Wherever I am, the world comes after me.
It offers me its busyness. It does not believe that I do not want it.
Now I understand 
why the old poets of China went so far
and high 
into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.
"The Old Poets of China" by Mary Oliver

Professors Santamaria (L) and Cañete (R). 


 Two UP Artists and professors at the UP Asian Center have each published a chapter in The Folk Performing Arts in ASEAN, edited by Narupon Duangwises and Lowell D. Skar and published in 2016 by the Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre, Bangkok, Thailand. 

In his article, "Performing Faith, Celebrating Plenty, Conserving Tradition: the Case of the Carabao Festival of Pulilan, Bulacan, The Philippines,”  Professor Reuben Ramas Cañete “looks at the Pulilan Carabao Festival as a manifestation of folk performance in constructing and maintaining the identities of its participants as farmers and Catholic devotees; while simultaneously problematizing the representation of folk performance through the display and execution of performance and “staging” objects, as enunciated by practitioners and local cultural preservationists, all of which occurs under the glare of global tourism” (117).

The chapter aims to situate the carabao kneeling and knee-walking tradition within wider socio-religious, geographical and historical contexts.  “Dedicated to the Spanish saint San Isidro Labrador, the Carabao Festival is a harvest festival that focuses on the thanksgiving of farmers for a year’s agricultural produce. Paraded through the center of the town, the farmers and their carabaos celebrate the fertility of the land via various buntings and decor, and perform religious rituals through the rehearsed act of genuflecting in front of the church” (117). The ethnographic study conducted by Professor Canete traces this practice in “the Province of Bulacan, in the central portion of Luzon island” (118), which dates “as far back as the middle of the 19th century CE” (120).

While Dr. Santamaria’s “Reconfiguring Folk Performance for the Contemporary Stage: Sintang Dalisay and the Igal of the Sama-Bajau in Southern Philippines” “argues that reconfiguring and staging folk performance must contend with issues of cultural and political representation, not all of which can be resolved in a single production” (301). The chapter ends with the challenges pertaining to artistically representing communities. Drs. Santamaria and Abad write that “first, how does one face the challenge of Islamic fundamentalism that is intolerant of multiple views of Muslim culture?” (320). “A second challenge to intercultural theater comes from Orientalism, more specifically Orientalism by Orientals [...] In this homogenization, groups of people are lumped together in convenient categories and described in uniformity” (321). “A third challenge to reconfiguring folk performance is what may be called ethnographic conflation. The phenomenon can be defined as “a condition whereby a piece of fiction is confused as a piece of ethnography” (Santamaria, 2014)” (322). Last but not least “how do we handle the potential asymmetries of intercultural work? As creators based in the dominant center, how do we ensure that our partners from the marginalized field are given equal voice in the processes of creation?” (322). The article is co-authored with Dr. Ricardo Abad of the Ateneo de Manila University. 

The Folk Performing Arts in ASEAN is published by Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre.


The UP Asian Center offers M.A. programs in Asian Studies with four fields of specialization: Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and West Asia. The Center also has an M.A. program in Philippine Studies that allows students to major in Philippine society and culture, Philippine foreign relations, or Philippine development studies. The Center offers a Ph.D. program in Philippine Studies in conjunction with the College of Arts and Letters and the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy. Get an overview of these programs. The Asian Center also houses a peer-reviewed, open-access journal,Asian Studies: Journal of Critical Perspectives on Asia. It has published several books and monographs, and hosts or organizes various lectures and conferences.