Feature: Discovering the Ibanags

by Oliver T. Baccay

Tuguegarao City (18 August) — “Simple but meaningful”…this is how visitors described this year’s Pavvurulun Festival in the celebration and preservation of the Ibanag culture, and discovering the talented Tuguegaraoenos.

Hon. Delfin Telan Ting, City Mayor, spearheaded the celebration highlighting the unity of the Ibanags in working against difficulties and obstacles in achieving growth and development.

Tuguegarao City is known as the Premier Ibanag City, the center of excellence in education, commerce and culture in Northeast Philippines, that’s why every patronal fiesta, the city officials used to line up activities that showcases the Ibanag tradition and culture such as the Street dancing in the tune of Ibanag courtship dance’Kalingkingan’, the Battle of the Bands in the tune of Sampaguita March, the original Ibanag children’s game, the folksong writing competition and performing the traditional Maskota wedding dance.

In the midst of a sunny day, the students played their role gracefully with a smile and with feelings in the street dancing competition. Kalingkingan is a kind of bird that thrives in the Callao Caves of Peñablanca, the town adjacent to the city and the cavers’ paradise of the north.

Kalingkingan birds go out from the cave every 6 o’clock in the evening to look for food and to have merry making, and then goes back every 6 o’clock in the morning to take a rest.

The Kalingkingan dance was formulated by the Ibanag ancestors, converting the birds’ nature and characteristics to an Ibanag culture. The birds’ characteristic of going out every 6 to look for food is like an Ibanag gentleman who looks for a lady to court every night. Their characteristics also of looking for food together and goes back together from the cave where they came from is attributed to the Ibanags togetherness, which is the essence of’Pavvurulun Festival’-oneness. Later, it was transformed to a song and dance.

Though the dance is an original festival of Peñablnaca, the city wants to showcase it also because the essence of the dance jived to the city’ festival theme of reminiscing and reviving the Ibanag Culture.

City Vice-Mayor Danilo Baccay said the street dance competition highlighting the Kalingkingan Ibanag dance is one way of reviving and preserving the Ibanag tradition and culture.

On the other hand, the students also displayed their talents in playing the instruments in the Battle of the Bands competition using the’Sampaguita March’ as the common tune of the bands.

The competitors displayed their strategies and styles in playing the bands using their colorful uniforms, but the judges chose only 3 winners in the competition.

Schoolchildren also enjoyed playing the original’Gaggayam na Cagayan’ or the children’s game that preserves the Ibanag culture.

In all activities which was conducted, it depicts on how the Ibanags live a simple life, on how do they work together to achieve progress, on how they preserve their hospitality.

Vice Mayor Danilo Baccay said it is being observed that nowadays, the new generation doesn’t know how to speak in Ibanag that’s why they are now planning to pass a resolution mandating the schools teach Ibanag dialect to schoolchildren.

The hospitality of the Ibanags was also one among the limelight of the festival. With the’Pancit Batil Patung’, the specialty of Tuguegarao, visitors really felt the real Ibanag taste as they were warm welcomed with the delicious ‘pancit batil patung’.

In the mass wedding, several couples were given blessings to tie a knot in a traditional way the Ibanag celebrate wedding. The Maskota Dance is always practiced, the real Ibanag wedding celebration.

“The true essence of this festival is the celebration of our original tradition and culture, our act of showing that we are proud of being an Ibanag,” Baccay said in an interview. (PIA 2)