It was a birthday celebration like no other. Noted and award-winning folk artists from across the country, along with government dignitaries from the field of culture and the arts, gathered in Ilocos Norte to extend their best wishes to Magdalena Gamayo as she celebrated her 100th birthday.
Gamayo, a National Commission on Culture and the Arts (NCCA) Gawad Manlilikha ng Bayan (GAMABA) awardee, is a master weaver who has dedicated her life to making inabel textiles and keeping the craft alive.
According to the NCCA, it is uncommon for a GAMABA awardee to reach such a milestone. One of the criteria for the award is a dedication to one’s craft for at least 50 years, making most of the Manlilikha ng Bayan (MB) already advanced in age. Although the NCCA celebrates all the birthdays of its GAMABA recipients, Magdalena’s celebration was grander, as it is rare for an awardee to reach a centenarian age and still have the strength to attend the event and receive a commemorative stamp.
The day after her grand centennial celebration, Nana Daleng, as she is fondly called, returned to her daily routine. She was weaving until breakfast, took a bath, slept until 10 in the morning, and then returned to weaving until lunchtime. These days, the steady stream of visitors, well-wishers, and relatives, along with the demands of teaching student weavers from as far as Manila, occupies most of her time, keeping her away from her loom.
One of her success stories is Nanay Pilar, her sister-in-law, who received an accolade from the Provincial Government of La Union in the early 2000s. Nanay Pilar is from a non-weaving town in Nueva Ecija. According to her, she began learning loom weaving from Nana Daleng in 1968, when she married the younger brother of folk artist. Now, Nanay Pilar is one of the teachers in the loom weaving room of Nana Daleng, sharing the knowledge she learned from the master weaver.
Dr. Norma Respicio, a respected academician from the University of the Philippines Diliman, joined the NCCA to document indigenous folk art practices for posterity. Along the way, she and her team discovered folk art practitioners who eventually became recipients of the prestigious GAMABA award. One of them is Nana Daleng, the weaver she often saw in the pre-dawn and late afternoon light in her loom weaving in the ’80s.
Nana Daleng was in contention for the award in the late 2010s alongside another weaver from Paoay. When the search committee came to validate the nominees in Ilocos Norte, unfortunately, the weaver from Paoay had given up weaving and instead went into a sari-sari store business, according to Respicio. At that time, Nana Daleng nearly quit weaving as well because the thread trader she used to buy from in Sarrat had migrated to Hawaii. All the commercial threads imported at that time were inferior and broke easily while being woven into fabric. This required extra work for the weaver to repair broken threads in the loom, delaying the work by a few minutes every hour of weaving.
The pmammadayao or accolades she received on her 100th birthday, along with the sheer number of greetings, presents, and guests that continue to visit her, gave her immense joy.
“I am happy that so many of you attended and for all the gifts I received—so many flowers, clothes, and even pieces of jewelry,” Nana Daleng said in Ilokano. “I did not expect this kind of birthday, and I did not expect to reach 100.”
“I am so glad because the name Gamayo and my life were once simple and unknown. But now, people know and even praise the family name of Gamayo,” she continued. “Some people who we haven’t met before are now approaching us and introducing themselves as our relatives. Some give gifts when they come to visit me… Some say they see pictures with the name Gamayo in some establishments and they feel proud.”