In Baguio, village ordinance regulates use of ‘gong’
BAGUIO CITY—The summer capital’s largest barangay has imposed new rules that would require an indigenous Filipino elder’s approval before the sound of “gangsa” (hand-held gong) rings out through neighborhoods in the village.
An ordinance passed late last year by the barangay council of Irisan prescribes the appropriate occasions when gongs and other indigenous musical instruments may be played in order to honor, protect and preserve indigenous culture there.
As mandated by the Local Government Code, Irisan Barangay Ordinance No. 8-2025 was transmitted to the Baguio City Council in January for its review. But during Monday’s session, the council discovered that it has already lapsed into law.
Councilor Maximo Edwin Jr., an Ibaloy and the indigenous people’s mandatory representative (IPMR) to the city council, said the Irisan ordinance had secured the approval of the barangay’s multiethnic communities through a general assembly.
But councilors, like lawyer Betty Lourdes Tabanda, said the restrictions might violate civil rights.
“Please tell the barangay council that it may be an infringement on the owners of these gongs especially in private gatherings,” she said.
Councilor Leandro Yangot pointed out that traditions practiced by Baguio residents who come from other parts of the Cordillera may not jibe with the practices of Baguio Ibaloys, the dominant indigenous community in the city.
Irisan is home to 36,562 residents, according to the 2020 census, and its name is derived from the Ibaloy “ishisan,” or the bowl used to crush chili (or “sili”).
Vice Mayor Faustino Olowan noted that the barangay has a mixed profile of Ilocano, Kankana-ey, Kalanguya and Ibaloy residents.
Yangot said: “The new regulation needs a second review [by Irisan residents] because they are in effect controlling the use of these cultural instruments.”
Gongs and other indigenous musical instruments have been classified as important heritage artifacts in Baguio City’s Cultural Mapping Project, which has researched and documented the history and still thriving traditions of the city’s original settlers.
Many Ibaloy families used to raise cattle in the plateau where the American colonial government built Baguio in the early 1900s. The original Ibaloy families were eventually displaced from their ancestral lands.
Traditional practices
But the Native Title Doctrine, which was issued by the United States Supreme Court in 1909, recognizes the right of Ibaloy clan leader and chieftain Mateo Cariño over his ancestral lands on what is now Camp John Hay in Baguio, making the city pivotal to the legal and constitutional protections granted to all indigenous peoples in the country.
In its declaration of policy, the Irisan ordinance says the barangay government will regulate the use of indigenous instruments “to maintain respect for traditional practices [and] ensure their proper care, storage and maintenance.”
“Indigenous musical instruments shall only be used for cultural celebrations and festivals, rituals, peace pacts, weddings, [as well as] educational and cultural demonstrations [of these instruments that are] approved by the indigenous council of elders.”
It requires visitors and people who are not indigenous peoples to first secure the elders’ approval before they can handle these instruments.
The ordinance says the Irisan village government, in collaboration with its indigenous peoples mandatory representative, is tasked to organize training for its youth regarding the proper handling of indigenous instruments.
Ibaloys are sensitive about how these instruments are played, said Rosella Bahni-Camte, a teacher and one of the city’s Ibaloy volunteer researchers in the cultural mapping program.
“Ibaloys play their gongs during the ‘tayaw’ (celebratory dance) as part of a ritual for the purpose of inviting the ancestors and spirits of dead relatives to partake of the meat of animals offered for these spirits,” she told the Inquirer.
