#madayaw

the department of education has, and rightfully so, included retellings of the Darangen in the English 7 curriculum learning modules (but wrong pictures!). during one of our classes, particularly in section Gladiola, we talked about the epic and how the Meranaws in the time of the Darangen has put premium on physical appearance over anything else.

whenever we touch the Meranaws in my MAPEH 7 (2012-2014) and in my English 7 classes (2014-present), i'd always tell them about the Kapagipat, among other cool Meranaw stuff, to illustrate how magical and ritualistic and creative and cool the Meranaws are. i had to do this because a considerable number of my students are Maranaws and those who are not will have had the mis-educated, illi-informed idea that Maranaws—Muslims in general—are people to be avoided. i'd always tell them the opposite: that Islam is a religion of peace, and all my Muslim friends are nice and generous and very approachable; i'd always tell them, too, how unfortunate i was to not have been born in an ethnolinguistic group, still connected to its ancient traditions. but i digress.

ive seen and studied the works of Madayaw Cultural Ensemble, among other cultural dance-theatre groups in Davao. and since their piece Singkil sa Laya performed in SM Ecoland back in the infancy of Sayaw Mindanao sometime in 2011, their "tribe in focus" would, except in very rare cases, be Islamized ethnolinguistic groups (Meranaw, Maguindanao, Tausug). no problem with this.

but the plot is done over and over only in different characters and settings. their staple is always like this: a pair of lovers, disturbed by a bitter third party; man fights the third party; pair of lovers marry. this happened for quite some time that i'd marvel at the times when madayaw would not win, and be internally outraged when they do. ive somehow sensed that all they did was show glitz and glamour: no advocacy, no plot, no depth; with only one goal: to fool the eyes of some unaware luzon-based judges—ergo, win. (there. ive said it.)

at first glance of this piece, i told myself that it's gonna be the same thing since 2011. theyve hit the formula. and now this is their forte. and theyre never going to outgrow their motifs. it's lamaw (leftover food). napagkainan na.

but as i was watching it, (insert curse word here) kalami sa piyesa! i was slowly liking the piece every minute as it went. it was like being introduced to lamaw—at first abhorring it for its name—but later discovering that lamaw is not only leftover food but also an effin refreshing delicacy (lamaw is a multilingual homonym and homophone having polar gastronomic meanings depending on which of the philippine languages one is using, making lamaw physically and lexically "lamaw." hello, buwan ng wika na surface level lang pagpapahalaga ng karamihan! hello, schools! but again, i digress.)!

it depicts, in a sense, an etymology of the trance-dance ritual Sagayan: what's its purpose—the Kapagipat, which i always mention to my students—and the rationale behind the skirt-and-hat-wearing male baylans who perform the ritual. in detail, i laud this piece because:

1) it is ritual-centered. it picked rituals (Kapagipat and Sagayan) and established a narrative around it. not the other way around. by doing this, the ritual is preserved, and not the narrative. both should be preserved but it's the ritual that needs preserving now as it has been relegated to the background. and with that, the rituals' meanings and intentions becomes obscured in the long run.

you see, the Sagayan is one of the most obscured trance-dances in our cultural performance history. Sagayan is mostly seen during Meranaw / Maguindanao weddings and it has since been ascribed to such weddings. hence, if a cultural dance has a lemba (wedding celebration) commonly at the conclusion of the piece, it will always have at least two sagayan performers. culturally, it's intention is to ward away bad spirits but choreographically, it's only there to add a sense of cultural precision. nothing about its importance and its true meaning.

but this has put the Sagayan back to Kapagipat. this piece has educated us about the ritual trance-dance and why it looks like that. it has, so to speak, made an etymology of the dance. and this creative and educational decision transcends mere performance. this transcends Sayaw Mindanaw.

2) it attempted to show today's relevant social issues. specifically—

2.a) gender-roles. the process of transferring the mantle of Sagayan practitioner from female to male shows that males and females may share roles and must be open to the fact given the gravitas of circumstances. in the piece, the female baylan was at first defeated by the tonong-possessed person in her effort to cure / exorcise him. to defeat the tonong, she tricked it by making her male companion be the baylan, donning him with female clothes and a headdress that covered the face. in their second encounter, the tonong was confident that it was still the same baylan, only to be overwhelmed and defeated by the female-disguised male baylan.

the Meranaw community has, in the surface, clear-cut, black-and-white, male-female gender roles and it is not to be dismantled or to be ridiculed as this is their norm. but they are also fluid enough to recognize that sometimes gender roles must be reinvented to solve a crisis, and it is this utilization of gender clear-cut-ted-ness that brought resolution to the narrative.

furthermore, this shows that even before philippines was philippines, cross-dressing has been a thing already. and it's rather strange to feel strange about it.

2.b) preservation of community; depression, and suicide to the individual. prior to becoming a tonong (spirit to be appeased), it belonged to a living human body that has experienced depression and who has eventually committed suicide. he has experienced the community's rejection and misjudgment as shown in the second act.

on surface level, it tells us that villains are created by society. and as a society, we have a role in shaping and influencing the decisions of individuals. whatever we do to others, it returns to us. we reap what we sow—making their planting and sowing dance routine more than just petty choreography, it has served a very symbolic purpose (learn, peasants. mao ning art).

on another level. the society's alleged "discrimination" is not something shocking to the ancient Meranaws. you see, in Darangen, Prince Bantugan, being extremely handsome, has won the hearts of many women and men alike, and he is often being favored by the people more than the generally good but not as handsome king, Mabaning. the Meranaws in the Darangen are notorious in describing how monsters destroy villages, and it should not be a shock that ancient Meranaws may ascribe this monstrosity to unfortunate persons who happen to possess faulty facial features. this is merely an instinct to preserve community rather than a community hell-bent to discriminate with no reasonable logic.

as modern audience with no Meranaw background, we get the moral of non-judgement; for Meranaws, they get the moral of preserving community. i must commend Madayaw if this was a conscious artistic decision because (insert curse word here) this is genius layering.

3) it escaped the lamaw trap. like what i said earlier, i have become tired of seeing the plot of the pieces of Madayaw. to me, they have settled, like dust at the bottom of undisturbed water. personally, i feel that they only mostly win because they look so good and shiny. and this is what happens when artists never grow. they stick to what is proven effective, without exploring something new. this is what kills the artist if they cling too long to their aesthetics. isa lang ako sa mga naunang naumay.

but this is nothing i have seen before. like what i said, it has focused on the rituals, and made the narrative complement the rituals. not the other way around. this is already very intelligent. this piece has therefore escaped their tiresome kasal-kasal motif, which to me was effin lamaw.

now, they have evolved into the LAMAW (yes, all caps). this level is achieved (objectively by the artist and subjectively felt by the viewer) when something expected to be artistically low suddenly proves itself as something very highbrow. i say all caps LAMAW because to me, this is the most important level of artistic expression (more about this in the future kay gabuhat kuno kog akong kaugalingong art manifesto alongside verfremdung ni bretch, ostranenie ni shklovsky, surrealisme ni breton, ug uban pa. haha murag korek).

what im trying to say is that they have at last grown and they have grown magnificently with this piece. this has amazed and re-educated me. (insert curse word) nabusog yung mata't utak ko.

i commend the overt inclusion of spiritism in the piece, which i first saw in Sayaw Mindanaw back in 2013 in Saliyaw's first champion piece.

speaking of Saliyaw, another dance-theatre / folkloric group in Davao, i must say that no other group so far has exceeded their creativity in presenting new motifs in the cultural performance community. to note, they started the aforementioned spiritism / netherworld motif; the focus to Sama, an ethnoliguistic group in Davao that rarely receive the spotlight (although this can be argued, but i personally think that the resurgence of appreciation to the Sama has been brought about by Saliyaw's focus to the tribe back in 2014); and the multicultural motif evidenced by their 2017 piece that included the mutual influence of Bagobo-Klata culture to Japanese. creativity-wise, Saliyaw has done more.

take this with a grain of salt.

it is just so appalling that masterpieces, such as this, among others, are not common in educational institutions. and to be brutally honest, it goes down to the interest of the admins and teachers if they so chooses to discuss these extra things in classes. if this does not interest schools, the study of culture and consequently our appreciation of our identity goes to the gutters.

we, especially the schools in the cities, have been lazy in representing whatever sense of culture we have left in our locale. we have not moved on from black tights and leotards with malong sash to represent the Islamized ethnolinguistic groups. to appear cultural, we put malongs everywhere, not even bothering to educate the students which malong motif is appropriate for which occasion. we rarely take initiatives to encourage students who belong to cultural minorities to showcase their identity. worst, we add to the horrible mis-education that Muslims are bad and Atas are ugly and Lumads are uncivilized through our throwaway statements. and sometimes unaware teachers do that (insert curse word).

the efforts of cultural performers during Kadayawan and throughout the year is not trivial. it is an effort to preserve our identity and an opportunity to atone for our misjudgments towards ethnolinguistic groups in the land that we have grabbed from them.

i may have said something about the art of a cultural group but i still respect them as cultural bearers and as they also put forward the true essence of cultural performances: to educate and to make us appreciate our local culture and identity—which very rarely happens in majority of educational institutions.