Last year, the #NationalMuseumPH featured the Santo Niño festivals in the Visayas —Ati-Atihan in Aklan, Sinulog in Cebu, and Dinagyang in Iloilo. This year, as we celebrate the feast of Santo Niño this month, we explore the Kahimunan Festival in Butuan City, Agusan del Norte in northeastern Mindanao — a thanksgiving celebration in honor of the Child Jesus and a tribute to the indigenous practices in the region.

The annual Kahimunan Festival was founded in 1987 by Father Juanito Belino, the first parish priest of Santo Niño Parish in Barangay Libertad, Butuan City, where a Santo Niño Diocesan Shrine is also located. This week-long event is held every 3rd week of January and has since been widely attended by devotees and tourists alike. 

While the festival is highly associated with the Santo Niño, its underlying indigenous root is indicative of the etymology of “kahimunan,” a Manobo term meaning ‘to gather.’ It also refers to the series of rituals performed at the start of planting season among the lumadnon of Agusan, and is also referred to as the full moon festival. The ritual is composed of chanting, singing and playing indigenous musical instruments including gimbor (drums), gong, and bamboo percussions such as kalatong/karatong and kotik. Grace Nono, a renowned ethnomusicologist who hails from Agusan, accounts that Kahimunan also known as Kaamulan, is a yearly celebration among the Manobo, Higaonon and Banwaon groups of Agusan del Sur, and music is a vital component of it.

Kahimunan Festival exemplifies an amalgamation of the influence of the Catholic practice and the indigenous ritual, similar to the many celebrated festivals in the Philippines. The annual street dancing competition participated in by several groups from different parts of northeastern Mindanao is one of the highlights of the event. Participants clad in vibrant clothing and accessories, accented with baskets and arrows among others, and dance along the streets of Libertad down to the City Sports Complex. The images of Santo Niño held by some participants is also a common sight.

Before the Covid-19 pandemic, about 400,000 visitors from different parts of the country joined the religious festivities last January 2019. With the threat of the Covid-19, the majority of the activities were suspended last year including street dancing. Nevertheless, daily novena masses were held at the Santo Niño Shrine under limited capacity to enter the shrine.

The Lumad gallery located on the third floor of the National Museum of Anthropology displays some of the traditional musical instruments of different Lumad groups in Mindanao. Follow the #NationalMuseumPH and discover more about the Philippines’ array of festivities.

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Text and poster by the NMP Ethnology Division

Photo from Mr. Michael S. Licup

© The National Museum of the Philippines (2022)

The #NationalMuseumPH celebrates the 86th birth anniversary of National Artist (NA) for Visual Arts Abdulmari Asia Imao #OnThisDay in 1936.

Imao, the first National Artist from Mindanao, was a sculptor, painter, photographer, ceramist, filmmaker, researcher, and writer. In 1954, a floating art exhibition by the Art Association of the Philippines (AAP) arrived in Sulu where he met Tomas Bernardo (1918-1994) who encouraged Imao to go to Manila to study art. He earned his fine arts degree at the University of the Philippines School of Fine Arts with National Artists Guillermo Tolentino and Napoleon Abueva as mentors. He traveled to the United States of America to pursue graduate studies at Kansas University as a Smith-Mundt and Fulbright scholar. He also had two-year fellowships at the Rhode Island School of Design for sculpture and ceramics, and at the Columbia University in New York for photography and cinema.

The artist’s goal is to promote indigenous motifs in Southern Philippines — the naga, the okir/ukkil, and the sarimanok. The sarimanok is an ornate chicken-like figure or a decorative bird notable in Maranao Art. The “Darangen”, a Maranao epic describes the sarimanok as a messenger of “datus” or chieftain — thus a symbol of royalty. 

Exhibited at The Pillars of Philippine Modernism, Gallery XVIII of the National Museum of Fine Arts is his 1975 acrylic painting “Sarimanok”. This is the only work of NA Imao in this medium at the National Fine Arts Collection wherein the sarimanok is depicted in a contemporary or modernist manner, placed in a plane of interlocking shapes.

You may also view other artworks of NA Imao at the Lilok, Hulma, at Tipon: Modern Sculptures in the Philippines (Gallery XXIX): Sarimanok (1996 and another dated 1969), and Fishes (1976). 

Imao was conferred as National Artist for Visual Arts in 2006. He passed away on December 14, 2014, in Marikina City. 

Text by NMP-FAD

Photo by Bengy Toda

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© The National Museum of the Philippines (2022)

It’s Friday again! In today’s #DignayanBiyernes, let us talk about how the natural sculptures inside our caves are formed – the stalactites and stalagmites, or collectively, speleothems. 

The word speleothem comes from the Greek words “spelaion” which means cave and “thema” meaning deposit. It refers to cave features that are formed through the deposition of minerals dominantly calcite. We know them better as stalactites which hang like icicles from the ceiling and stalagmites which rise from the ground or the cave floor. 

These are created because of the rainwater that seeps through cracks in the rocks over a long period. Do you know that it takes about hundreds to thousands of years for a speleothem about 10 centimeters long to be formed? 

The weak acid that is made by the interaction of rainwater to the atmosphere and other organic materials dissolves the mineral calcite in which a cave is formed. When this water that contains dissolved minerals is exposed to the air, calcite is redeposited on the cave walls, ceiling, and floor. When the redeposited minerals continue to build up, stalactite is formed. And when the water that still contains dissolved minerals drops to the floor, stalagmites will be created. 

Speleothems are extremely fragile as they are covered by a very thin layer of water with dissolved minerals which also makes them grow. So the next time you visit a cave, try not to touch an actively growing stalactite or stalagmite as you may disrupt its formation that started hundreds to thousands of years ago. 

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Text and image by the NMP Geology and Paleontology Division

© National Museum of the Philippines (2022)