Ang Dabawenyo

The City of Davao is geared up for this year’s celebration of the Kadayawan Festival. As city streets have already been adorned with colorful buntings and streamers, the 2009 Kadayawan Festival Executive Committee — headed by Mayor Rodrigo Duterte along with private sector co-chair Lorenzo Te, Jr. — has lined up an exciting calendar of [...]

Planning for Davao City’s biggest traditional celebration has begun! And this time, it’s the younger generation who’s more or less holding the reins.

There’s an ongoing event in Davao, called Kalimudan. It showcases the region’s traditional cultures: the Bagobo, Manobo, Kagan, and others. I know that Davao has many local tribes (more politically-correctly referred to as “cultural minorities” — but I personally don’t like this term at all), but I didn’t know that there are in fact more! [...]

The past years’ Kadayawan sa Dabaw celebrations, it’s been thought, have veered away from the authentic spirit of this most important of Davao’s festivals. People have started talking about how ‘commercialized’ the Kadayawan has become over the years. And this probably explains the knee-jerk reaction by this year’s organizers — their unexpected move to change [...]