Nabas celebrates 7th Bariw Festival
BY BOY RYAN B. ZABAL

This coastal town of Nabas celebrates the 7th Bariw Festival on May 15 in honor of the patron saint of farmers, ‘San Isidro Labrador’.

Bariw festival, a thanksgiving for the bounties of harvests, is one of the unique and popular festivals in Aklan highlighted by street dancing competitions of tribus dressed in costumes made of bariw leaves.
To portray the uniqueness of the indigenous materials such as bariw, tribus from the barangays showcase the famous local product with equally lovely bariw-clad street dancers accompanied by bagtoe, drums and lyres.

Every second week of May, the Bariw festival comes alive to promote the tourism potentials of the town of Nabas. It also brought to life the creativeness of the rapidy growing Bariw Festival and the choreographic dancing and costume design of tribus.

Bariw (common name pandan) is a palm tree abundantly surrounded the coastal communities in western Aklan and parts of Antique and it is brown in color. Women in the barrios are mostly weavers who are adept in the cutting and drying of bariw leaves and turn them into handicrafts of mats, baskets and other items.
The grandeur of this festival is captured by Aklanforum - its color and pageantry in the street dancing of ten tribus from the different barangays and the religiosity in honor of patron saint San Isidro Labrador.

View Aklanforum photos on Nabasnons paying homage to the thriving industry of bariw as a means of livelihood for the locals in one of Aklan's 4th class municipalities at http://boyryan.multiply.com/photos/album/35/2010_Bariw_Festival_in_Nabas_Aklan