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The Iligan Sinulog

VIVA SENOR SAN MIGUEL!

These short essays chronicle the celebration of Michaelmas in Iligan City. The “sinulog”/“yawa-yawa” rituals have transformed from their beginnings in the region’s lore —- the merging of Higaunun, M’ranao, and settler lore being prominent — to its transported consumerist-determined forms today – the Kasadya towards the Diyandi — an expected consequence of world economic re-ordering, thus remolding the mindsets in our cosmopolitan orders.

My earliest research in the 1980s annotated the full diandi version including its versos, and a complete transliteration and its annotation of the San Miguel Comedia, including its music score published in Komedya, 1999 (ed. Nicanor Tiongson, UP Press).

I, too, have been engaged in these transformations as I was resource person when the JayCees (c/o the late Dito Maruhom) invited me to conduct a series of workshops in the 1990s to migrate the narrative and re-form this to a street-dance space branded “Kasadya,” if only to protect the integrity of the sources. The consumerist setting, however, with the pomp, pageantry, and price money deluged almost to extinction the original sources that carried the spiritual functions.

A documentary, likewise, has been produced gathering from the performances of the sinulog, diandi, yawa-yawa, comedia, and their complementing acts in the 10-day celebrations that begin with the pagkanaug.

The forms performed today, first branded as the Kasadya and later the Diyandi, take little note of the contexts and cultural manifestations of the original in form and narrative. There is that binding engagement among the community, audience, government leaders, education, media, business, among others, that has determined the transformations of the “sinulog,” the most dominant being the consumerist requirements that now dictate how these forms should be performed.

PART 1. The Narratives and “Pagkanaug”
PART 2. The Icons of the Iliganon: Guerrero and Mayomo
PART 3. The Diandi: Performing Courtship
PART 4. The Sinulog: The Celestial Victory in the Streets
PART 5. The Drama/Yawa-yawa

(photo credits: Bobby Timonera, Rene B. Pernia, and various Iligan social media sites. No copyright infringement intended.)

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