. Pasilan

The Yakan of Basilan are known to be among the finest weavers in the Southern Philippines. They create
eye-catching and colorful textiles with tiny motifs, and possess techniques wielded only by seasoned
weavers accomplishing designs restricted for utilization within a certain weaving category only.

Weaving is an extremely important craft in the Yakan community. All Yakan women in the past were
trained in weaving. Long ago, a common practice among the Yakan was that, when a female was born, the
pandey, traditional midwife, would cut the umbilical cord using a wooden bar called bayre (other Yakan
pronounce this as beyde). That bar was used for ‘beating-in’ the weft of the loom. By thus severing of the
umbilical cord, it was believed that the infant would grow up to become an accomplished weaver. This,
and all other aspects of the Yakan weaving tradition, is best personified by a seventy-three-year-old
virtuoso from the weaving domicile of the Yakan in Parangbasak, Lamitan City: Ambalang Ausalin.
Apuh Ambalang, as she is called by her community of weavers, is highly esteemed in all of Lamitan. Her
skill is deemed incomparable: she is able to bring forth all designs and actualize all textile categories
typical to the Yakan. She can execute the suwah bekkat (cross-stitch-like embellishment) and suwah
pendan (embroidery-like embellishment) techniques of the bunga sama category. She possesses the
complex knowledge of the entire weaving process, aware at the same time of the cultural significance of
each textile design or category. As a young girl, her mother, who was the best weaver of her time,
mentored Ambalang. She practiced with strips of lugus and coconut leaves (mat-making material). Having
learned from her mother the expert, Ambalang, using the backstrap loom, started to weave all designs of
the bunga sama category, then took on the sinalu’an and the seputangan, two of the most intricate
categories in Yakan weaving. They are the most intricate since the former requires the use of the minutest
details of diamond or rhomboid designs, and the latter demands balance and the filling up of all the
spaces on the warp with pussuk labung and dinglu or mata-mata patterns.

Secret in the comb

Ambalang, like other Yakan weavers, uses the back strap tension loom, which can be small or large
depending on the type of cloth or design to be woven. This loom can be rolled, carried about, and set up
easily. The weaver sits before the loom with a belt called awit around her waist; a warp beam, deddug, is
suspended from a house beam diagonally in front of her. She braces her feet against a piece of wood
called tindakan, and uses her body to keep the warp threads taut and in place. The warp is wound eight to
ten meters or longer, just enough to make it easy for setting up the loom inside the house. The threads
are pulled through a bamboo comb, sud, one at a time so that the threads are evenly spaced. This process
is called paghani, the warping process. The secret of an intricately-woven cloth resides in the comb: the
more the number of sticks that make up the comb, the closer its teeth, thus the tighter and more
embossed or lifted the designs will be. This type of comb is called sud dendam. The pattern or design is
made by counting the threads of the loom for each row. Each vertical row is bundled with a separate piece
of yarn or sack thread so it can be used throughout the length of the loom. This process is called
pagpeneh, that is, choosing the threads/making up the design. In this way the whole pattern is pre-
programmed. This method is used in almost all cloth designs except for the seputangan, female headcloth.
The sellag or thread for the background color of the woof is wound on a stick called anak tulak that can
turn into a bamboo shuttle, tulak. The lesser the number of threads of the tulak, which the older weavers
refer to as sellag mintedde or the single weft thread, the more embossed and tighter the designs will be.
The multicolored thicker threads that make up the pattern called sulip, supplementary weft, are cut to a
length of thirty centimeters or longer (depending on the design and the weaver’s skill), and placed in
between the warp threads, as the pattern requires. The processes of maghani, warping; magpeneh,
counting of threads/designing of patterns; and, magtennun, the actual weaving, can be rendered entirely
by this masterful weaver.

The word ‘tennun’ in Yakan generally means woven cloth, and used in making the Yakan dress. Yakan
textiles are often mistakenly described as ‘embroidered’ by people not familiar with the production
process.
There are different categories of a Yakan cloth. Ambalang has mastered all these, although her artistry
and craftsmanship are best expressed in the bunga sama, sinalu’an, and seputangan.

Categories

The bunga sama is a design or category of weaving with floral and bold designs. The cloth is usually
fashioned into upper wear and pants, though only for the dress of a high status Yakan, specially the suwah
bekkat and the suwah pendan. Today, however, the bunga sama is commonly produced and pressed to
service as table runners, placemats, wall decor, or doilies. Ambalang can easily identify the variety of
motifs in this category. Her best work for this form of weaving is always reflected in the bunga sama teed
peneh pitumpuh (cloth with seventy designs), and the peneh kenna–kenna (fish-like design), peneh sawe–
sawe (snake-like design), peneh dawen–dawen (folial design), and peneh kule–kule (turtle-like design).

She is also renowned for weaving the sinalu’an. This is a design or category of weave with stripes of the
diamond twill technique. The finished cloth is traditionally sewn as trousers as well as upper wear. Under
this category, Ambalang is best identified with the sinalu’an teed, the most complicated of all Yakan
woven textiles. Each of the stripes has an elaborate pattern of very small diamonds and incised triangles
resembling the sections of bamboo. It has tiny bands of zigzags called kalis-kalis (incisions); minute
diamonds called bulak-bulak (flower-like); diminutive horizontal lines that separate the motifs into the
littlest segments resembling the sections of the bamboo called batak or honga, small bands of diamonds
inside the bulak-bulak called lepoq-lepoq; vertical rows of small dashes called olet-olet, sipit-sipit, or
lelipan-lelipan (caterpillar-like); rows of crab-like motifs called kaka-kaka; a panel of jar-like motif called
komboh-komboh; and the plain vertical lines or columns called bettik (resembling the contour of the land
when planting in straight lines).

The seputangan is her other exemplary specialty, as it was her mother’s too. This cloth is a meter square
in size with geometric designs, and is the most expensive part of the Yakan female ensemble because of
its detailed design. This piece of cloth is folded and tied over the olos inalaman or olos pinalantupan to
tighten the hold of the skirt around the waist. It may also be worn as a head covering. To this day, it is
placed on the shoulders of brides and grooms during weddings. The pussuk labung (sawtooth), sipit–sipit
or subid–subid (twill-like), dawen–dawen (leaf-like), harren–harren (staircases), kabban–buddi
(diamonds/triangles), dinglu or mata (diamond/eye), and buwani–buwani (honeycomb-like) designs are
evident in this type of cloth that sets apart Ambalang’s creations from those of other seputangan weavers.

Representative and realistic depictions

In Ambalang’s belief, traceable to the faith of her ancestors, diamonds represent rice grains and symbolize
wealth. When four stars come together and appear like a single diamond in the sky, it means that harvest
is approaching and will be plentiful. The diamonds are called mata-mata or dinglu–dinglu. The depiction of
mountains, punoh–punoh (mountain-like), is set at the sides of the bunga–sama called higad–higad or sing
or the balikat–balikat of the seputangan. The X’s represent rice mortars that are arranged in clusters along
with the diamonds to form an interesting illusion. The interplay of X’s and diamonds symbolizes wealth
and bountifulness in harvest. This particular pattern is seen on a seputangan, the Yakan headcloth, and
inalaman, a high status overskirt. A floral motif is one of the most popular contrivances seen on the
bunga–sama or on the border of an inalaman. The fairy or butterfly wings, locally known as the kaba–kaba
or wing-like motif, as seen in the bunga–sama teed peneh pitumpuh, is the most intricate in the bunga–
sama category. The snake is regarded as a vehicle of the spirits as in the mailikidjabaniya. This particular
pattern, seen in the bunga–sama, symbolizes power and authority; cloth with this pattern is reserved
exclusively for tailoring trousers for male members of high status or rich clans.

In Yakan weaving, most of the animal and plant motifs are realistically represented in textiles. The Yakan
value nature as the mother of art and in their weaving, record the pure beauty of nature. The designs
reflect the nature around Yakan customary habitation or occupation as agriculturists, as each cloth
patterning is symbolic of the palay, unhusked rice, which also signals power, social status, and self-
expression. The minuteness and compressed detail of a motif or design symbolize the Yakan’s sense of
“community,” “togetherness,” or “harmony.” In the past, if a Yakan woman possessed the three great
skills of warping, designing, and weaving, and was able to produce a cloth, sew it, and make a complete
ensemble for her husband and children, she was regarded as an honorable woman, wife, and mother,
which is how Ambalang is acknowledged in the Yakan community.

Through her recollection of the earliest strategies and techniques learned from her mother, Ambalang has
started training Vilma, her daughter, and some of her nieces, in whom she sees the continuity of her craft
in future years, and the successful handover of a heritage through generations of gifted weavers. For
Ambalang to realize such artistry, she has to be in harmony with her soul, her spirit ancestors, her
environment, her tools, her threads, her loom, and her Creator. The Yakan weaving complex engages the
weaver entirely, body and soul, and all the elements that surround her.

The tennun Yakan is an extraordinarily important manifestation of Yakan culture. Its categories, colors,
designs or motifs, and significance will constantly remind Ambalang, in her outstanding handwork, what it
means to be Yakan — people of the earth. Through her craft, Ambalang as a’a pandey megtetennun (an
expert weaver), affirms their identity as a people who continuously weave the threads of culture,
interlacing past, present, and, hopefully, the future, in becoming a cultural treasure for the new
generation Yakan, for all Filipinos, and all humankind.

15. ESTELITA BANTILAN


Mat Weaver, 2016
(born 17 October 1940)

By Marian Pastor Roces

She was at birth, seventy-two years ago, Labnai Tumndan. It was a recognizable name in the language,
Blaan, spoken in the montane hamlet of Mlasang. Her extended family reckoned their place in relation to
the mlasang, a tree that, once a year, flowers profusely, sheds the inflorescences immediately, and
carpets abode and environment in magnificence all at once.

Mid-twentieth century in what are now the Mindanao provinces of Sarangani and South Cotabato, Blaan
speakers — also called Blaan, like their language — took on the slow beginning of village life of some
permanence. Their forebears had for centuries shifted domiciles systematically to regenerate land
cultivated to wild rice and yams. Around the time of Labnai’s childhood, the small community understood
their link to the Philippine political system to be vested in the new identity of Mlasang as Upper Lasang, a
barangay of the municipality of Malapatan, in a province called Cotabato. Shortly after, this province was
subdivided and Malapatan was absorbed into the new province of Sarangani.

The child Labnai, already precocious in mat weaving, took on the name Estelita in the 1950s. Protestant
pastors had installed themselves among her people, had commenced fundamental social change. When
Estelita married, becoming Mrs. Bantilan, she raised a family in the foreign faith.

But she kept to her mat weaving. She persisted where other women could not because her husband
Tuwada was atypically supportive. Estelita also carried on because mats were her gifts of choice to people
she cherished. She was never wont to monetize her mats. She carved out considerable time from
domestic and farming responsibilities to accomplish some of the biggest, most subtly beautiful mats to be
seen anywhere in Southeast Asia today. And, from the evidence of the mats she makes today, Estelita has
continued to cultivate a personal aesthetic through half a century.

“Princess”

In her old age, Estelita began to be called by a new nickname, Princess. The term of endearment is spoken
with the lightness of heart; also with genuine respect, especially from the other mat weavers of Upper
Lasang.

There are at least half a dozen women of the village whose elevated skills in the art of the mat are
recognized beyond even the Malapatan township. There are more who might have applied themselves to
the discipline had personal circumstances been more congenial to taking up an art tradition that demands
inordinate time and unusual powers of concentration.

Among them, however, and their families, there is happy agreement around Estelita’s superior gifts. Thus,
their Princess: a worthy avatar of the entire community’s artistic heritage. The Upper Lasang women
present their Princess to visitors as their star artist. They share the private joke and term of endearment
— her princess-hood — as a fun part of many other matters collectively construed, realized, remembered,
practiced, and celebrated.

Princess does not separate herself from the rest. While she knows she is good, there is little about her
disposition and body language to suggest an outsized sense of self. During discussions, she recedes into
the weavers’ group. At the end of any visit, she slips with dispatch into a home as austere as the rest.
Beside her is, nearly always, her husband Tawada.

The art and the body

Like all mat weavers, Estelita’s entire body is her “loom.” The thin strips of the
pandanus romblon (Pandanus copelandii merr. Bariu) emerge matrixed through deft fingers performing a
personal rhythm, the beat seemingly guided by her eyes. The unwoven strips are held taut at the other
end of her body, as toes curl and close around, not only these strips but, as it were, the abstraction that
other people call design. The arc of her torso determines the dexterity of feet and toes. Hand/eye
coordination transpires within a frame of milliseconds.
Mats are woven with mental powers deployed to realize the mathematical possibilities of color and
crossover movement, synaptically (nearly simultaneously) linked to foot and handwork — the operations
mediated by or through the eyes — and no muscle, no thought, no strand nor strip, no inner sentiment,
and no bodily posture can be outside an inaudible rhythm.

It is to achieve this gestalt that mat weavers necessarily maintain a profound poise. In Estelita’s case,
however, the serenity and poise clearly show in her person as fundamental to the artistry she exercises.
She maintains the clarity in her eyes, the stillness of her mien, and her precise physical movements
whether weaving, or discussing, or just listening. One takes in Estelita’s presence as a demonstration of
the inextricability of serenity from the art of the mat.

Estelita’s demeanor — characterized by alertness, focus, and a calm that appears to permeate her entire
body — is key to understanding mat weaving itself, among the Sarangani Blaan and the rest of the
Filipinos who still know the art. It is an exercise of imagination within the parameters of a technology of
making. The rigidity of the parameters is precisely what the weaver works with to play with surprising
variation and compelling repetitiveness. To manage this maneuver between confinement and freedom,
any good weaver needs the focused energy Estelita abundantly demonstrates. Except that in her case, a
preternatural serenity appears to be the very source of genius.

Place

Upper Lasang is an interior zone barangay of Malapatan, which has a seaward orientation like the rest of
Sarangani, The vast Sarangani Bay is as though cupped by the mountains of the province. Vistas of this big
water dominate the experience of place to the Blaan of these parts. They are called coastal Blaan —
distinct from the Blaan of Koronadal and Tampakan in South Cotabato who have a different dialectical
variant of Blaan the language, and markedly different clothing ensembles in the past. Estelita’s community
of weavers, now dependent on coconut plantings, were shifting agriculturists who exchanged extensively
with Maguindanao travelers and communities along the coastline.

A great many features of the Blaan clothing ensembles from a century ago, now residing in museums and
private collections, were objects of this exchange: notably, mother of pearl, glass beads, cotton cloth, and
threads. Metal musical instruments and horses were also exchanged from Maguindanao traders with ikat-
dyed cloth the Blaan made. The system involved reciprocal relations between speakers of different
languages living in mountains vis-à-vis the coasts. Mats, too, figured in these relations in the past. Indeed
Estelita’s focus on mats as prize gifts for people she cares for is a residual aspect of ancient reciprocation
and exchange systems of island Southeast Asia.

Throughout most of the archipelago, mats are no longer embedded in socio-spiritual complexes. Their old,
ubiquitous place in a Southeast Asian cosmology — whose overt facets involve the use of mats in all
passages of human life, from birth to interment in mats — has for most part vanished. It is for this reason
that Estelita’s unusually enduring relationship to mats for use and circulation outside the cash economy
demands recognition. It is reasonable to think that her devotion to the idea of mats as gifts, rather than as
commodities for sale, is the same concept of making that allowed her to refine her art to a technical and
aesthetic sophistication vested in remarkable visual restraint.

She fortuitously lives in a place congenial to the growth of the plants she needs. Mat weaving in Sarangani
is associated with the Malapatan community, which has persisted with a refined level of the practice.
Aside from Estelita, her women friends in Upper Lasang do carry on, albeit oriented towards market. This
persistence is facilitated by the continued growth of romblon and buri, two of the plant species that mat
weavers have used in these and other coastal areas of the Philippines. These are coastal zone plants
today. How far into interior areas they proliferated in, in the past, is uncertain. What is known is that the
mat weaving communities are those where these raw materials grow abundantly.

In Upper Lasang, Estelita’s mathematical precision and aesthetic clarity found hospitable ground in which
to thrive. She lives among people who enjoy strong cultural recollection; for instance, the use as dyestuff
of the bark of the tree whose extravagant shedding of inflorescence deserved its own
descriptive, mlasang. It is a place where strong women, mat weavers all, had the gumption to form
themselves into a legal association to manage their affairs and dealings with market. Upper Lasang is also
where a woman like Estelita can partner with a man supportive of her art. Estelita is therefore right to
take the nickname “Princess” in stride, to not regard herself separate from her milieu. She makes for a
beautiful Princess, in truth. But her remarkable artistic and personal attribute is her ability to vanish into
her community — even as she shines out.

16. YABING MASALON DULO


Ikat Weaver, 2016
(born 8 August 1914)

By Marian Pastor Roces

A century

Yabing Dulo believes herself older than ninety. Her identity card marks that age, however, and date of
birth, the fourteenth of August supposedly 1910. Since the venerable ikat-dyer has a memory sharper
than blades, it seems always best to follow her counsel. She does know for a fact that she was born in a
place already called Landan in that long ago time. The exact sitio was and is still named Amgu-o, a
settlement of a few related families within Landan, today a barangay, a constituent unit of a town. During
the early twentieth century, Amgu-o was a cluster of houses thoroughly unconnected to the national
political organization. It was a hilly, forested place where streams were punctuated by all sizes of rocks.
The trees, then, were ancient.

Now ancient as well — accepting the honorific Fu, elder, with no hauteur — Fu Yabing has lived long
enough to have seen Amgu-o emerge as an exposed, dry place sans those trees. Her thatch-wood-
concrete domicile speaks of a permanence unconnected to the archaic system of shifting agriculture that
gave its practitioners to move entire hamlets following the obligation to regenerate soil after extended
use; giving that land back to the forest. Today, visitors reach Fu Yabing on foot, or by motorcycle, or a
four-wheel drive vehicle through pockmarked dirt passes; although it must be added, they are not overly
daunted. Landan is connected to the rest of the country by feeder roads, however flimsy, and through the
national political order, however tenuous in these parts.

It may indeed be suggested that it is Fu Yabing and her art that is unconnected to the relevant order of
things. They have been loosened free from their old coordinates in both nature and culture. Living in
radically different circumstances from her arboreal birthplace, among a people who in that past engaged
in precise reciprocal instead of market relations, she carries on with an exquisite tradition that at present
grafts poorly with the cash economy. But she has always faced the disjunct between systems by deploying
her gift: the expert making of fine warp ikat textiles. With the GAMABA (Gawad sa Manlilikha ng Bayan)
recognition, it is clear she has prevailed.

Ikat and the forests

Fu Yabing was born in an Amgu-o where the plant and animal life were differentiated to minute degrees
by the locals in the vocabulary of their tongue, Blaan. Among them, some held encyclopedic lore — which
none divided into seen and unseen reality, or science and enchantment. The adepts knew their biology,
climate, and geology invariably in relation to states of being; knew their arts of transformation, not the
least, wielding the pigmenting, or toxic, or life-enhancing, or mysterious qualities of barks, roots, leaves,
and strange small petioles in various mixes in various preparations. Which is to say, the minutiae of life in
its many forms was saturated with meaning.

That their forests were fecund with possibility was more than a matter of utility. Fu Yabing lived as a youth
in a milieu with a density of stimuli that encouraged skill and imagination. Aside from, for instance,
dyestuff that were also medicine deployed by weaver/dyers who were also pharmacologists and healers,
the forebears took from forests an education in complex biological systems. Plant and animal life
supported systems of reciprocation and exchange that embedded human within plant and animal
communities. When Fu Yabing’s generation took from the forest fibrous material that they worked into
art, that art, in turn, supported the integrity of natural/cultural interconnection.

To be sure, this was before the husbanding in plantations of that fiber plant, a kind of banana, known to
the Blaan as lutáy and abaka to other Philippine peoples. This Musa textilis Neé, a source of the world’s
strongest fiber, used to be a creature of thick forests, growing in their understory well beneath the
sometimes triple-canopy cover in these parts. The Blaan of the early twentieth century would have
understood lutáy’s relation to the interspecies dynamics of tropical rainforests.

This much can be inferred from the extended literature on related cultures. (Unfortunately, no substantive
ethnography has been written on the Blaan to date.) The warp ikat, lutáy textiles of the Blaan belong to a
tradition common to the Bagobo, Blaan, Tboli, Mandaya, and Mansaka (and to a lesser extent, to the
Subanen) of Mindanao. Moreover — although cotton is used because Musa textilis does not grow south
of Sangir and Talaud Islands — the technique is also shared with the Iban of Kalimantan, the Toraja of
Sulawesi, the Atoni and Tetum of both Timor Barat and East Timor, and the nearby peoples of Sumba,
Flores, and Roti of Nusa Tenggara Timur. These related ethnolinguistic groups also shared a history of
cultural formation amid thick forests. For all these cultures, it was in this art-making that often conflicting
divine forces were aligned, equilibrium constructed, and human abilities given to serve the social order.

It was, most important for all these cultures, in the dyeing of lutáy warp threads, prior to weaving, that an
imagination at once mythic and scientific was sustained.

Although no longer. In Mindanao, the forests are for the most part an extinct form of community. Among
all the peoples who used to ikat in Mindanao, ikat is, for the most part, an extinct form of art-making,
community-making, equilibrium-making. And but for Fu Yabing Dulo and only one or two others (one of
whom is her daughter Lamena), Blaan ikat dyeing is an extinct form of human endeavor in a world gone
the way of the forests.

Arc of change
A settlement of about eighty households, Amgu-o today is tucked behind one of the largest pineapple
plantations in the world. Its operations began soon after Fu Yabing’s birth, during the American colonial
occupation of the Philippines. Mindanao was among the United States’ lands “of promise” for
industrialized agriculture. In the wake of this aggressive project on this Philippine island, the Blaan were
perforce marginalized in a literal, geographic sense: they were one way or another thrust into small spaces
left out of industrial estates. The municipality of both plantation and fringes is Polomolok, an old name; in
a province called South Cotabato, a name circa the 1970s. Until then, Polomolok was understood to be
located in a vast province bigger than several U.S. states, which was named for a stone fort built by
Muslims, kuta batu, Cotabato.

Plantation and fringe communities are at the fertile lower inclines of a dormant volcano named Mtutung
by the Blaan; Matutum by everyone else. The fringe communities were overrun by Communist guerrillas
since the 1970s. At the end of the twentieth century, these areas were a theater of intense battles
between rebel and State. The Amgu-o group was temporarily displaced together with other Blaan
Koronadal of the Matutum area, who remained distinct in clothing ensemble form and speech variation
from the Blaan Mahin (coastal Blaan) until that point. The latter experienced displacement and war in
another period. Blaan subgroups now tend towards a single undifferentiated identity as an outcome of
the shared experience of violence.

Still, the radical social change had begun well before this latter-day period of conflict. Christian
evangelization transpired nearly simultaneously with the landing, like a spaceship, of the plantation
economy. The priests were Protestant Americans and a few married into Blaan families, installing
themselves as indigenous preachers. Later Blaan pastors were to live in the U.S. Bible School was a regular
experience since after the Second World War.

Artist and survivor

In this landscape of upheaval, Yabing Dulo and her late husband were among those who kept to animism.
She also kept to her own understanding of weaving quality. Indeed she persisted with wild lutáy until
these were no longer possible to acquire. Arjho Cariño Turner, Fu Yabing’s grandniece and U.S.-resident
wife of an American missionary, writes of the precise period of shift: “Fu Yabing and her family own a farm
in the valley called Aksugok (in Amgu-o) where I and my family also lived when I was in elementary school.
I saw firsthand the kind of wild abaka she used. With the advent of [agricultural change], some of those
farms were converted to produce other crops and very few parent abaka are growing wildly.”

Arjho herself has been more than a footnote in Fu Yabing’s extraordinary biography as artist and survivor.
It was with her assistance and the welcoming spirit of weaving students in a nearby village of upland Blaan
in Lamlifew, Malungon, Sarangani, that Fu Yabing experienced full-time work as a mentor, even if only
briefly. But it was because of this stint that she traveled to Manila in 2009, to be part of an ASEAN Textile
Symposium at the National Museum of the Philippines. She has since been the focus of progressively
intensifying interest and adulation in her province and nationally.

That focus brings to greater clarity a person whose ikat-dyed fabrics bear stunning similarity with
museum-held Blaan pieces created more than a century ago; who allowed supporters, primarily Arjho, to
mightily devise ways for the market economy to link with her art in respectful ways; and whose grit and
quiet power verily intimidate all who meet her into according her a dignified space in the tumult of today.

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