- published: 31 Aug 2012
- views: 1726
Baro't saya is the unofficial national dress of the Philippines and is worn by women. The name is a contraction of the Tagalog words baro at saya, meaning "dress (blouse) and skirt".
This indigenous mode of dressing of the natives of the Philippines was influenced during the Spanish Colonization of the archipelago. In early pre-history, the half-naked style consisting of only the saya (long wrap-around) or tapis (knee-length wrap-around) covering the lower half of the body with bare upper torso, was gradually covered with a collarless blouse called a "baro", which is the Philippine cognate of the Malay "baju". Early Pre-colonial clothing of groups such as the Tagalog and Visayans included both the baro and saya made from silk in matching colors. This style was exclusively worn by the women of upper-caste families, while those in lower-castes wore baro made from pounded white bark fiber. The closest living clothes in the Philippines that still resemble the early baro't saya include the clothing of the Tumandok people of Panay; who are the only Visayan group to have not been hispanized, the clothing of the various Moro groups, and those of the Lumad tribes in interior Mindanao.
Poison oak, some boyhood bravery
When a telephone was a tin can on a string
And I fell asleep with you still talking to me
You said you weren't afraid to die
In polaroids you were dressed in women's clothes
Were you made ashamed, why'd you lock them in a drawer?
Well, I don't think I ever loved you more
Than when you turned away
When you slammed the door
When you stole a car
Drove toward Mexico
And you wrote bad checks
Just to fill your arm
I was young enough
I still believed in war
Well let the poets cry themselves to sleep
And all their tearful words will turn back into steam
But me, I'm a single cell
On a serpent's tongue
There's a muddy field
Where a garden was
And I'm glad you got away
But Im still stuck out here
My clothes are soaking wet
From your brother's tears
And I never thought this life was possible
You're the yellow bird that I've been waiting for
The end of paralysis
I was a statuette
Now I'm drunk as hell
On a piano bench
And when I press the keys
It all gets reversed
The sound of loneliness