“Makan:” Diversifying Ethnolinguistic Heritage Through the Art of Bamboo Weaving
Rowena S. Cabrillos and Edbert Jay M. Cabrillos
Abstract
Bamboo is a plant of many uses. It is used for furniture, handicraft, housing, fishing, and in pulp and paper industries. As they say, man can find a use for bamboos from birth to death (Faylon, 2009). The art of bamboo artistry is widely prevalent in the Philippines particularly in areas where there are plenty of bamboos. One of the oldest and most common uses of bamboo is weaving. “Makan” or “Amakan” is an ethno product made from weaved bamboo. It is a “kiniray-a” term which refers to bamboo mats used in drying palay grains to be fully processed as rice to be cooked and served in everyone’s table It is a product made by artistic and indigenous manugrara or weavers of Barangay Carawisan I. Makan weaving involves manipulating bamboo into traditional knits and woven patterns to produce useful decorative products for practical use or just for aesthetic purposes. This bamboo mat has unique and intricate pattern called binalantak. Each mat piece is unique and that no two mats are the same. Just like people, they are individually unique.
Keywords: Bamboo making, Makan, the Philippines, Barangay, linguistic anthropology, ethnolinguistics