Who is Ginaw Bilog?

Ginaw Bilog is a Hanunoo Mangyan poet from Mansalay, Oriental Mindoro.

• Who is Ginaw Bilog?
• Ginaw Bilog is a Hanunoo Mangyan
poet from Mansalay, Oriental
Mindoro. He is considered as a
master of the Ambahan poetry. This
wisdom is his key to the
understanding of the Mangyan soul.
In 1993, he was given the Gawad sa
Manlilikha ng Bayan award.
• He grew up in such a cultural
environment. Already steeped in the
wisdom that the ambahan is a key to the
understanding of the Mangyan soul,
Ginaw took it upon himself to continually
keep scores of ambahan poetry
recorded, not only on bamboo tubes but
on old, dog-eared notebooks passed on
to him by friends.
• The Ambahan Poets
• As mentioned earlier, Ginaw had
won an award because of his
dedication to preserve the
ambahan poetry. But, what is
ambahan?
• Ambahan is a poetic literary
form composed of seven-
syllable lines used to convey
messages through metaphors
and images.
• Such an oral tradition is common
place among indigenous cultural
groups but the ambahan has
remained in existence today
chiefly because it is etched on
bamboo tubes using ancient
Southeast Asian, pre-colonial
script called surat Mangyan.
• The ambahan is just one of
those evidences that even
before the arrival of the
Spaniards, Filipinos already
have a system of writing.
• One important thing to
remember about the ambahan
texts inscribed on bamboos is
that they are left along forest
trails to greet strangers or
guide travelers.
• And Bilog, in essence, has
been consistent with this
aspect of ambahan
tradition.
• When Bilog received his award in
1993, he was dressed in typical
Mangyan garb of loincloth and a blue
type of jacket, wearing as well an
easy smile. This same image of him
was seen at Luneta by students and
other visitors at the Dayaw:
Philippine Cultural Communities Arts
Festival held at Rizal Park, Manila
from December 3 to 9 in 2001.
• He was among the estimated 400
traditional artists, craftsmen,
scholars, and cultural practitioners
from 38 cultural communities, freely
interacting with visitors, showing
them how engraving the “ambahan”
onto the skin of bamboos was done.
• On June 3, 2003, Ginaw died at
the age of 50 because of a
lingering illness. Before he
died, he had established the
School of Living Traditions
(SLT).
• An SLT is one where a living
master/culture bearer or culture
specialist, in this case, Bilog,
imparts to a group of young
people (from the same ethno-
linguistic community) the skills
and techniques of doing a
traditional art or craft.
• The establishment of the SLT is in
response to the UNESCO declaration that
there should be two approaches to the
preservation of cultural heritage: one is
to record it in a tangible form and
conserve it in archives; the other is to
preserve it in a living form by ensuring its
transmission to the next generations. The
SLT addresses the second approach.
• The Filipinos are grateful to the
Hanunoo Mangyan for having
preserved a distinctive heritage form
our ancient civilization that colonial
rule had nearly succeeded in
destroying. The nation is justifiably
proud of Ginaw Bilog for vigorously
promoting the elegantly poetic art of
the surat Mangyan and the ambahan.