by Bayan is the Tagalog name for a writing system that was shared across a lot of different ethnic groups and languages in the Philippines and pre-colonial Philippines it is a descendant of the same writing system that was used to write Sanskrit huh which is itself a descendant of The Phoenician alphabet so and like in a really distant way it's actually related to the English alphabet by thousands of years wow this is my friend Mark I discovered him on Instagram drawing an incredibly beautiful Philippine script known as as Babin as you're about to learn Babin is an ancient writing system widely used by ancestors of the Philippine Islands before they were colonized by the Spaniards even though babayan is no longer used as an official script there has been a Resurgence among present day Filipinos who appreciate not only its beauty but its connection to a past that has since been lost to us I reached out to Mark hoping he would educate me on the history of Bin in typical Filipino style he went above and beyond not only did he immerse me in riveting conversation about the importance of B in to our Philippine Heritage he also taught me how to write it and then fed me a delicious Filipino meal the reason why I'm here is because you do this incredible I want to call it an art form but it's not even an art I mean it is obviously but it's also it's writing it's communication it's language that was in a way lost can I say that yeah first I thank you for saying for hesitating to call an art form because I think it's really easy for people who learn and teach and like you know just like writing by buying to be considered artists because that the way they use it is via brushes and things like that but honestly you don't have to be one to to appreciate the beauty of being able to think of it as just like you know a writing system so let's go through it the Indian sphere influence yes was really pervasive right as you can imagine so it's you know it started in the Indians had continent but like you know Hinduism had spread out to you know the Philippines southeast Asia all of these places you know along with Buddhism and all of these things and so that was kind of like the kind of like Empire or like the set of Empires right that was the culture and you can still see it in the way that the Phil like Filipinos and the southern Philippines like their cultural dances are actually offshoots of like Hindu epic Tales after generations and evolution it became its own thing every language that used it had its own name for it but essentially it just kind of meant writing yeah I mean by by means to trace or Edge and so kind of like to trace along which actually in ilano is is very beautiful because by by means the the the sea so it's kind of like the edge of like where the water meets the the Earth and things like that so it's like very I know it's nice it's beautiful and that's why it looks like the way it does it actually now that I think about it it actually kind of does look like ocean waves a lot of people say that specific characters are derived from like very specific things so like the be looks like a pair of breaths people are like okay cuz it's like B you know like woman or like the LA character looks very phallic and as people people think it's because it's related to La you know a man they might be more Legend than kind of like fact but there's a lot of ways to interpret kind of just like the form of it it was at its Heyday in maybe like the mid 15 1600s when some Spanish people came over and they're like this is fine but we have something better it was used pretty pervasively and a lot of different reports on like what literacy was like back in the day but some people say it was really really high because of how easy it was to learn it stayed alive throughout the colonial period because there were monks and Friars who were really invested in kind of like you know propagating the faith and you know evangelizing and they actually created these prayer books called Drina Christiana which were like published in the 1500s yeah and like one side was in Latin and the other side was in by Bayan right oh my gosh amazing yeah and they did that in multiple languages so they did for the Chinese Filipinos who were in Thea they did that for theal for Theos things like and so number one that was like you know native not yet Filipinos but you know the the people who were who are there are ancestors that was their first touch with the Catholic faith which is now most of what being Filipino about sometimes and it was also kind of evidence that like by Bayan was really just used right and that's kind of like when it stopped right that's when it that's when it stopped being used and quickly replaced by the Latin alphabet but because it stopped so abruptly somebody who learns by buying today can actually go into one of those documents and read it without much problem and also that is wild right and it also kind of like points to um how steady the languages of our ethnic groups have been throughout the years throughout the centuries which is actually pretty cool it kind of died off I think it's safe to call it a dead a dead writing system but there are you know ethnic groups particularly in the Filipino Highlands places that it was kind of difficult for missionaries to go to that were able to preserve versions of their own kind of like writing system so not necessarily by bayin but you know their own tribes kind of like writing system and so there was always like this awareness that different writing systems existed especially in Malaysia you know Bali like Balan has its own writing system that's almost like their cousins right and Ka script and things like that which are like malayic scripts that are basically part of the same family as by Bay and so like there's always been this awareness that it existed all of this information Scholars have been able to kind of just like keep kind of like information about it alive at least to the extent where you know in the late 20th century when we were born sounds like it sounds like a historical period yeah which it kind of is which it is now when we were born you know like our generation especially because Filipino Americans and our quest to always find more things about us yeah you know found it or you know or have been able to kind of just like reconnect with that in ways that are just a little bit more than the handful of ways that it continues to exist in the Philippines which has obviously like embraced it again because of this like Renewed Energy so like for example people who graduate from the University of the Philippines they don't have a graduation gwn they actually have like a sash called the sabl and they have by Bayan they've always had by Bay it so like little ways that it exists right logos of like cultural institution has it some of our revolutionary Flags the designs incorporate by Bayan really so it's been you know it but um in terms of like the enthusiasm for making sure that like kids know about it or whatever you know small and so when I first started doing these festivals or whatever um like you know these street festivals these markets where I'm like a little Artisan in the corner mhm and I have these like you know Elder Filipinos walk by they're just like you know this is the first time I'm seen this in you know which is like a crazy thing yeah yeah how did you discover it the internet how does anybody discover anything these days I mean yeah but I mean the first time that you came across it were were you like searching about the Philippine culture and Heritage and history I feel like a lot of us who are kind of like born and raised in the states and used to look for kind of like you know things anything about the Philippines especially like in the 80s and 90s like you had like the one video cassette in the library yeah about like oh here's what like the natives of the Highlands look like and you know this type of stuff that yeah Filipinos do and like if it wasn't that then it's like stuff about us in World War II or like the US in World War II and so I was as a kid just like desperate for any kind of coverage of anything Filipino if it was like artistic right if it was you know martial arts you know you see all the the in the '90s was all about martial arts movies I'm just like is any of this Filipino like no there's a lot of Japanese there's a lot of Chinese and so like anything I can find online especially like in the early 2000s just kind of like perusing blogs and websites and then I came across you know a handful of people online who today are actually regarded as kind of like you know the kind of like the the people responsible for bringing it into this generation like these Elder Elder artists um I would even call them Elders CU like they're contemporaries I there are people kind of like our AG but like people who are kind of like quick to be like oh my God I would I I can kind of use the internet to tell people about by buying there are these websites where you can kind of like type in your name and then like it'll like translate transliterate it into Yeah by buying in like you know short articles short blog posts and as the years went by like people built on those and was able to refer to research by actual Scholars and things like that and so I was able to kind of like follow that thread and kind of like learn as much as I can honestly a lot of people of this generation who found out about it would probably have just started at the Wikipedia article about it honestly or you know one of those like minor smaller websites and then kind of like built up their own understanding about it yeah yeah and so that's how I did it too outside of like doing school workor and stuff kind of just like practice it's a relatively simple alphabet it's a very relatively simple writing system when you know it compare it to something like Chinese Filipino as a language is very phonetic and so honestly it was one of the easier kind of like systems to kind of adopt and I would just like write my notes in it sometimes like you know practice writing my name if I hadn't somebody else like I'm talking to and I had felt like doodling I just be writing their name or something that kind of progressed into just you know as a hobby experimenting with brushes and you know experimenting with like markers and going and learning you know Adobe illustrators so I can like do it digitally and things like that I kind of like developed this reputation in school in my Social Circles as the guy who knew how to do that cuz that's really nerdy and it actually kind of coincided with this Resurgence of people wanting to do tattoos and things like that and we discovering kind of our tattoo tradition and our indigenous aesthetic right visual aesthetic and so I started getting like requests from people in my Social Circles being like Hey how do you write this how do you write that right I just got a tattoo can you spell check it and sometimes it's even after the fact yeah oh no it's a reflection of like the reopt of what it is of of you know of of the writing system for our people and so kind of like it's a snapshot of like the way that we're trying to like reclaim it you know there's a little bit of stumbling there's a little bit of reinterpretation and I can't be I can't be mad at it but yeah so you know that kind of just translated into just being that guy who was just like can you write this out for me can you translate this this phrase and in the past couple of years it's been like it's gotten to the point where I wanted to be able to kind of establish myself not just like as this ad hoc person who does this but maybe even kind of like start a visual language of my own a lot of these Bayan writers by being you call them Artisans right they actually become artists by way of creating their own visual language what does that mean exactly adopting a style or you know creating your own sty it's a very kind of malleable system you know you can tell when it's by buying but I see an artist online who kind of like are inspired by Arabic script and they they create like an Arabic style font for byan and like they digitize it and stuff you have artists who are really inspired by the way Chinese looks and so you have like Chinese Style by buy right we have artists who are taking logos of like various brands in the world and then they're just kind of like replacing it with the by buayan equivalent and they're really just like and I think that's really cool I think that's art right that's art that's where the art then comes in right and that's where art comes in and so like these people aren't just writers they're artists and and and so making that transition has been kind of like the theme of what I've been doing and establishing kind of like this you can call it brand right establishing myself as as like a byby in uh like artist in in in the kind of like the web sphere or whatever yeah yeah I'm just putting myself out there like showing up to these like Filipino artist networking events and things like that around New York I know that I have my own style just like in my doodles and things like that and when I do these tattoo designs as favors so I'm like you know maybe I can start just kind of like creating Maps just like the way that cartographers create Maps like you know in the modern world and just like used by buan I had spent time over this past kind of like season developing prints based off of like maps of parts of the United states that are really concentrated with Filipinos so I have like an NYC map I have like a la map a Bay Area map with everything written in with everything written in by Bay yeah that is a great idea yeah I bet it looks beautiful I just finished like a Philippines map and like I've been kind of like asking people like what city should I do next people are like Seattle Texas Chicago like Alaska I think right like these B ones and obviously people are like oh can you do these with like actual Filipino cities I'm like yeah totally what a gift I I mean it's I see it as that I would just want to compare it to like my journey to ReDiscover our culture is getting my parents like Renewed Energy you know just like little things like that you know just being able to walk past and see something that you had only heard about you know as as Legend so to speak you know completely Legend because like they're just like I only realized like some people would say I I knew about it but I've never seen it with my own eye like what the wall is so easy to kind of like break down and I'm really excited about the fact that there are so many Artisans and artists who are just picking it up so easily and like propagating it on on Instagram and so yeah you know I used to be afraid of like oh my God if I put myself out there as an artist like am I going to like be up against like all these other by buyan artists because like you know it's such a niche thing and if you stop being that one person then like you're all fighting over I'm like no that's not the point of this right it's bigger than all of us it's bigger than us yeah yeah woman okay actually you know what I'm getting really hungry yeah let's see what let's see what the food is about [Music] [Applause] [Music]