BIO
About
Ginaw Bilog, Hanunoo Mangyan from Mansalay, Mindoro, 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.
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Born in 1953, poet Ginaw Bilog contributed to the preservation of the Ambahan or the traditional poetry of the Hanunuo Mangyans in Oriental Mindoro.
Most treasured of his collection are those inherited from his father and grandfather, sources of inspiration and guidance for his creative endeavors. To this day, Ginaw shares old and new ambahans with his fellow Mangyans and promotes this poetic form on every occasion.
Works
The Mangyan script is one of the four remaining syllabic scripts in the country, and Ginaw Bilog’s work has been crucial to its preservation. Based in Mansalay, Oriental Mindoro, the poet was known for writing ambahan (a metaphoric poem comprising seven-syllable lines), first in a notebook, then on traditionally used bamboo tubes.
The poems, often recited with music at social gatherings and used to convey messages among the Hanunuo Mangyan, had topics like advising the young, bidding a friend goodbye, and asking for a place to stay.
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Mindoro Island in the Philippines is home to two closely-related, incised-in-bamboo endangered alphabets–Hanunuo in the southern part of the island, and the less well known Buhid farther north. It’s a sign of how accustomed we have become to the notion of writing in parallel horizontal lines that these scripts have caused great confusion among outside observers. Some thought the script was vertical, others left-to-right or right-to-left, even bottom to top. The act of incising with a sharp bolo knife in a hard, round, relatively unstable surface such as a piece of bamboo is fundamentally different from writing on lined paper.
Historically, young Hanunuo men and women learned the Hanunuo script in order to write each other love poems. The goal was to learn as many songs as possible, and using the script to write the songs facilitated this process. Nowadays they are more likely to use digital devices, which are unlikely to support the Hanunuo script.
The Mangyan Heritage Center has started teaching the Hanunuo Mangyan Syllabic Script in Mangyan public elementary and secondary schools, partnering with the Department of Education to give a one hour once a week schedule for each class in selected schools.
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