LESSON 6

• Philippine Traditional arts and folk crafts

  -Exquisite testimonies to our national cultural wealth and heritage
• High Artist

  -Hailed as a master, genius, seer, and a path breaker
• Folk artist

  -Tended to live in anonymity and obscurity
• National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA)

  -Launched the Gawad sa Manlilikha ng Bayan (GAMABA) or

  National Living Treasures Award in 1992
• Gawad sa Manlilikha ng Bayan (GAMABA) or

  National Living Treasures Award in 1992

  -Made to identify the finest folk artists of the land who are dedicated to their craft, using skills and indigenous methods and materials.

  -Apart from honoring traditional artisans and culture bearers, the award aims to preserve and revitalize traditional arts threatened with extinction.
• Origin of the GAMABA or National Living Treasures Award

  -Can be traced to National Folk Artist Award, which was a brainchild of the Rotary Club of Makati-Ayala.
• 1988

  -Year after the program was established by the Rotary Club, an advisory group composed of representatives from the Cultural Center of the Philippines, the Department of Trade and Industry, the Department of Education, Culture and Sports, and other government and private organizations was formed to oversee the selection process.
• 1989

  -The National Folk Artist Award was formally launched with the screening of artists representing a broad range of Filipino crafts in the municipal, provincial, and regional levels.
• 1990

  -A national screening followed which conducted a more extensive search and documentation, focusing on specific folk traditions all over the archipelago, which resulted in the awarding of six traditional artists.
• 1990

  -Senate Bill No. 240, authored by Senators Edgardo Angara, Leticia Shahani, and Sotero Laurel, proposed honoring the bearers of traditional art with a Presidential Award, recognizing them as National Living Treasures.
• April 1992

  -The Gawad sa Manlilikha ng Bayan (GAMABA) or National Living Treasures Award was institutionalized through Republic Act No. 7355.
• National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA)

  -Tasked with the administration of the award in April 1992. The _ through the Gawad sa Manlilikha ng Bayan Committee is "mandated by law, which support from all concerned agencies, to continue the search for traditional artists, adopt a program that will assure the transfer of skills to the youth, and undertake measures to promote a genuine appreciation of and instill pride among our people in the genius of the Gawad sa Manlilikha ng Bayan and our traditional cultures."
• Many of the GAMABA awardees come from indigenous people who have historically rejected conversion and assimilation into Islam and Catholicism.

  They hail from cultural communities where age-old customs, beliefs, rituals, and traditions are kept intact in spite of impelling external factors.
• Manlilikha ng Bayan or National Living Treasures

  -Culture bearers who have consistently created or performed superior artistic forms expressive of a traditional culture within the community for their lifetime of at least fifty years.

  -Other awardees are from traditional communities who have kept their indigenous cultures intact even with acceptance of Muslim faith, or from traditional communities nurtured in Catholic Creed.
• Their respective communities recognize them as expert creators and teachers of visual, literary, or musical forms, achieved through a mastery of tools, techniques, and materials.
• Indigenous peoples

  -Who have retreated to the highlands or coastal hinterlands have been the most faithful stewards of the earth's natural resources.

  -Their spiritual view of the world, their values of collective responsibility, and respect for elders, ancestors, spirits, and the community, guide their individual behavior in daily life.
• Indigenous people

  -By instinct and habit, they are protective of the Earth's diverse environment.

  -Have kept their unique primeval institutions.
• Family

  -Basic unit of the indigenous communities.
• Kinship

  -Expands into the communal structure which is governed by oral laws and sacred teachings.
• Displaced members of traditional communities

  -risk becoming dysfunctional and social elements as they cannot assimilate into the dominant society where inappropriate technology, consumption, and waste prevail
• Traditional Society

  -Artistic creation is not self-conscious
• Craft Practitioners

  -They have multiple roles to play in the community - Economic, Social, and Spiritual
• Examples:

  -Bagobo Weaver Salinta Monon is a farmer and housewife even as she performs her weaving tasks as an inherent vacation.

  -Masino Intaray is a farmer, musician, and babaylan (spiritual adviser-healer)
• Crafts

  -Made for daily use as well as for functions of the spirit

  -Passed on for generations, they have integral significance in the life cycle of birth, courtship, marriage, death, worship, appeasement of nature's forces, supplication in planting, gratitude in harvest, and victory in war.
• Crafts person

  -Inseparable from his or her collective purpose, and the creative output, whether in music or in weaves, are cohesive factors and symbols of harmony in a community.
• Muslim og Magindanon musician Samaon Sulaiman

  -A community barber and Imam in the Libutan mosque, recognizes the spiritual connection of his music.

  -Like his Indigenous counterparts, Eduardo Mutuc, farmer, woodcarver, and metal smith, creates in the context of devotion to a divine, thus transcending his daily tasks into the supernatural realm.
• Dayaw

  -Produced by the National Commission for Culture and The Arts (NCCA) and ANC

  -Six-part, 30 minute documentary series focusing on the preservation of the country's culture and heritage.

  -Conceptualized and hosted by Senator Loren Legarda.

  -The series aims to educate and inspire Filipinos on the protection and preservation of the cultural and artistic treasures of the Philippines.
• In each episode of DAYAW

  -Legarda explores the facets that bind Filipino indigenous people, be it for their respect for nature, the inspiration they draw from it, the survival methods, that they learned, and how these have eventually enhanced and enriched their lives.
• Mito, Kuwento, Musika (The Indigenous Imagination)

  -Features two UNESCO Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity-the Hudhud chants of the Ifugaos and the Darangen of the Maranaos.

  -The episode also pays homage to the skills and artistic excellence of three GAMABA awardees who have passed on
• (Mito, Kuwento, Musika (The Indigenous Imagination))

  • Samaon Sulaiman - Kudyapi Master
  • Masino Intaray - A Pala'wan epic chanter
  • Ginaw Bilog - A poet and master of the Hanunoo Mangyan Syllabary
• Hinabing Kasaysayan ng mga Kababaihan (Weaving Stories of Feminine Knowledge)

  -Takes viewers to the centers of weaving in the country in a bid to stir interest, awareness, and support for this intangible cultural heritage.

  -This episode features woman who have championed textile weaving in the Philippines, including three Gawad sa Manlilikha ng Bayan (GAMABA) awardees:

  • Magdalena Gamayo of Ilocos Norte,
  • The Late Lang Dulay of Lake Sebu, and
  • the late Salinta Monon of Bansalan, Davao del Sur
• Lang Dulay (1928-2015)

  -T'boli weaver of t'nalak, from Lake Sebu, South Cotabato

  -Sensitive to nature's forces.
• T'nalak

  -Unique traditional cloth, hand-woven by T'boli women in finest ikat (tie-dye) method from abaca fibers with three primary colors - natural color of abaca, red, and black.
• A single piece of T'nalak can take up to three months to finish.
• Lang Dulay

  created and wove over a hundred designs such as entwined zigzags,

  triangles, diamonds, hexagons, and other linear patterns suggestive of crab, crocodile, butterfly. bind in flight, frog, shick, person in shelter, flowers, clouds, mountains, and water. Through her delicate designs, she commemorated the lives of her people.
• Lang Dulay

  
  

  In 1998, as part of the Philippine Centennial celebration, Lang Dubay's inalak creations were exhibited at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC. In the same year, she received the GAMABA recognition, which allowed her greater productivity in her craft as well as efficiency in passing on its knowledge. Until her passing, she was able to train forty-six weavers who now make their own designs.
• Lang Dulay

  
  

  She symbolically bequeathed her woven mantle to one of her

  granddaughters, Noemi Dulay as apparent successor to her weaving prowess
• Haja Amina Appi (1925-2013) was a Sama mat weaver from Tawi-Tawi

  The term "Sama" is believed to have originated from the Austronesian root word sem meaning "together." It is also a term suggesting the binding together of leaves and grass that go into a bang (mat);

  Locally called topo, these mats are made from pandan leaves. If traditions were strictly followed, mats made by weavers in Unggus Matata, in Tandubas island where Haja Amina hails from, are to be used and kept within the family or clan.

  The whole process of making epis engaged in only by women.
• Haja Amina Appi's impressive originality can be seen in the way the executed traditional Sulu designs into distinctive designs of akkil or naga. In one of her most outstanding mats, she repetitively wove the lateral crab shape into an ascending-descending progression. She also made recurring boat shapes suggestive of the rhythms of the graceful Pangalay, and curvilinear patterns inspired by the wild waters surrounding the Sulu archipelags. All these are distinct design qualities expressive of the Sama sol and millies, for which she was several by her fellow weavers
• Alonzo Saclag (b. 1942)

  -from Lubuagan, Kalinga, in the Cordillera region, is a master of dance, music, and the performing arts associated with the cultural practices of a people known since colonial times for fiercely guarding their community life and cultural heritage.

  -actively advocates the documentation of Kalinga beliefs and customs to uphold and defend indigenous people's rights as these are threatened by the negative forces of globalization.