Kanto Vol 1, 2018 | Page 71

Hello! Please introduce yourself. I’m Kristian Kabuay, an artist and educator of prePhilippine scripts. of the economic conditions. I and others are proof that there is economic benefit to cultural practices. How did you get started with Baybayin? What was your biggest challenge when you were only beginning to write with it? I first saw it on one of the Katipunan flags. I thought the “Ka” was a capital “I” representing “Independence” but when I found out it was our own writing system, I was hooked. The biggest challenge was writing the strokes since it’s quite different from the Roman alphabet. Can anybody learn Baybayin? If one were to suddenly take up Baybayin, what's the most important thing that they should remember? And how can one start? Yes they can. The most important thing is to learn the Kudlit (vowel marks), Virama (vowel cancels), and writing as pronounced. They can start by checking out my website baybayin.com and in the future baybayinschool.com. In your many platforms, you've touched on common misconceptions people have about Baybayin. (It is a writing system - not a language, and that Alibata is a misnomer.) What other misapprehensions are there that the community could benefit to correct? Not specifically to writing systems, but [others tend to think] cultural and artistic practice is impractical. When people say impractical, they really mean that it won’t make any money and one cannot live off it. Most of these thoughts come from the Philippines because Do you envision a time when Baybayin would be widely used? How far or close are we from that reality? And what can the average Filipino do to help us get closer to that? Maybe...We’re still far from it because of the social, cultural, and economic conditions. The best thing the average Filipino can do is to be economically stable. Sure, you can do something cultural and economic in parallel but in the Philippine context, economic independence is the main factor. Once they have that, they can have the privilege to explore the culture more. Kristian Kabuay is a San Francisco- based Filipino artist who has made it his mission to revive and promulgate the nearly extinct prePhilippine script Baybayin via a contemporary interpretation in art and mixed-media. 69