The Kadayawan Festival is an annual festival in the city of Davao in the Philippines. Its name derives from the friendly greeting "Madayaw", from the Dabawenyo word "dayaw", meaning good, valuable, superior or beautiful. The festival is a celebration of life, a thanksgiving for the gifts of nature, the wealth of culture, the bounties of harvest and serenity of living.
Today, Kadayawan has transformed into a festival of festivals, with a number of spin-off festivals in the region.
Once every year, when the harvests are in and the smell of fresh cut grass and a thousand waling-waling blooms fill the night with their heady, sweet smell, the streets of Davao are transformed into wildly pulsating rivers of color by endless rows of parades and flower-decked floats. Like a torrent of rainbows winding wildly around the usually drab black asphalt of this southernmost of Philippine cities, Davao comes alive in an explosion of music, dancing and feasting!
