Initial presentation after a two-week intensive fieldwork course held in Benguet (Bahong, La Trinidad and Baguio).

1. Bahong: Agents, Places and
Practices through Music, Flowers
and Savong Shi Bahong
Cindy Cruz 86-16518
about.me/cindycruzcabrera en.gravatar.com/cindycatz
Anthropology 265: Field Research Methods in Folklore
Dr. Hector Guazon
University of the Philippines Diliman

2. Folklore

3. • Oral traditions, material culture, behaviors
and practices shared by a group of two or
more people in a communicative act /
community
• Interest in what people do with oral traditions,
material culture, behaviors and practices –
how these are learned and incorporated in a
group’s daily experiences and lives.

4. “Savong Shi Bahong” and the
Rose Capital of the Philippines

5. Material culture as created and appropriated by
various agents or actors within particular
spaces/places in the following aspects:
• Its representation, immortalization and
iconization of Bahong
• Its production and distribution processes and
routes
• Its flows and routes within places and spaces
through traditional media forms (DVDs and
radio, for example) and new media forms
(MP3s and internet platforms)

6. Research Perspectives

7. Anthropological Perspective
• This research traces and maps the movement
of this song and the practices that surround
this representative of material culture within
Baguio, Centermall and the market area
(where it is commonly sold), and within the
stalls.

8. Media Studies Perspective
• This research also examines the treatment of
the song “Savong Shi Bahong” as
representative of independent indigenous
contemporary music or folk music popular
with the marginalized majority but
symbolically annihilated by institutions within
the music industry as the arbiters of
“mainstream”, “popular” or “capitalist
ordained” music.

9. Research Question

10. • In what ways do people use, regard and
appropriate the song AND negotiate its
meanings as they move it through the spaces
and places where they act and conduct their
daily lives in comparison to the ways the
institutions and the system (within which
these people and their places/spaces are
subsumed) regard material culture produced
in folklife?

11. Jeffrey Visaya
Bahong Resident and acclaimed landscape artist

12. Landscape Assistants of Jeffrey Visaya
(three Bahong residents and a migrant worker)

13. Melanie Suhat
Bahong resident and flower farm owner

14. Steve Kisse
Bahong resident, flower farmer and farm owner

15. Elvis Kisse
Bahong resident, flower farmer and farm owner

16. Leslie Puroc
Bahong resident and flower farm owner

17. Abegail Antonio
Bahong resident and Ms. Savong Shi Bahong 2014

18. Helen Gadgad
Bahong resident and Kagawad

19. Belmer Elis
Bahong resident and Kagawad

20. Arnold Namuhmuh
Miner and Folksinger at D’Restaurant

21. Albert Basilan (with VP Larry)
Musician and President, Cordillera Entertainment Baguio
and Benguet Based Artists Inc. (CEBBBAI)

22. Peter Wasing
Z-Radio DJ, Musician and Owner of Wild West Bar

23. Edong Carta
Z-Radio DJ, prominent musician and composer

24. Ramon Zialcita “The Doctor”
DJ at 99.9 Country FM

25. Ridz Coilan
Salesperson at Migor Music Center

26. Elsie Mallones
Owner, Abatan Records

27. John Martin
Gospel Singer and Dangwa Mailing Station owner
Fe Jovellanos
Gospel Singer

28. Mauricio Dumogan
Baguio City Mayor

29. Nick Aliping
Baguio Congressman

30. Interpretation of Research

31. • With Bahong as the space of the song’s story,
the meaning of the song is appropriated,
negotiated, and recreated by Bahong
residents as conditioned and framed by their
aspirations and yearnings in the contexts of
their lives within this space.

32. • Folk groups (in particular – people who know
of the song AND the people of Bahong) create,
utilize, find and frequent spaces through
which folkloric material culture can thrive and
proliferate despite its invisibility and
marginalization in privileged places enjoying
institutional and commercial support.

33. • With regard to “Savong Shi Bahong” and
songs of this genre and/or similar production
conditions, folkloric culture preferences
(which may be considered this region’s
popular culture) within Bahong and Baguio
veer toward independently produced
indigenous contemporary music despite the
commercial and institutional endorsement of
popular music.

34. • The “Savong Shi Bahong” folkloric culture is
continually reproduced through the
recognition, legitimization,
critique/invalidation, performance, and
appropriation-negotiation of the song as a
marker of Bahong as well as a representative
of indigenous contemporary music.