At Harana Night at a downtown Toronto restaurant, second-generation Filipinos are taking inspiration from love songs to learn an ancient way of script writing in the Philippines
Participants at a recent sold-out event at Makilala restaurant on Church Street learn the strokes on how to write in Baybayin, an ancient form of Filipino script that was employed before the country was colonized by Spain in the 1600s. While the language is no longer used, there is a growing popularity to learn it, especially as part of exploring Philippine culture.
“I didn’t grow up in the Philippines so for me, any way I could learn Tagalog, anything Philippines-related, I wanna get into it,” Chrisia Rayos tells OMNI News. Rayos, who was born in Dubai and grew up in Canada, says she and her husband are making the most of every opportunity to learn more about Filipino culture.
“I just like learning more about my wife’s culture,” added Dennis Ngo.
Kat Daaca has been holding Baybayin workshops for two years in different cities across North America. She says choosing the love song theme was timely as she observed many yearning to connect, not only with other people, but also with themselves.
“I also think we’ve come to this time where it’s not cool to be yearning, or we’re all being nonchalant, and I think we’re taking that back,” she explains. “It’s so like a Filipino to be yearning and to sing love songs and the Harana Night theme is really a reclamation of our collective yearning.”
“I think Baybayin is such a wonderful tool for us to access other parts of self identity and reclamation of culture.”
Daaca adds the event’s goal is participation rather than perfection.
“There tends to be a lot of shame and guilt around not knowing our culture, not knowing the language, and the writing system is a part of that. And so for me, I want to be the living example that you are Filipino enough to participate. I’m someone who’s not fluent in Tagalog, and yet I’m here at the front of the classroom teaching Baybayin.”
Participants say they hope to see more events like these in the city so they can pass it forward to the next generation.
“For me, it’s the more I know about it, the more our kids are going to know about it,” said Ngo. “I want to make sure that our kids don’t forget where their roots are and they appreciate their mothers side of the family as well.”
