thekuntawman
Purple Belt
i was reading the "emtpy hand FMA" post, and i decided to post my reply in a separate thread.
the misconceptions of the FMA has made many teachers dishonest, and the most hurtful ones came from pilipino teachers. we all read books and magazines. now a few years ago, no filipino teacher wanted to admit that his art does not have all those things danny inosanto said the FMA is suppose to have, like kinomutai, emtpy hand=knife=stick, dumug, etc. so what happened you have teachers adopting the "kali" name, because they thought this makes his art looked more authentic. because remember, kali is the "mother art"
when edgar sulite came out with his millions of drills, now, every filipino teacher has to get a whole bunch of new drills to add to the few they already have. then remy presas with the "flow" every filipino style has to have it. etc.
the new thing today is kuntao/silat, or to adopt what they think is kuntao/silat into the art they do, and not call it silat or kuntao/kuntaw. i have to say about 75% of the "kuntao/silat" is made up (recently, meaning no real lineage except for a few years ago), and 99% of the FILIPINO kuntaw/kuntao is not kuntaw from the philippines. oh, now they are saying kuntaw is fukkien chinese, and has hsing-yi, and pa kua. i say ********. all of those guys i knew them then and i know them now, they are passing off kung fu knowledge for filipino martial arts now. i can name a whole lot of names, but i am not wanting to make enemies right now.
with videos going around, now people can easily take philippine martial arts technique, and call it there own style, or disguise it to be WMA western martial arts. one guy about 4 years ago came to my school and showed me some kind of scottish double sword fighting. it was sinawali. when bravehart II comes out we can see some more of their WMA swordfighting. oh, and then now we find roman "gladiator fighting" they recently discovered. that makes as much sense as greek "mu tau" kickboxing. and the real origin of SPANIARD espada Y daga, that the filipino learned from the conquistador.
pride, arrogance and greed can be blamed for an old tradition, which is, learning from other arts and teachers. many of the old filipino teachers have no problem to say, they learned some judo and shotokan and tae kwon do. they use to study with doce pares or beng kiam. they made their own styles and they can prove that it works. today, teachers want to act like it was there all the time, and its pure FILIPINO style, not adopted, and they "learned it from their dad". whatever. there is no shame from studying another style and using what you like. but since people want to see your papers, some people are force to lie and hide it because they dont have papers, or they are too proud.
if you look back when martialtalk first started, people got pissed because i said, most filipino styles have no empty hand or very little, knife does not translate to stick to emtpy hand, etc. but guess what, that is because they want to be able to say "my style has this too, and my style has that..." nobody wants to admit that his own style is not "complete". complete by those who dont know filipino cultures and styles, only what they think is there. does anybody remember a paul vunak article? when he wrote, is your FMA authentic? then it should have dumug, it should have panantukan, pananjakman, kinomutai. well somebody should write one, to say, how do you know if your FMA is not filipino.
we have confusion with the philippine arts now, because even our filipino leaders did not tell the truth about there art and background. and now they have to fight against the truth and keep telling the same lies, and avoid immigrant filipinos, and avoid going to the philippines, etc.
the misconceptions of the FMA has made many teachers dishonest, and the most hurtful ones came from pilipino teachers. we all read books and magazines. now a few years ago, no filipino teacher wanted to admit that his art does not have all those things danny inosanto said the FMA is suppose to have, like kinomutai, emtpy hand=knife=stick, dumug, etc. so what happened you have teachers adopting the "kali" name, because they thought this makes his art looked more authentic. because remember, kali is the "mother art"
when edgar sulite came out with his millions of drills, now, every filipino teacher has to get a whole bunch of new drills to add to the few they already have. then remy presas with the "flow" every filipino style has to have it. etc.
the new thing today is kuntao/silat, or to adopt what they think is kuntao/silat into the art they do, and not call it silat or kuntao/kuntaw. i have to say about 75% of the "kuntao/silat" is made up (recently, meaning no real lineage except for a few years ago), and 99% of the FILIPINO kuntaw/kuntao is not kuntaw from the philippines. oh, now they are saying kuntaw is fukkien chinese, and has hsing-yi, and pa kua. i say ********. all of those guys i knew them then and i know them now, they are passing off kung fu knowledge for filipino martial arts now. i can name a whole lot of names, but i am not wanting to make enemies right now.
with videos going around, now people can easily take philippine martial arts technique, and call it there own style, or disguise it to be WMA western martial arts. one guy about 4 years ago came to my school and showed me some kind of scottish double sword fighting. it was sinawali. when bravehart II comes out we can see some more of their WMA swordfighting. oh, and then now we find roman "gladiator fighting" they recently discovered. that makes as much sense as greek "mu tau" kickboxing. and the real origin of SPANIARD espada Y daga, that the filipino learned from the conquistador.
pride, arrogance and greed can be blamed for an old tradition, which is, learning from other arts and teachers. many of the old filipino teachers have no problem to say, they learned some judo and shotokan and tae kwon do. they use to study with doce pares or beng kiam. they made their own styles and they can prove that it works. today, teachers want to act like it was there all the time, and its pure FILIPINO style, not adopted, and they "learned it from their dad". whatever. there is no shame from studying another style and using what you like. but since people want to see your papers, some people are force to lie and hide it because they dont have papers, or they are too proud.
if you look back when martialtalk first started, people got pissed because i said, most filipino styles have no empty hand or very little, knife does not translate to stick to emtpy hand, etc. but guess what, that is because they want to be able to say "my style has this too, and my style has that..." nobody wants to admit that his own style is not "complete". complete by those who dont know filipino cultures and styles, only what they think is there. does anybody remember a paul vunak article? when he wrote, is your FMA authentic? then it should have dumug, it should have panantukan, pananjakman, kinomutai. well somebody should write one, to say, how do you know if your FMA is not filipino.
we have confusion with the philippine arts now, because even our filipino leaders did not tell the truth about there art and background. and now they have to fight against the truth and keep telling the same lies, and avoid immigrant filipinos, and avoid going to the philippines, etc.
