Tuklas: Discover the Indigenous Culture of Filipinos

 

Philippine Expressions Bookshop celebrates its 30^th Anniversary and Asian Pacific American Heritage Month with the presentation of-

TUKLAS: DISCOVER THE INDIGENOUS CULTURE OF FILIPINOS
Saturdays, May 17, May 24 and May 31, 2014 | 5:00pm – 9:00pm

Croatian Cultural Center of Greater Los Angeles | 519 West 7th St @ Pacific | San Pedro, CA 90731

May 17-31: T’nalak Exhibit : The Sacred Weave of the Tbolis

Explore a T’nalak forest and enjoy 50 of the highest quality handwoven tapestries by the T’boli people of Lake Sebu, Cotabato, Mindanao Island; the documentary Weaving T’nalak; a touch-and-feel experience of the raw materials from the abaca tree; t’nalak looms; and rolls of finished products.

Curator Fides Enriquez is an independent ethnographer, film documentarian, photographer, produce,r and explorer. The T’boli textile exhibit, Fu Dalu – The Spirit of the T’nalak  was first presented at Pusod Gallery in Berkeley in 2002, and then on special display at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco in 2005.  Fides has given talks on T’nalak at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and for the Textile Arts Council at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. In 2012, she produced the award winning documentary, Harana – The Search for the Lost Art Of Serenade, a film about the traditional courtship music of the Philippines. She has also produced Florante Aguilar’s original theatrical works Lalawigan – A Tagalog Song Cycle and Aswang – Tales of Philippine Lore.

May 17: Book Launch, Music, & Martial Arts

Author Lane Wilcken deciphers the fragments of Filipino tradition and reveals the actual life history of an ancient art and a people as we launch his book, The Forgotten Children of Maui: Filipino Myths, Tattoos & Rituals of a Demigod. 2013. Hidden within the ancient mythology, and long-forgotten tattoo designs, and dying rituals of the Philippines, lies the powerful impact of Maui, a man well-known in Polynesia but nearly forgotten in the Philippines. Wilcken is also the author of Filipino Tattoos: Ancient to Modern. 2010.

We will also hear the haunting sounds of chants from ancient Philippines which only Grace Nono, well-known ethnomusicologist could interpret as we launch her latest book, Song of the Babaylan: Living Voices, Medicines, Spiritualities of Philippine Ritualist – Oralist – Healers.(2013). Nono is also the author of The Shared Voice: Chanted and Spoken Narratives from the Philippines (2008).

The sounds of kulintang, the traditional musical instrument of the Muslim people of Southern Philippines, will enchant you as Eleanor Academia of the World Kulintang Institute demonstrates the varied tones that evolve from the brass gongs and speak to your heart. She and her husband, Guro Cass Magda of the Magda Institute (which teaches martial arts philosophy in action) will also demonstrate traditional martial art forms called Kali in the southern islands of the country and Arnis in the lowlands of Visayas and Luzon. They will talk about how the art has evolved from a dance of skills to the art of self-defense.

Hand-weaving whether for cloth or mats and baskets, kulintang music, chants and native dances, martial arts, the art of tattooing and the calligraphy of ancient Filipinos will surprise you. They are the basis of the ancient culture of the people. The Filipino you meet today is the composite of all these traditions, as he evolves from 350 years of Hispanization which has Christianized the core of his being.

MAY 24, 2014  – Reception for Filipino-American Authors

Authors have been part of the Bookshop family all these years. Our anniversary celebration is as much theirs, as it is ours!

• Abadeha: The Philippine Cinderella. A retelling by Myrna de la Paz Mulhern, author and storyteller.
• Being Filipino, As a Writer in America: a panel discussion. Cecilia Manguerra Brainard, Moderator.
• Baybayin & Alibata: Filipino Ancient Script. By Norman de los Santos
• Arnis: Filipino Martial Arts. A demo by Guro Ramses Sison and his students.
• Kulintang: Ancient music and its History by Ron Quesada of Kulintronica. The underlying theme is cultural survival through tradition and innocation. He will perform traditional kulintang music and to show his versalility, he will demonstrate how music from an ancient instrument can be blended to create fusion music of the 2lst century.

 MAY 31, 2014   – A Celebration of Filipino Folk dances

Traditional dances from the North to the South will highlight the similarities and the differences among various communities, whether in their musical traditions, costumes and folk ways. Some of the dances to be featured include Sambi sa Malong or Kappa Malong Malong, a Maranao dance that shows the many ways of wearing a malong. Malong is a simple tubular yet highly functional piece of cloth. Another one is the Kalinga Courtship Dance from the Luzon Cordilleras.

Join us for a delightful show.

TICKETS

Tickets are good for all three Saturday events.
General: $30 or a dollar a year to represent thirty years of service to the Filipino American community
Sponsor: $100 & $50
Students/Seniors: $10
A limited number of $10.00 tickets are available for the May 17 Opening Event.

To order tickets, please send your check payable to Philippine Expressions Bookshop and mail to PO Box 4201, Palos Verdes Peninsula, CA 90274. You can also pay via PayPal to : <linda_nietes@sbcglobal.net> or call 310-514-9139 should you wish to pay by credit card. Only paid reservations will be honored. The number seventy-seven (77) is the magic number for Linda this year. There will be a special prize for the number 77th guest for the next three Saturdays. Send your reservations early.

All programs will start promptly at 5:00pm. Street parking. Refreshments Table will open by 6:00pm. A mini-bazaar of Filipiniana books, art, handwoven fabrics and other curiosities will be available on all three Saturdays. If you wish to be part of the bazaar, please call Linda Nietes at 310-514-9139 or send email to: linda@philippineexpressionsbookshop.com

First Books for Filipino Children, a literacy project of Linda Nietes and Robert J. Little gives free books to the poor children of the Province of Antique, Philippines. As the name suggests, these books are literally the first and probably the last books that these children will be able to own in their lifetime unless the economic conditions of their parents improve. So, your support of these three weekend events will allow them to continue their literacy project.

Talk and Audio-Visual Show on Philippine Ancestral Gold

This is the last literary event for 2013 of our Bookshop. Co-sponsored by the Silver Lake Library, it is part of our continuing outreach program to make the Filipino presence in the community more visible, as well as to share with mainstream America the rich cultural background of Filipinos. If you will be unable to attend, we accept orders for autographed copies of this collector’s book. Call 310-514-9139 or email us : linda@philippineexpressionsbookshop.com

Event is free and open to the public. Seats are limited.
Street parking is available. RSVP by phone or email or reply to EVENTS in facebook.

Those who want to donate to Typhoon Yolanda Relief may bring canned goods which we will donate to the Historic Filipino Rotary Club who will ship them to the Philippines.

Philippine Ancestral Gold
Edited by Florina H. Capistrano-Baker
Essays by Florina H. Capistrano-Baker, John Guy and John Miksic

Publisher: Ayala Foundation and National University of Singapore Press (NUS). 2011. 300 pages.

ISBN 978-971-8551-72-1 HARDCOVER

ISBN 978-971-8551-74-5 SOFTCOVER

Winner of the 31st Philippine National Book Awards for Design

Philippine Ancestral Gold features more than 1,000 gold objects that were recovered in the Philippines from the 1960s to 1981 and now form part of the collection of the Ayala Museum in Manila. Many of these treasures were found in association with tenth-to-twelfth century Chinese export ceramics, and formal similarities with objects from other Southeast Asian cultures affirm regional affinities and inter-island trade networks that flourished in the region before there was regular contact with the Western world. Adornments of elite individuals and the deities they adorned include a spectacular array of golden sashes, necklaces, pectorals, diadems, earrings, finger rings, and arm and leg ornaments. Over 400 full-color photographs are included in the book which you will enjoy immensely.

“This important book provides a great deal of material that is almost unknown generally outside of the Philippines. Scholars working on many other topics will find it invaluable, especially those tracing the various maritime trade networks that operated throughout the greater Indian Ocean system.”

-Emma C. Bunker, Asian Art Department, Denver Art Museum.

“The authors are among the world’s most experienced specialists on this subject, and the line of vision from the Philippines and other parts of island Southeast Asia to the mainland is novel and most inspiring.”

-Andreas Reinecke, Commission for Archaeology of Non-European Cultures
of the German Archaeological Institute.

“All collections are valuable in different ways. The monetary worth of this one is incalculable. But its deeper value can be assayed only in consideration of its historical and academic significance and the self-knowledge and pride it gives to Filipinos.”

-Florina H. Capistrano-Baker

“…what distinguishes the Philippines goldworking tradition is that it displays a level sophistication only matched by the kingdoms of Java.”

-John Guy

“The Ayala Museum’s Gold Collection is perhaps the country’s greatest tangible cultural asset and can stand comparison with any other assemblage of gold artifacts in the world.”

-John Miksic

Also, visit the Ayala Museum website: www.ayalamuseum.org

About the Author

Florina H. Capistrano-Baker received her Ph.D., M.Phil. and M.A.degrees in Art History from the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University in New York City. She was a researcher at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1987-1994, director of the Ayala Museum (Philippines) from 2000-2006 and currently consulting curator at Ayala Foundation. She has taught at Northwestern University, University of Illinois at Chicago, Bard Graduate Center and Skidmore College. She is the author of Art of Island Southeast Asia: The Fred and Rita Richman Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1994), Multiple Originals, Original Multiples: 19th-century Images of Philippine Costumes (2004), and Embroidered Multiples: 18th-19th Century Philippine Costumes from the National Museum of Ethnology, Leiden, The Netherlands(2007). Her latest book Philippine Ancestral Gold (2011) documents an important corpus of archaeological gold ornaments that give evidence of early maritime trade between the Philippines, China and Southeast Asia before Spanish and American colonization in the 19th century. Dr. Capistrano-Baker is the recipient of fellowships from Columbia University, American Association of University Women, Asian Cultural Council, Ford Foundation, Japan Foundation, Locsin Foundation and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.She is currently a Getty Research Institute Scholar here in Los Angeles.

Celebrate Small Business Saturday with us during this event. Small Business Saturday is a day to celebrate and support small businesses and all that they do for their communities. Support your community bookshop who has blazed the special trail in marketing Philippine books in the US and who has served the Fil Am community for the last 29 years! During this event, we will display a small selection of titles that you might want to pick up as gifts for Christmas. Come to the lecture, enjoy the audiovisuals, network, see old friends, and at the same time, do your Christmas shopping. If you have a special title in mind, do let us know – call (310) 514-9139 and will bring it to the event for your pick up. Maraming salamat po!