The Ubaya of Besao

The Ubaya of Besao

There is a place in the Cordillera highlands where the air carries the scent of pine resin and morning mist clings to the terraced slopes like a mother holding her child close before letting go for the day. That place is Besao, a municipality tucked into the ridges of Mountain Province, Philippines; a town that does not merely remember its roots but dances upon them, eats from them, laughs beside them, and then, once a year, rests in them with a gratitude so deep it becomes a festival.

That festival is called the Ubaya.

Say the word slowly. Oo-bah-yah. Let it settle. In the Kankanaey tongue, the language of the i-Besao, "ubaya" carries a meaning akin to the Hebrew Sabbath; a sacred pause, a ceasing of labor, a holy permission to breathe. More specifically, ubaya means rest from a day's work in the fields, as traditionally practiced by the farmers of Besao. It is not laziness. It is not indifference. It is the ancient understanding that the land gives, the body tires, and the soul needs silence to be filled again.

This meaning is not incidental to the festival. It is the festival.

The i-Besao are farmers at their core; men and women who know the weight of a bolo in one hand and the softness of a rice seedling in the other, who can read the sky for rain the way a scholar reads a page, who have planted and harvested on terraced mountainsides that were sculpted by their ancestors long before the Spanish set foot on Philippine shores. The Ubaya is a cultural celebration observed by every i-Besao community to commemorate a transition in their agricultural calendar; after the planting season, the community rests and celebrates to mark the end of their farm work, and it ushers in the start of another major community activity such as house repair or construction. Likewise, after harvest time, the community again celebrates the Ubaya to express their thanks for their blessings. 

To give rest a name and a festival; that is the genius of Besao.

Before it wore its current name, the town's founding anniversary celebration existed in simpler forms, tied to the fiesta of its patron saint. It was Mayor Johnson Bantog II who breathed new cultural life into the occasion; formalizing the indigenous concept of Ubaya into a full-blown municipal festival that wed the founding anniversary to the ancestral rhythm of the land. Under his administration, the Ubaya Festival was institutionalized and year after year it grew; from a modest local gathering into a multi-day celebration that now draws visitors, dignitaries, and diaspora Besaoans from across the country and from abroad.

The municipality of Besao celebrated its 121st founding anniversary and 14th Ubaya Festival on February 27 to March 2, 2025, with the theme "SUMYA: Bridging Heritage and Innovation. Count backwards and you will find that the first Ubaya Festival in its formal, municipally recognized form was held in 2012; a young festival by national standards, yes, but one rooted in a tradition far older than any government resolution could contain.

The celebration happens every year around the first days of March, anchored to the town's founding anniversary on March 1. It is a date that carries two weights at once; the civic pride of a town that has stood for more than a century, and the older, quieter pride of a people who rested in their fields before there were any municipalities to found.

When Ubaya week arrives, the air in Besao shifts. There is a particular energy that rolls through the fourteen barangays like the fog that spills over the mountain ridges each morning; thick, electric, impossible to ignore. Roads that are normally quiet with the sound of roosters and the distant rhythm of bolos become alive with the footfall of returning sons and daughters. Buses arrive from Baguio City, from Manila, from wherever the working world has carried the i-Besao. They come back for this. They come back to rest together, in the way their grandparents rested; with food, with laughter, with stories told under the open Cordillera sky.

The local government sets the stage with the full ceremony of a civic opening; a parade winds through the town center, barangay delegations marching with the kind of proud, straight-backed dignity that highland peoples carry naturally, their woven textiles catching the thin mountain sunlight in flashes of crimson, black, and earth-brown. Officials take their places on the stage; the municipal mayor, the vice mayor, the councilors, and the invited guests, who have included congressmen, provincial directors, and even mayors from sister cities bearing their own community's warmth.

One of the most beloved features of the festival is the tepeng; a community feast that no amount of hotel dining can replicate or replace. The program is followed by a community lunch known as "tepeng," held at the Tinagapan ground with tents set up for each zone. Imagine it; long tables draped with banana leaves rather than linen, the smoke of communal cooking drifting across the grounds, the smell of boiled root crops and mountain rice mingling with the sweetness of highland vegetables and savory meat. Every family brings something. Every stomach goes home full. There is no guest list at a tepeng; only neighbors and neighbors of neighbors, strangers who become familiar in the time it takes to share a meal.

The agro-industrial trade fair runs alongside the festivities, displaying the honest abundance of Besao's soil. Among the local products for sale at the trade fair are coffee, muscovado sugar, cacao, and fresh vegetables, each item a testament to the farmer whose hands brought it from seedling to stall. You can taste Besao at this fair; bitter, rich coffee grown at elevation; dark muscovado with its molasses warmth; vegetables and meat that carry the crispness of cool mountain nights in every bite.

Then there are the games; and here, Ubaya becomes something wonderfully irreverent about rest, because the i-Besao rest with extraordinary enthusiasm. Among the indigenous games lined up for festivities include ak-akad, tug-of-war, sulti, sanggol, innawwitan, and depap di otik, while ball games include baseball, softball, basketball, and volleyball. Ak-akad, innawwitan, sanggol; these are not just athletic contests. They are living vocabulary, games that carry the names of movements, tools, and moments from highland life, passed from grandfather to grandchild like oral literature made physical. Watch an innawwitan match and you are watching memory in motion.

The celebration also features music and dance festivals, combative sports, street dancing, and community lambak. The street dancing alone is worth making the winding mountain drive up to Besao; groups of performers in full indigenous regalia, their bodies weaving and stamping patterns that tell stories without words, their voices lifting in the cadences of Kankanaey song. The covered gymnasium fills with noise; the sharp tap of basketball on pavement, the roar of the crowd when a local player scores, the kind of communal joy that cities with all their entertainment somehow cannot manufacture.

The Ubaya Festival also serves as a sacred time for farmers to reflect and rest after the busy planting season, and this spiritual dimension is never far from the surface. Mayor Bryne Bacwaden has reminded his constituents to take time during the festival to remember their ancestors, whose contributions have shaped the unique culture and traditions of the community, urging the people of Besao to honor their roots and continue fostering the rich cultural legacy that defines their identity. "Siya nan gapu ay wada di Ubaya festival," the mayor has said in Kankanaey, meaning, this is the reason the Ubaya festival exists; it is the opportunity to teach the young so they will not forget the good culture of the people.

And so, at its heart, Ubaya is not merely a parade or a trade fair or a softball tournament, though it is joyfully all of those things. It is a town pausing to look at itself in the mirror of its own traditions and saying, we are still here, we are still this, we are still rooted. The world rushes forward with its technologies and its timelines, and Besao says, yes, and also; first, rest. First, gather. First, give thanks for the planting.

Besao's founding anniversary and Ubaya Festival are observed alongside a theme in the native dialect that reads; "Nan naiposgan ay kaugaliyan di i-Besao, tawid ya gameng ay aawiten olay intoy omayen," which translates to "Besao Culture: our birthright and guide wherever we reside."

Wherever we reside. Those three words carry every Besaoan who has ever had to leave the mountain, every farmer's child who ended up in a city office or an overseas post, every highland heart beating inside a lowland life. Ubaya calls them back. And for a few days every March, when the pine trees stand tall over the terraced fields and the mountain air is sharp with the promise of another season, they come; to rest, to feast, to play, to remember, and to be, together, i-Besao.

If you have never been, plan the drive when the festival arrives. It is worth every curve in the road.

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