“To date, Mrs. Gamayo is one of 16 individuals given the Gawad sa Manlilikha ng Bayan or National Living Treasures Award”
Ilokandia’s National Living Treasure, 99-year-old master weaver Magdalena Gamayo from Pinili, Ilocos Norte will hold this week a three-day exhibit sponsored by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts at its gallery in old Intramuros district in Manila.
The NCCA commissioned Bernard Guerrero, a cultural worker based in Paoay, Ilocos Norte, to be the curator of the national exhibition. He is a cultural heritage consultant to various local government units as well as to the Department of Tourism Region I.
The exhibit, starting Wednesday, will feature the life and works of Gamayo, who started weaving in her hometown when she was nine years old and now, after turning 99 last August 13, supervises weavers in her barangay in the outskirts of the garlic-producing town 10 kms away due east.
The exhibit will run from 8am to 6pm from Wednesday and Thursday and from 9am to 3pm on Friday. But she will only be at the NCCA Gallery on Thursday, according to officials from Pinili.
Mrs Gamayo’s works (including her old blankets woven as from the 1960s to the 1980s) will be brought to Manila, in the exhibit titled “Inubon a Dayaw (A String of Honor)” which will showcase her life’s efforts at weaving which made her in 2012 a National Living Treasure, the only one thus far from the Ilocos Region.
The 135-centimeter widow will be accompanied by officials from Pinili, headed by the town’s municipal accountant and Tourism Officer-designate Mavi Cercado, members of the Sangguniang Bayan and 10 weavers from her museum in her rustic barangay.
They are expected to arrive in the capital on Wednesday on a flight from the Laoag International Airport, some 40 kms from her town, and will go to the nearby National Museum the morning after to turn over her woven gifts.
Gamayo will be at the NCCA Gallery on Thursday at 4 pm, then fly back to Ilocos Norte on Friday.
Part of the exhibit will be those woven by her understudies at the GAMABA Museum or the Gawad Manlilikha ng Bayan in her agricultural barangay, nestled among verdant trees in the town where warriors walked during the Philippine American Revolution and World War II.
Her woven fabrics will not be sold, but those woven by her companions at the Museum will be for sale.
The traditonal folk artist looks after the younger trainees – relatives and barangay neigbors – who get her scrupulous mentorship and counsel.
To date, Mrs. Gamayo is one of 16 individuals given the Gawad sa Manlilikha ng Bayan or National Living Treasures Award, the highest state honor given to a Filipino in recognition of their outstanding work as a traditional folk artist.
A recipient of the award is “a Filipino citizen or group of Filipino citizens 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 generations in their community with the same degree of technical and artistic competence.
In an earlier interview last summer, we were able to get a better glimpse of the woman who started weaving at age nine after finishing grade 3 in nearby barangay Sacritan, in efforts to help her siblings – four girls and five boys – and her parents.
Which suggests she has been on the loom pedal for nearly 90 years.
Born in Pinili two years after the erstwhile barangays of Paoay, Badoc and Batac became Ilocos Norte’s 17th town, the self-possessed Magdalena watched her paternal aunts, whose roots are from Paoay, the town heretofore known across the region for its distinct woven fabric.
There is a word called “abel” which is the Ilokano word for weave, and “inabel” can be interpreted to mean any kind of woven fabric.
In the world of weaving, inabel is particularly used to refer to textile distinctly Ilokano in origin.
With her at the center are 12 women and a male weaver – relatives and neighbors — who are perpetuating and institutionalizing her winning design “Inubon a Sabong” which, loosely translated, means “A String of Flowers” – a quick reminder of the 1941 song “A String of Pearls” composed by violinist Jerry Grya with lyrics by Eddie DeLange and set into music by trombonist Glenn Miller and His Orchestra which became #1 hit, a big band and jazz standard.
Mrs. Gamayo’s understudies are also weaving other designs called in Ilokano bola bola, tawwa-tawwa, pinilian,, binakol, kusikos and sinan paid.
And she is ultracareful in her coaching to ensure comparative durability, which has become known in the region.
Buyers travel to Lumbaan-Bicbica through the cemented road from the town proper, only four kilometers from the MacArthur national highway that cuts through the Ilocos region from the Tarlac-Pangasinan-La Union Expressway.
Her backup members don’t get any wage, but she told us in the interview each gets two-thirds of their sale from their respective woven fabrics – bought in Vigan, Ilocos Sur or in Metro Manila – one third of which would be given to the center for its maintenance.
None to the government.
One fill-in can weave more or less 60 yards in a month, depending on the design of the fabric.
From a small place of loom weavers prior to receiving her GAMABA, Mrs Gamayo now has, thanks to the government, 18 looms and a wider space used for the GAMABA Cultural Center, funded by the provincial government.
There are other extra looms because of the rising number of trainees in the center, with one loom occupying 2 x 1 ½ square meter area.
There are times the weavers attend trade fairs sponsored by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, especially those in the capital – like the exhibit this week.
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We take this space to invite awareness of Ilokanos to three recently published books by prize-winning writers from northern Philippines, all members of the national association of Ilocano writers who are marking their 55th year this month as a cohesive literary organization.
The books are titled “Manen, Adda Umuna (Again, There’s a First),” a compilation of award-winning poetry by Ariel Sotel Tabag, the incumbent president of GUMIL Filipinas from Villa, Santa Teresita, Cagayan; “Opas” and other short stories, a compilation of prize winning stories by Daniel Nesperos from San Lorenzo, San Nicolas, Ilocos Norte.
The third is “Dagiti Bin-i Ti Kimat (Seeds of Lighting),” a Cultural Center of the Philippines grantee for novel in 1991 by Cles B. Rambaud, a Pedro Bucaneg Awardee from Puritac, Pinili, Ilocos Norte and the incumbent editor of the Manila-based Iloko publication Bannawag.
The books were published this year by Saniata Publications of Quezon City.
Orders may be placed with online Lazada.