Bahong: Agents, Places and Practices through Music, Flowers and Savong Shi Bahong

Bahong: Agents, Places and Practices through Music, Flowers

and Savong Shi Bahong

Cindy Cruz 86-16518about.me/cindycruzcabrera en.gravatar.com/cindycatz

Anthropology 265: Field Research Methods in FolkloreDr. Hector Guazon

University of the Philippines Diliman

Folklore

• Oral traditions, material culture, behaviors and practices shared by a group of two or more people in a communicative act / community

• Interest in what people do with oral traditions, material culture, behaviors and practices – how these are learned and incorporated in a group’s daily experiences and lives.

“Savong Shi Bahong” and the Rose Capital of the Philippines

Material culture as created and appropriated by various agents or actors within particular spaces/places in the following aspects:

• Its representation, immortalization and iconization of Bahong

• Its production and distribution processes and routes

• Its flows and routes within places and spaces through traditional media forms (DVDs and radio, for example) and new media forms (MP3s and internet platforms)

Research Perspectives

Anthropological Perspective

• This research traces and maps the movement of this song and the practices that surround this representative of material culture within Baguio, Centermall and the market area (where it is commonly sold), and within the stalls.

Media Studies Perspective• This research also examines the treatment of

the song “Savong Shi Bahong” as representative of independent indigenous contemporary music or folk music popular with the marginalized majority but symbolically annihilated by institutions within the music industry as the arbiters of “mainstream”, “popular” or “capitalist ordained” music.

Research Question

• In what ways do people use, regard and appropriate the song AND negotiate its meanings as they move it through the spaces and places where they act and conduct their daily lives in comparison to the ways the institutions and the system (within which these people and their places/spaces are subsumed) regard material culture produced in folklife?

Jeffrey VisayaBahong Resident and acclaimed landscape artist

Landscape Assistants of Jeffrey Visaya(three Bahong residents and a migrant worker)

Melanie SuhatBahong resident and flower farm owner

Steve KisseBahong resident, flower farmer and farm owner

Elvis KisseBahong resident, flower farmer and farm owner

Leslie PurocBahong resident and flower farm owner

Abegail AntonioBahong resident and Ms. Savong Shi Bahong 2014

Helen GadgadBahong resident and Kagawad

Belmer ElisBahong resident and Kagawad

Arnold NamuhmuhMiner and Folksinger at D’Restaurant

Albert Basilan (with VP Larry)Musician and President, Cordillera Entertainment Baguio

and Benguet Based Artists Inc. (CEBBBAI)

Peter WasingZ-Radio DJ, Musician and Owner of Wild West Bar

Edong CartaZ-Radio DJ, prominent musician and composer

Ramon Zialcita “The Doctor”DJ at 99.9 Country FM

Ridz CoilanSalesperson at Migor Music Center

Elsie MallonesOwner, Abatan Records

John MartinGospel Singer and Dangwa Mailing Station owner

Fe JovellanosGospel Singer

Mauricio DumoganBaguio City Mayor

Nick AlipingBaguio Congressman

Interpretation of Research

• With Bahong as the space of the song’s story, the meaning of the song is appropriated, negotiated, and recreated by Bahong residents as conditioned and framed by their aspirations and yearnings in the contexts of their lives within this space.

• Folk groups (in particular – people who know of the song AND the people of Bahong) create, utilize, find and frequent spaces through which folkloric material culture can thrive and proliferate despite its invisibility and marginalization in privileged places enjoying institutional and commercial support.

• With regard to “Savong Shi Bahong” and songs of this genre and/or similar production conditions, folkloric culture preferences (which may be considered this region’s popular culture) within Bahong and Baguio veer toward independently produced indigenous contemporary music despite the commercial and institutional endorsement of popular music.

• The “Savong Shi Bahong” folkloric culture is continually reproduced through the recognition, legitimization, critique/invalidation, performance, and appropriation-negotiation of the song as a marker of Bahong as well as a representative of indigenous contemporary music.