page_title: Subanon people
section_title: Performing Arts
hierarchical_section_title: Subanon people / Culture / Performing Arts
caption_attribution_description: Subanen lead dancer carrying St. james image dance during colorful street dancing competition on KINABAYO Festival in Dapitan City, Zamboanga Norte
context_page_description: Subanon is a tribe indigenous to the Zamboanga peninsula area, particularly living in the mountainous areas of Zamboanga del Sur and Misamis Occidental, Mindanao Island, Philippines. The Subanon people speak the Subanon language. The name is derived from the word "soba" or "suba", a word common in Sulu, Visayas, and
  Mindanao, which means “river, ” and the suffix “-nun” or -non” which indicates a locality or place of origin. Accordingly, the name "Subanon" means "a person or people of the river". These people originally lived in the low lying areas. However, due to disturbances and competitions from other settlers like the Muslims, and migrations of Cebuano speakers to the coastal areas attracted by the inviting Land Tenure Laws, further pushed the Subanen into the interior.
  The Subanons are farmers and regularly move from one location to another to clear more forest for fields. They cultivate crops, with rice as the most important crop, but they are also known to raise livestock including pigs, chickens, cattle, and water buffaloes. Subanon houses are built along hillsides and ridges overlooking family fields.
context_section_description: Subanen musical instruments include the gagong, a single brass gong; the kolintang, a set of eight small brass gongs of graduated sizes; and the durugan, a hollowed log  which is beaten like a drum; and the drums.
  Vocal music includes the chants for the epic, and several types of songs, which include  the dionli (a love song), buwa (lullaby), and giloy (a funeral song for a dead chieftain).
  The giloy is usually sung by two singers, one of them being the balian, during a gukas, the ritual ceremony performed as a memorial for the death of a chief. The chanting of  the biloy is accompanied by the ritualistic offering of bottled drinks, canned milk, cocoa,  margarine, sardines, broiled fish, chicken, and pork. The balian and her assistants bring  out a jar of pangasi (rice wine) from the house and into the field, where the wine is poured onto the earth. Then the chanting begins, inside the house. To be at peace with the diwata of the tribe, the Subanen perform ritual dances, sing songs, chant prayers, and play their drums and gongs. The balian, who is more often a woman, is the lead performer in almost all Subanen dance rituals. Her trance dance involves continuous chanting, frenzied shaking of palm leaves, or the brandishing of a bolo alternated with the flipping of red pieces of cloth. Upon reaching a feverish climax, the balian stops, snaps out of her trance, and proceeds to give instructions dictated by the diwata to the people.
  Dance among the Subanen fulfills a multitude of ceremonial and ritual functions. Most important of the ritual dances is the buklog which is performed on a platform at least 6–10 meters above the ground. The most expensive ritual of the Subanon, the buklog is held to commemorate a dead person, so that his acceptance into the spirit world may be facilitated, or to give thanks for a bountiful harvest, or to ask for such a harvest as well as other favors from the diwata.
  The whole structure of the buklog platform sways and appears to be shaky, but it is supported at the corners by upright posts. In the middle of the platform, a paglaw (central pole) passes through, with its base resting on a durugan, a hollow log 3 meters long and as thick as a coconut trunk which is laid horizontally on the ground, resting on a number of large empty earthen jars sunk into the earth. These jars act as resonators when the paglaw strikes the durugan. The jars are kept from breaking by means of sticks and leaves, protecting them from the durugan's impact. The sound that the paglaw makes is a booming one, and can be heard for kilometers around.
  In a typical performance of the buklog, gongs are beaten, songs rendered (both traditional ones and those which are improvised for the occasion), and the people take turns sipping basi or rice beer from the reeds placed in the jars. As evening comes, and all through the night, they proceed to the buklog platform by ladder or notched log, and join hands in a circle. They alternately close in and jump backward around the central pole, and as they press down hard on the platform in unison, they cause the lower end of the pole to strike the hollow log, which then makes a deep booming sound. It is only the balian who appears serious in her communication with the spirit world, while all the rest are more concerned with merrymaking—drinking, feasting, and dancing.
  The balian does the dancing in other ceremonies, e.g., for the recovery of a sick child. During the ritual offering of chicken, an egg, a chew of betel nut, a saucer of cooked rice, and a cigarette made of tobacco wrapped with nipa leaf, the shaman burns incense, beats a china bowl with a stick, beats a small gong called agun cina (Chinese gong), with the purpose of inviting the diwata mogolot (a class of deities who live in the sea) to share in the repast. Then she takes hold of salidingan in each hand—these are bunches of long strips of the salidingan or anahaw leaves—and dances seven times around the altar.
  In the puluntuh— a buklog held in memory of the dead—two altars are constructed, one underneath the dancing platform, a
caption: A Subanen lead dancer carrying St. James image during the Kinabayo Festival
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