DAVAO CITY—Maguindanao is reviving a fading industry on weaving ethnic Maguindanao cloths and tapestries to ignite interest as it enters its second year this February, and organizers expect 10 percent more visitors over those who visited last year.
Ayesha Dilangalen, Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) tourism secretary, said the regional government has already sent out a directive to the 36 municipal governments to form or activate their respective women’s groups to revive the weaving of cloth from local materials to be used in making traditional dresses.
She said the directive also encouraged “all the first ladies, the wife of the mayors” to head the organizations.
The move to organize the women came in the wake of the shifting of the festival, from Sinagayan, centering on the war dances of olden times, to the Inaul, literally meaning “woven,” to cast the spotlight now on the weaving industry.
The festival would also hope to renew interest and appreciation of the traditional dresses that Dilangalen said has been lost among the youth “who prefer the ready-to-wear clothes in the shopping malls, department stores and the ukay-ukay or rummage stalls.”
“Although currently, there has been some amount of curiosity among the youth in the use of the traditional dresses. Now, you would observe some of them wearing them again on certain occasions, or at least, they use the cloth as an accent to their daily wear,” she said.
The festival also hopes to attract both Filipino and foreign visitors to try the costumes and buy them, “and eventually help the women earn money, and make weaving their livelihood.”
There are currently 15 women organizations, but the ARMM would like to have one for each of the towns. The ARMM has already distributed 10 weaving machines and 70 looming machines, said Mondana Monina Macarongon, chief of Maguindanao’s human resource department.
The Inaul Festival would be held on the second week of February, replacing the Sinagayan Festival, which was first organized in 2011. The lakeside town of Buluan is the venue.
On the first year of the Inaul Festival, 10,000 visitors came and spent P20 million, including about P1 million on the inaul cloth.
Dilangalen said she hoped the national attention given to the “inaul” cloth during the Mindanao Tapestry Show in Davao City would attract more interest. The show had the 2017 Miss Universe pageant candidates wearing the inaul cloth in various designs.
A Maguindanao tourism information said inaul weaving “has more than 20 designs, with the royal heirloom piece being the rarest, since it is no longer being produced.”
“Other ways of inaul weaving include the umpak, binaludto, panigabi or taro and binaluda, also called ikat by the T’boli and the tribes of Cordillera,” it added.
It said there are three types of threads used in weaving the inaul: The cottony tanor, the silky rayon and the shiny katiyado.
“Rayon and ‘tanor’ can be combined to form a malong [a wrap-around cloth] called ‘mestiza,’” it said.