Kaamulan Festival

Kaamulan Festival
Malaybalay,Bukidnon, March

Expect the Bukidnon to go tribal from the first to the second week of March, when the streets of Malaybalay take on that familiar fiesta theme. Banners, banderitas, and beer will be norm, as well as the sweet, haunting sound of native music. An early morning pamuhat ritual kicks off the festivities, to be followed by an ethnic food fest, trade fairs, and a lot of native dancing. Kaamulan is one of the Philippine festivals that is truly authentic tribal celebration.

Kaamulan Festival all began in 1974. It was the fiesta of Malaybalay, May 15, in honor of San Isidro Labrador. The town’s vice mayor then, Edilberto Mamawag, thought of inviting some indigenous Bukidnon tribespeople to town. Mamawag thought a few dance steps by the natives at Plaza Rizal would enliven the fiesta-goers.

That simple idea caught fire. A former reporter for the Manila Times, Mamawag had at that time a guest Manila reporter who later wrote about it for a national magazine. That signaled the start of Kaamulan’s fame. One year led to another. On Sept. 16, 1977, the Regional Development Council adopted Kaamulan as the regional festival of northern Mindanao.

The name Kaamulan is Binukid for “social gathering.” There are eight indigenous groups in Bukidnon: the Matigsalug, Umayamnon, Ilianon, Pulangihon, Talaandig, Tigwa Manobo, Western Bukidnon Manobo and the Higaunon who are also found in the hinterlands of Agusan del Sur, Misamis Oriental and Lanao del Norte. Comparative linguistic studies have shown that their languages, along with other Manobo languages of Mindanao, are daughter languages of an earlier parent language called Proto Manobo, the speakers of which were believed to have migrated to southern Mindanao many centuries ago.

Unlike other festivals, Kaamulan is not all street theater pageantry, although that is only one of its many facets. If other festivals have to stage-direct schoolchildren and make them appear as natives, in Kaamulan it is the real indigenous peoples who attract the crowds. And which is probably why the authentic rituals are what spice up the Kaamulan pageantry.

There is the pangampo (general worship), the tagulambong ho datu (a political ritual marking one’s formal ascendancy to the datuship), the panumanod (spiriting ceremony), the panlisig (edging away of evil spirits), another ceremony called pamalas and a native horse fight called kagsaba ho kabayo.