THE GRAND CAÑAO FESTIVAL – celebration of the ethnic Igorots of Baguio

THE GRAND CAÑAO
The Festival

At the Benguet provincial grounds, ethnic Igorots of Baguio annually come together for the celebration of the Grand Cañao, a socio-religious ceremony that coincides with the observance of Benguet Foundation Day.

The festival kicks off with an activity they call the avang. Each delegates of the municipalites of Benguet line up and participates in capturing a hog representing their town. The high priest of the tribe, called the mambunong, perform prayers in chants and bless the hogs to be cooked, a meal for everyone.

Each of the municpalities of Benguet namely Atok, Bakun, Bokod, Buguias, Itogon, Kabayan, Kapangan, Kibungan, La Trinidad, Mankayan, Sablan, Tuba, and Tublay, perform their own native dances called the tayaw on their respective stages. The dance, consisting of two persons, a man and a woman, where the man is garbed with blankets of which they call the gateng, and blanket with indegenous designs on each shoulder or the tapis regalia, and the woman wearing blanket similar to that of the man’s, being wrapped around her body. These tapis are designed with different colors that represent each tribe, making the Grand Cañao a festival of colors, yet divisions between tribe’s identity are put aside as the dance and the celebration put together every tribe as one group unified by the beating of gongs. With the man leading the woman in dancing in a circle doing a hop-skip movement, a music is played with the rhythm of metal sticks, solibao, and gongs.

Afte a few rounds of the dance, everyone takes a drink of rice wine, which they call tapey, the woman rightafter, takes the role of the man in leading the dance, and this time wears the blanket on her shoulder, handed over by the man, enticed with the chants of the spectators, and again tapey is stributed to everyone which signals that the dance is ending and giving way to another pair or group of dancers.

One can also see a group that would perform the tinaktakyadan, another traditional dance, in which a group of men and women separated in two lines, and start the dance from the opposite directions towards each other. A creative dance it is that women, once met with the men, dance in an inner circle in unison, while the men on the other hand, dance in the outer circle in the opposite direction.

Sounds of the gongs and chants float through the air, as they enjoy the savory taste of tapey, the freshly cooked watwat, with everyone wearing a smile on their faces, makes the festivity even more meaningful.

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