IBALONG Z: When an Old Bikol Epic Finds a New Generation

With IBALONG Z, Bikol theatre has welcomed something increasingly important to the region: a new musical willing to look backward without being trapped by the past.

Written by seasoned Bikol playwright Jobert Grey Landeza, with music by Naga City singer-songwriter and music producer Karl Ramirez, and directed by veteran theatre-maker Sari Saysay, IBALONG Z: A New Bicol Musical takes one of the region’s oldest narratives and asks a very contemporary question:

What happens to a story when the generation expected to remember it begins to forget?

And perhaps more importantly: how do we make them care again?

Before IBALONG Z, There Was Ibalong

Ibalong is often introduced simply as a Bikol epic. But reading the surviving narrative reminds us that Ibalong is larger than a single hero, a single city, or even a single landscape.

It is a civilization imagined through rivers, mountains, volcanoes, forests, settlements, disasters, peoples and journeys across Bikol.

This is also where my own curiosity begins.

Legazpi has long carried Ibalong prominently through the Ibalong Festival, and rightly so: the text itself evokes places associated with Albay, including Masaraga and the mountains of Lignon.

But read further, and the geography expands.

The surviving text also invokes landscapes and communities connected to what is now Camarines Sur: the old Asog, the ancient Isarog, Ponong, and Panicuason. There are passages referring to the tribes or communities of Panicuason and Asog.

So perhaps Ibalong is most powerful when we resist treating it as something that belongs exclusively to one place.

It belongs to a wider Bikol imagination.

It is the story of our rivers. Our mountains. Our volcanoes. Our disasters. Our transformations.

And its transmission matters just as much as its geography.

Ibalong is told through a Kadunong, a keeper of knowledge and memory. That idea becomes the beating heart of IBALONG Z.

When the Old Generation Meets the New

IBALONG Z does not simply stage the epic.

It stages the problem of remembering it.

In an age when almost every piece of information is technically available somewhere online, knowledge has paradoxically become easier to lose. Younger generations are surrounded by an endless stream of content, trends, videos, memes, notifications and disposable information.

The stories that formed our communities can easily become buried underneath all that noise.

That is where IBALONG Z finds its contemporary voice.

At the center of the musical is Rodel, an aspiring musician whose grandfather—an elder Kadunong—passes on to him the responsibility of becoming a keeper of stories.

Except Rodel is hardly the obvious heir to such a responsibility.

His journey takes him toward Libon, beginning an adventure that is comedic, energetic and, beneath all the spectacle, deeply concerned with memory.

Along the way, he encounters Iling, Hilang, Laryong, Dinahong, Kimantong, Sural, and Hablom from Isla Memorya—figures fighting, in one way or another, against the possibility of being forgotten.

They need Rodel.

But they do not entirely trust him.

His commitment to becoming a Kadunong is questioned because, at first, he appears more interested in the reward waiting at the end of the journey than in the responsibility he is being asked to inherit.

And that tension gives the musical its contemporary pulse.

Because perhaps Rodel's problem is also ours.

Do we remember because something benefits us—or because remembering itself is a responsibility?

A World That Refuses to Sit Still

From there, IBALONG Z opens its world.

We encounter Oryol. We enter the Isla nin Gagamban. Creatures and figures from the Bikol imagination emerge—Sarimao, Tandayag, Buaya, Yasaw, Angongolod, Tibolon, Onglo and Patyanak—alongside the legendary heroes Baltog, Handyong and Bantong.

Yet what impressed me was that the production did not treat these figures as museum pieces.

The musical moves.

It jokes. It sings. It plays. It surprises. It allows the audience to participate.

There is very little opportunity for the energy to collapse because the storytelling keeps changing its language. One moment feels like folklore. Another feels like comedy. Then adventure. Then concert. Then ritual. Then contemporary musical theatre.

The production understands something essential about introducing an epic to a younger audience:

You cannot demand that they care simply because the material is historically important. You have to make them want to listen.

IBALONG Z does exactly that.

It does not dilute the material to make it accessible.

It gives the material a new theatrical vocabulary.

Behind the Retelling

During a post-show conversation I had with playwright and dramaturg Jobert Grey Landeza, he emphasized something important:

Ibalong is a Bikol epic, and it should not remain confined to one city. It is a story that deserves to be told across the region.

That respect for the source is evident in the writing. Albay literary figure Abdon Balde Jr. also praised how closely IBALONG Z remained connected to the surviving 60 stanzas transcribed by Melendreras. But what makes the musical work is that it does not feel trapped by the old text. It retells the story in a language that today's audience can understand and enjoy.

Under Sari Saysay's direction, the production is energetic, physical, funny, and constantly alive. I remember writing in my notes, “Comparable to the production quality of Metro Manila shows.” The discipline of the ensemble, movement, and theatrical storytelling were immediately noticeable, and Direk Sari later shared that the artists had undergone workshops with Tanghalang Pilipino.

But what awed me most was the audience.

The younger generation—especially the students—was responding.

They laughed, participated, reacted to the characters and followed the story.

An epic that could easily feel distant or academic suddenly felt immediate and entertaining to them.

And much of that comes from Karl Ramirez's music. The score moves through pop, rap, hip-hop and contemporary musical theatre while still carrying a distinctly Bikol character. More importantly, the music stays with you. The melodies and musical themes are memorable enough that you can leave the theatre still hearing them in your head.

That is where IBALONG Z succeeds most for me: the story can be remembered because the experience itself is memorable.

It does not simply ask younger audiences to learn about Ibalong.

It makes them respond to it, enjoy it, and hopefully want to remember it.

What It Took to Make IBALONG Z Possible

There is another story behind IBALONG Z that deserves attention.

The project was led by the City Government of Legazpi, with Tanghalang Pilipino tapped as a partner and the production performed by artists from Sining Banwa, in connection with the Ibalong Festival.

For me, that partnership may ultimately prove as important as the production itself.

Across six performances over three days, we saw something regional theatre practitioners have always known but are too often asked to prove: There is an audience for theatre here.

• People will come.
• Young people will watch.
• Families will watch.
• Communities will respond.
• But theatre must first be accessible to them.

Accessibility does not mean sacrificing quality. It means creating the conditions that allow people to encounter theatre in the first place—through government support, institutional partnerships, schools, cultural organizations, sponsors, artists and communities willing to work together.

When those pieces align, theatre stops becoming an occasional luxury available only to those who can travel to Manila.

It becomes part of civic and cultural life.

And that is the larger milestone represented by IBALONG Z.

The Story Is Bigger Than the Stage

At DALAN, we have always believed that ang teatro ay isang komunidad.

Theatre happens when artists, audiences, institutions, schools, sponsors, cultural workers, communities and public leaders decide that a story is worth telling—and that people deserve the chance to experience it.

IBALONG Z is a testament to what becomes possible when those forces come together.

Because preserving a story does not mean locking it inside an archive. Sometimes it means allowing a grandfather to pass it on to his grandchild. Sometimes it means turning an epic into rap, comedy, movement and song. Sometimes it means letting Baltog, Handyong, Bantong and Oryol meet a generation that speaks an entirely different cultural language.

And this is where I make my own call—not only to the creators of IBALONG Z, but to our cultural institutions, schools, partners and especially our LGUs across Bikol:

Bring this story to more audiences. Bring it across the region. Bring it to Camarines Sur.

To the LGUs and communities of CamSur, this is your story too. The landscapes, places, peoples and memories found in Ibalong are not confined to one city or province. They are part of a larger Bikol story.

Ibalong is ours, as Bicolanos.

So let us continue to retell it, stage it, sing it and pass it on.

Because sometimes the best way to keep an old story alive is not simply to tell people, “Remember this.”

It is to create something powerful enough that they will want to remember.

That, ultimately, may be the greatest accomplishment of IBALONG Z.

It does not merely retell Ibalong.

It passes it on, and now, we hope we bring it home to the rest of Bikol.