“Let the Story Go Round and Round”: Poetic Devices and Orality in Sugidanon Epics of Panay Island, Philippines

Cover Image, The Journal of Asian Studies, Volume 84, Number 2, May 2025.

In an article in The Journal of Asian Studies, David Gowey asserts that features of oral performance such as the Panay Bukidnon chanted epics situate the epics alongside other regional poetry forms in Island Southeast Asia. The following is the article’s abstract:

This article argues that, as Panay Bukidnon chanted epics called sugidanon are increasingly transformed from oral into written texts and from community to public performances, scholarly attention paid to markers of oral performance should similarly increase. These markers include variation between performances and performers, semantic parallelism and other forms of repetition, and audience participation. This article proposes a nonhierarchical typology for sugidanon performance contexts to better understand how Panay Bukidnon chanting practices have changed over time from the sixteenth century to the present. An in-depth analysis of semantic parallelisms examines a standard repertoire of poetic speech that appears across all recorded sugidanon epics; the author proposes that these features of semiextemporaneous performance situate the epics alongside other regional poetry forms in Island Southeast Asia.