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• Sayaw Ng Bati: The System Of Easter Dance Sponsorship In Angono, Rizal, The Philippines

  187-199

  Jose Antonio Lorenzo Tamayo

  Views:

  225

  The brand of Catholicism that exists in the Philippines blends both Christian and folk traditions. During the precolonial period, sponsoring community rituals was obligatory for the datu (chieftain) and the local aristocracy, as these events consumed significant resources. The Christianization of the country through Spanish colonization transformed precolonial sponsorship traditions as new sponsorship practices emerged among the local elites, aligning them with the veneration of the santo (images of saints) and the fiesta (the feast of the town’s patron saint). This article explores a distinct Catholic sponsorship system in the Southern Tagalog region called sayaw ng bati or bati, a dance ritual performed in Angono, Rizal, during Easter. Based on in-depth interviews conducted with three performers, the article provided an overview of bati as a sponsorship system, focusing on the process of becoming a performer and the corresponding motivations, the material and economic aspects of the practice, and the positioning of bati within the context of panata (devotional pledge).

• SAYAW NG BATI: A PERSPECTIVE ON TRANSCULTURATION OF THE SPANISH COLONIAL HERITAGE IN THE SOUTHERN TAGALOG REGION OF THE PHILIPPINES

  173-188

  Jose Antonio Lorenzo L. Tamayo

  Views:

  1618

  Just like other dances that developed during the Christianization of the Philippines, the Sayaw ng Bati (Dance of Greeting), a dance performance conducted during the dawn of Easter Sunday in the Southern Tagalog Region, is a byproduct of transculturation, a process where the subordinate culture (the colonized) selects certain cultural items in the dominant culture (the colonizer) that fits their contexts and preferences. This paper then aims to elucidate how transculturation occurred in the Philippines that dramatically altered the precolonial heritage of the Filipino people during the Spanish colonization of the country. Using a variety of sources from reputable Filipino scholars in the field of cultural anthropology and dance, the precolonial and Spanish colonial experiences were reviewed and contrasted to understand how transculturation happened in Philippine society and to look for parallels between the two historical contexts, which also affected how dance forms imported from Europe were perceived and developed through the ingenuity of Filipinos during the colonization of the archipelago.