David Gowey

This article argues that, as Panay Bukidnon chanted epics called sugidanon are increasingly transformed from oral into written texts and from community to public performances, scholarly attention paid to markers of oral performance should similarly increase. These markers include variation between performances and performers, semantic parallelism and other forms of repetition, and audience participation. This article proposes a nonhierarchical typology for sugidanon performance contexts to better understand how Panay Bukidnon chanting practices have changed over time from the sixteenth century to the present. An in-depth analysis of semantic parallelisms examines a standard repertoire of poetic speech that appears across all recorded sugidanon epics; the author proposes that these features of semi-extemporaneous performance situate the epics alongside other regional poetry forms in Island Southeast Asia.

Indigenous Panay Bukidnon people of the Philippines have chanted long narrative poems called sugidanon since at least the sixteenth century. These poems were traditionally performed by binukot (secluded) women and feature binukot women as active characters. This article examines three sugidanon epics alongside two Hiligaynon-language Catholic devotional poems written by Spanish missionaries. These writers appropriated selectively from Panayanon poetry forms, idioms, and gender categories to create a new Christianized Visayan model woman with comparatively lower prestige than her precolonial counterpart. Fashioned after Mary, this new feminine ideal elevated a Hispanicized view of the binukot as a pious and domesticated foil to Indigenous Panayanon religious practitioners (babaylan) who were most often women but also effeminate men or intersex individuals. Panayanon people also adapted to Spanish colonialism by incorporating Mary alongside Indigenous figures such as the babaylan and female ancestors depicted in sugidanon epics.

Recent scholarship on the Philippines has called into question the degree of colonial control which Spain held over the Philippines from 1521 to 1899. At the same time, scholars of colonial Latin America have been increasingly reaching out across the Pacific to incorporate Philippine materials into comparative analyses of Iberian colonialism in the Atlantic world. This paper examines the blood oaths of Rajah Humabon (1521) and Datu Sikatuna (1565) alongside other episodes from Philippine history to argue for the study of the Iberian colonialisms in former Pacific colonies alongside the Americas. Furthermore, this paper analyzes these materials through the lens of Filomeno Aguilar’s ‘clash of spirits’ to better understand the range of Filipino responses to Spanish power during the colonial period and attempts to recover local agency via Indigenous sincerity, specifically in narratives of local conversion to Catholicism and other various forms of collaboration with Spanish authorities.

Tikum Kadlum is the first poem in the Caballero family’s sugidanon cycle that serves as a prologue for the main storylines involving recurring characters, including Labaw Donggon, Amburukay, and Matan-ayon. It provides valuable insights for contemporary readers into the cultural practices and values of Panay Bukidnon chanters, as well as the world around them within the Philippines and greater Island Southeast Asia. This paper explores four main themes from the text:(1) reverence for the natural world,(2) heirloom objects,(3) tuos as an imagistic icon, and (4) gender relations. It involves a discussion of Makabagting’s tuos, an icon of promise, and its long-term consequences on the narrative; various appeasement rituals practiced within the Panay Bukidnon community and how these connect to larger Philippine folk beliefs; constructing a dialogue between the epic’s portrayal of social and family dynamics, and ethnographic sources; and possible connections to broader Asian folklore.