Modernization and progress have placed folk tradition in the background. But the Ibanags, the native settlers of Cagayan, are moving to preserve a tradition that has involved countless Cagayano generations and save it from the influences of modernization.

The singing of the Salamon, touted to be the longest Christmas carol, has started in villages in Cagayan. And elders are acting fast to hand this venerable tradition to the young.

IBANAG villagers in Cagayan and northern Isabela have intensified the teaching of the singing of the Salamon to young Ibanags.

The singing of the Salamon has started in villages since two weeks ago and will be sung until Jan. 6, the feast of the Epiphany.

Bako Iding Taccaban, 86, widow of Ignacio Taccaban and a cantor (church choir member), has started teaching her children and grandchildren how to sing the 2,500-line Salamon, the Ibanag Christmas carol in rhymed quatrains for several reasons.

The lessons from the different episodes on the birth and life of Christ are very valuable to the youth and elders at this time when vices corrupt people, Taccaban said.

The traditional singing, according to elders, might be lost in the face of materialism and modern forms of entertainment.

Salamon writers and composers are getting fewer and even the cinco-cinco (a five-stringed instrument to accompany Salamon singers) is getting rarer that singers now use the conventional guitar.

Who started the writing and singing of the Salamon has been the subject of researchers. It falls under folksongs which generally have no specific authorship and its successful transmission depends primarily on the acceptance by a community whose members recognize the ideas and emotions expressed by a folksong as intimately their own.

Derived from the name Solomon, the wisest king in the Bible, Salamon is sung by family members and relatives every night before an altar with the accompaniment of a cinco-cinco until dawn.

Chocolate, native cakes and coffee are provided participants in the singing.

This year, after two supertyphoons destroyed at least 40 percent of crops in Cagayan Valley, including the deko or glutinous rice used for the native cakes, and with the shortage of sugar, singers keep themselves awake with coffee and biscuits.

Possibly because of the religiosity of the Ibanags, the episodes, proverbs, lessons and even riddles in the Salamon are all aimed at rearing the youth into becoming good citizens and inheritors of heaven.

Prof. Vidolina Cueto, in her thesis, ''An Analysis of Some Selected Ibanag Folksongs,'' recommended that the Salamon be used for educational instruction in music, physical education and social studies and as effective means of teaching Filipino values.

The late Msgr. Domingo Mallo, a researcher and expert on Ibanag culture, believed that the Salamon could have been inspired by the Bible.

''Worshipping beside the deities of nature, the spirits of their ancients, the Cagayanes were a religious people who received revelations from the spirit world through dreams and communicated with the great beyond through ministrations of female shamans,'' he wrote.

''With the aid of the kuribaw (bamboo mouth instrument similar to the Jewish harp), the tulali, kuritang and the cinco-cinco, the Ibanags made playful or sad music through which they passed to their children the beauty of the unoni (proverbs and songs) their loves which the tribe was supposed to keep sacred and inviolable.''

The Salamon's episode on the Holy Family's flight to Egypt alone contains lessons on values. Elders said the episode teaches lessons of familial love and values.

On passing a farmer sowing corn, Mary asked, ''What are you sowing, brother?'' The farmer answered wryly, ''Pebbles.''

And Mary remarked: ''Pebbles that you sow, pebbles that you reap.'' And indeed the farmer reaped a harvest of pebbles. A lesson on courtesy and honesty.

The Salamon starts the narrative from the annunciation to nativity. It also talks about the family's flight to Egypt and the childhood of Jesus as a carpenter's son.

This premier folk literature of Cagayanos also tells of Jesus' obedience to his parents and the miracles he performed.

In this era of power and tyranny, the Salamon cites how King Herod suffered in the end after he ordered the killing of babies in search of the infant Jesus.

Writing the Salamon is a ritual which is an art and a privilege only for the old folk. It is taboo for the young to be involved in its writing. But this taboo worries the old folk as writers are getting fewer like the Taccabans and the Marallags who are all gone.

During the writing period which usually takes months, the writer refrains from uttering a curse or blasphemous words and from displaying his or her anger.

The book starts with a sign of the cross and it is written using blood taken from a white chicken. The writer offers some prayers and a deko.