Jagpreet Sandhu

12 – Love
Vital Task 1

Chosen Artist: Lang Dulay

LANG DULAY

Textile Weaver
T’boli
Lake Sebu, South Cotabato
Awarded in 1998

Born on August 3, 1928, Bey Lang Dulay was a T'boli princess from
the Lake Sebu region in South Cotabato. She first learnt weaving
at the age of 12 from her mother, Luan Senig. She has since
passed her technique to her granddaughters and her students
through her humble workshop at the Manlilikha ng Bayan Center
in Sitio Tukolefa, Lamdalag, Lake Sebu, South Cotabato.

She is known for maintaining the use of traditional motifs in

T'nalak weaving amidst commercialization of the craft which saw the introduction of more modern
designs by non-T'bolis. Before the 1960s, the Tboli bartered tnalak for horses, which played an
important role in their work. Upon the establishment of the St. Cruz Mission, which encouraged the
community to weave and provided them with a means to market their produce, the tnalak designs
gained widespread popularity and enable weavers like Lang to earn a steady income from their art.
However, the demand also resulted in the commercialization of the tnalak industry, with outsiders
coming in to impose their own designs on the Tboli weavers.

Ironically modern designs get a better price than the traditional ones. Despite this, and the fact that
those modern designs are easier to weave, Lang persists in doing things the old, if harder, way, to give
voice, in effect, to the songs that were her elders
before her. Her textiles are judged excellent because
of the “fine even quality of the yarn, the close
interweaving of the warp and weft, the precision in the
forms and patterns, the chromatic integrity of the dye,
and the consistency of the finish.” T’nalak designs even
became more popular when some legislators wore
them during one of former President Noynoy Aquino’s
SONA.

Lang Dulay notably had a mental repertoire of around

100 patterns and designs: some of these were based on her dreams, hence her description as a
"dreamweaver". The T’boli weavers, like Lang Dulay, get the designs for their t’nalak from their dreams.
They believe that when Fu Dalu, the spirit of the abaca, shows them the design in their dreams, they
must immediately weave it into cloth or else they might fall ill and soon forget the pattern. Sometimes,
the designs are passed on from generation to generation, from grandmother to grandchild. Some of
Lang Dulay’s designs were the bulinglangit (clouds), the bangkiring (hair bangs), and the kabangi
(butterfly). During her prime, her designs were said to fetch a price of at least Php1,200 per meter.

Lang Dulay suffered a coma in 2015 then died April of the same year.

Sources:

https://ncca.gov.ph/about-culture-and-arts/culture-profile/gamaba/national-living-treasures-lang-
dulay/

https://notesbynyx.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/lake-sebus-lang-dulay/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lang_Dulay