The River of ExchangeMusics in the Social Relations Between Aboriginal Manobos and Visayan Settlers in Caraga, Mindanao, Philippines

José S. Buenconsejo, PhDAssociate ProfessorDepartment of MusicologyCollege of MusicUniversity of the Philippines Diliman

Essay Copyright @ 2008 José S. BuenconsejoPhotos Copyright @ 2008 by Charles Nikolas J. Buenconsejo and Narciso S. Buenconsejo

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INTRODUCTION

! Anyone doing a transaction in the Philippines would know that personalism is important. Personal relations are valued for they

permeate in the accomplishment of tasks. My research on traditional, indigenous Agusan Manobos in a remote corner in Mindanao Island

was not an exemption. I arrived there in 1991 as an independent scholar, thanks to a personal network. Since then, during the many visits I

made thereafter, I have witnessed Agusan Manobos interact with and live peacefully with Cebuano-speaking Visayans, the group that I

belong to. In my mind, this co-existence has been made possible because there have been rituals by which gestures of friendship, hospital-

ity, and dialogue are promoted and realized in cultural performances.

!But, were there ever social conflicts in the cross-cultural encounter between inland Manobos and coastal Visayans at all?

! Certainly there were, but the arts, especially musical expressions, have played a great part in preempting violence; Manobo arts

have continually endorsed the ethic of group recognition. How this is possible is a story worth recounting for.

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Agusan Riverside Scene

! An ancient creation myth known by the descendants of an aboriginal people—particularly the Agusan Manobo speakers living

along Umayam River—explains the bifurcation of their cosmos into two domains: the mountainworld and the seaworld. The river, one

among the hundreds of tributaries of Agusan River that flows out into the Visayan sea, traverses the two worlds. It serves as a mythical

bridge between them.

! At a physical level, the river is a material conduit of social exchange between inland and coastal peoples. The latter call those peo-

ple in the interior or upriver as “Manobos.” They, in turn, refer to those from the seacoasts as “Dagatnon” (from the seacoasts) or, with

reference to their Christian culture, “Binenyagan” (baptized or Christian). For centuries, Umayam and Agusan Rivers have been the ma-

jor passageways by which goods and people travel to and fro the interior part of Agusan Valley, Caraga Region.

! As such, travel is cumbersome for upriver travel from Bunawan port near the National Highway inland is not frequent and it alone,

even with oil-dependent motorized riverboats, takes a little less than three hours. Minus telecommunication technology that breaches

physical borders and the highways that physically link places to other regions, the rate and frequency of exchange between the highway

and inland town has been very slow indeed.

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Loreto

! I have visited the town of Loreto in middle Agusan Valley many times during the previous decade, with the purpose of exploring

Agusan Manobo traditional music. The Manobos, however, had initially found my goal unusual because they stereotype outsiders--

particularly Visayans—as traders who buy and sell things.

! Loreto, for its nondescript landscape and as an “out-of-the-way” place, is far from being a tourist destination. Most likely it will

never be. It does not have remarkable natural attractions.

Most of the outsiders who travel to the place have been government and non-governmental workers and, of course, middlemen in com-

mercial ventures. Some of these are called contractors for they act as intermediaries in the exchange of logs and paper money.

Many of them, however, are itinerant, self-capitalized petty traders who sell fish, plas-

tic household wares, and used clothing. These goods are much in demand inland.

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Conversely, most of those who travel outside of the place are low-paying job seekers

in cities like Manila, Davao, and Cagayan de Oro. The periodic homecoming of these

workers always bring happiness to parents.

Researcher at Work

! It took me some time to convince the Manobos that I was doing some kind of a huge “homework” for universities. They gradually

appreciated my endeavors as they saw me work hard in audio and video recordings, transcribing and translating songtexts, stories, and

dialogues, writing genealogies, making sketches of places, and writing down detailed observations of their culture into fieldnotes.

! Originally, I had hoped to know about “authentic” Agusan Manobo culture. As my research progressed, however, I was dismayed

to learn that the music of the aboriginal peoples I had initially sought to understand was not pure and pristine, but quite mixed or syncretic

with outside cultures, particularly that of the Visayan settlers. In the town center where I concentrated my research, it was quite difficult,

in fact, to distinguish between native Manobo culture from the encroaching Christian Visayan culture because the former has been so

open and assimilative to the latter.

! This is manifest as well in Manobos living in the barrios. Manobos’ cosmopolitanism is a concrete proof of social relationships

with their neighbors, native groups from the mountains and upriver parts. Despite its having been adaptive to a comparatively out-of-the

way place, contemporary Manobo culture is remarkable for its contacts with outside worlds. Little did I know that much insight can be

gleaned at a culture such as this. It was odd for example to see a medium opening the invocation to her spirit helpers with the Christian

sign of the cross! Or see a medium addressing her Visayan spiritguide, complete with signs of Visayan life: guitar, beer, and table. Being a

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Visayan, it was like seeing a distorted image of one’s self in a mirror. No doubt such incorporation of outsiders’ cultures has enabled Ma-

nobos to differentiate their way of life from those of others, a competency that, no doubt, comes from interacting with cultural practices

and things not one’s own. Thus, I began to investigate Agusan Manobo traditional music, not merely in its own terms, but also as part of a

larger picture, i.e., as part of a dynamic sociocultural process. I eventually learned how musical gestures in Manobo musics demonstrate

social meanings that are grounded in social interactions and relationships with outsiders.

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Cultural Encounters with Neighboring Groups

! Manobos in Loreto have enduring bonds of social exchange with various outside groups, especially through marriage. These

groups are ranked with one another according to the level of their material cultures. They look down upon various mountain groups living

in the central mountain range of Mindanao in the west whose cultures are perceived to be more materially inferior, albeit more “authentic”

than theirs.

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They believe their King resides in the mythic mountain and it is from this standpoint that the source of legitimate power--authority--is rep-

resented and performed in traditional Manobo ritual.

The medium’s possession is evoked by the sound of rhythms played on drum and gong, in

the style of the mountain people, called tinaga-untod or simply binaylan. Physically, from

the mountains came the fierce men who were once warriors on blood debt exchange. Old

town Manobos in Loreto still remember the memory

of these charismatic men from the mountains visiting the town. In the past, they invoked vigilance among residents for they cannot be

gazed upon directly for fear of intimidating them and hence inviting a retort.

! From the Agusan River, Manobos in Loreto have had relations with the Mandaya, upriver peoples of Davao, south of the place. A

fast, driving drum and gong music depicts Manobo perception of Mandayas from upriver Agusan. Today, this rhythm is hardly played for

lack of players.

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! To the north and east came the lowland Christians who are perceived to have more advanced and hence desired culture for they

have brought with them modern practices and signs.

! Visayanization must have a long history already, for the incorporation of this 19th century Spanish fandango into the repertory of

struck bamboo zither music is a proof of cross-cultural encounter and contact between inland and coastal peoples. Since that history of

contact, Manobos have consistently assimilated Visayan cultural practices such as sedentarization, intensive wet-rice cultivation, cash

economy, Western education, cosmopolitan health care, state bureaucracy and so on.

The Visayan Settlers

! Along with the Christian cross, the most visible sign of Visayan settler culture is intensive wet rice cultivation. The size of lands in

this form of agriculture varies from two hectares to as much as ten. Most of these lands were formerly forests. But the loggers cleared

them. Later the Visayan settlers developed them into lands for intensive cultivation.

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Old tree stumps in the rice fields are reminders of the bygone age.

! This contrasts with Manobo economy, which was once thoroughly based on hunting and gathering and on small scale, multicrop-

ping agriculture on swiddens that can not produce surpluses. Swiddens required the construction of temporary houses beside them.

These are abandoned after the swiddens are left to fallow every two or three years. Planted with a variety of crops, a big portion of which

goes to the market for cash, Manobo swiddens are located in the outskirts of the town or in the barrios, comparatively away from Visayan

presence. Today, these have become spaces where Manobos realize their traditional beliefs, songs, and rituals.

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! The recent intensive peopling of Visayan-speakers in the area owes largely to the migration of laborers from neighboring prov-

inces who once worked in the commercial logging camps during the 1950s and 1960s. These were the decades when the industry was at its

height. When logging operations slowed down in the following years, a number of these workers, especially their children who grew in the

area during the logging boom, opted to remain. Some married local Manobo spouses.

! In addition, there were other kinds of Visayans who settled in the town. This group transferred their residences from other parts

of Mindanao Island. They were born of parents who settled in Mindanao much earlier, i.e., at the turn of the 20th century. They learned of

the town Loreto by word of mouth.

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The Visayanized Manobo World

! This cultural transformation has a long history. It stretches all the way back to the late 19th century when the Jesuits established a

chapel in the area. In her childhood, Lily remembers their friendly relations with the parish priest, who was a Caucasian. Her parents had

assisted Catholic evangelization in the area.

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Visitors are not new in Manay Lily’s household and the hospitality she offered me in her capacity as go-between in my research, continues,

in fact, the cordial public face her family has been known for since the time she can remember. Then, as 20th century modernization crept

in under the aegis of American colonialism, particularly when government institutions such as schools and public health were introduced

in the area, Lily remembers her parents to have given hospitality to teachers and other government servants in their house, just as I was

likewise offered during my visits.

! Her ability to translate and identify the cultural difference between her Manobo culture and Visayan is remarkable. It is conse-

quent of her carrying both indigenous Manobo and Visayan cultures that she learned intimately through her parents’ hospitality and her

husband. Lily was a favorite of her maternal grandmother who was a religious specialist, a spirit medium. Thus she grew up deeply im-

mersed into the complex lore and meanings behind indigenous rites, witnessing them first hand. Today, she does not find it contradictory

to alternate beliefs in Manobo animism with orthodox Catholicism. She is simultaneously a Catholic and a participant in indigenous relig-

ious practices, reasoning that the supernatural were all created by one and the same God.

! Parallel to the alternating use of religious practices, one concerning freedom from death in afterlife and the other, freedom from

sicknesses given by the spirits of nature, Lily has ability to speak two languages Manobo and Visayan. At home in her family, Manay Lily

speaks to her children the Visayan settler language, the prestigious lingua franca of the place. On the streets where she meets fellow Ma-

nobos, she speaks Manobo.

! In many occasions like these, they would usually share betel chew with one another, an ancient practice that old Visayan culture

had in the past but which was forgotten as urban practices from the West were assimilated.

! The sharing of betel quids is a ritualized, albeit tiny, gesture of friendship among Manobos during face-to-face meetings. It is es-

sentially an act of courtesy and politeness, of respect that recognizes the encounter of a person who is related to the self.

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To be offered the areca quid wrapped in betel piper leaf and sprinkled with lime by a person is

to be invited and encouraged to converse with the giver. It is a culturally-defined, yet rooted in

the universal impulse for human kindness, like a pat on the back of the guest made by the host

that facilitates the opening up of the sphere of human conversation that the physical, face-to-

face situation initially brought about.

Agusan Manobo Traditional Song Tud-om

! This makes it largely parallel to the performance of traditional song tud-om in which the singer discloses thoughts to an interlocu-

tor. A quintessential Manobo vocal expression, tud-om is no longer heard in the Visayanized town center, but only in the barrios.

! As I met many singers in the course of my research and having explained to them my desire to know the social meaning of this ex-

pression, I was offered, in response, hundreds of performances that I recorded on tape. My insistence in recording as many individual

songs as I can during my visits had puzzled the singers as to why I had to collect many. After all, given the context of recording elicitation,

these songs expressed the same act of “giving a small favor.”

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! In addition, many of them conveyed the sensation of “being passed by,” i.e., with references to the opportunity of meeting a visi-

tor and to the idea of being “alighted” by a spirit. The messages thus fitted perfectly with the cultural convention of facing another person

that the recording event is already an ideal performance occasion.

! Tud-om is improvised “speaking-in-song.” Although not unique to the Agusan Manobo, tud-om is identified with them for its as-

sociations with the voice of the spirit heard in ritual. In general, the songs’ messages center on the expression of politely “refusing” the

guest to whom the song is addressed. Thus, the act of performing and sharing the voice is magnified. Tud-om vocal expression is intense

and highly emotional; it is sung to a constricted, guttaral vocal technique.

! In other tud-om performance situations, song erupts when messages that are difficult to convey are presented obliquely to a lis-

tener via a melody. Hence, emotions are vented out just the same, but channeled positively so to speak.

! Compared to everyday speech, tud-om utilizes a technique in which word constructions are altered and poetic words or “archaic

words” are substituted to produce harmonious and pleasing locutions. Tud-om is thus an example of an art form that literally prevents vio-

lence; overtly confrontational disclosures of sentiment in speech—hard words—in public are imaginatively deflected, thanks to the song

channel.

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! This belief has fascinated me throughout my research. But the idea of voice as lying somewhere in the threshold of personal and

spiritual worlds can be illuminated by understanding it as an ancient universal communicative sign system where voice is perceived to have

a sonorous material substance. This has a potency capable of generating psychic energies that can cause things to happen. Voice, like all

things perceivable in the world of magic and resemblance, is animated. In this world, it is as if voice has a life of its own. Animating the

voice would disturb the external reality to which it is a part. Hence personal voice mirrors spirit voice. In Agusan Manobo culture, this be-

lief is understood as sagman and is none other than the Visayan buyag or the Tagalog usug. Sagman is actualized, causing harm to the

doer, if human action unknowingly intrudes into the unseen order of things in nature. For example, in the construction of ritual struc-

tures outside the house where an elaborate curing ritual is to be held, it is only the residents of the house who can create them for, being

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householders, they are responsible for the mystic energies that are contained in their very own doing. In Manobo tud-om, the shift of the

voice from person to spirit is manifested by tremblings, the main symptom of spirit attack or possession.

The Physicality and Hermeneutics of Agusan Manobo Spirit-possession Rite

In possession rite, the word tud-om means the sung voice emitted from the medium’s body. In rites done particularly for curing

and one which requires the death of a sacrificial animal, the incarnation of spirits is purposive for they are brought intentionally to the rit-

ual space by participants’ plea for compassion, i.e., so they can heal and divine the truths regarding the causes of the patient’s illness.

The medium facing the patient

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! It is the physical presence of person in need—the patient facing the medium--and the moral economy that compels the medium to

respond to that patient’s need as a person that inverts the negative identity of spirit. A spirit is by its very nature a sheer Other. But, in rit-

ual, it becomes a person who heeds the moral obligation. This is part of the broader goal of ritual, which is the re-institution of harmoni-

ous social order and community.

! The incarnation of spirit is a momentous event. The spirit’s form and substance infuse to become that of a compassionate being, a

person, who responds to a related being. Song marks this event. It comes about as a humanly creative agency and response that leaps into

the human magination of spirit transforming itself into a human being. The act of possession is a mirror of real persons recognizing each

other’s presences. And what a better way to show proof of the encounter than song emitting from a body which now becomes a musical

gesture that functions to indicate, like the demonstrative pronoun “this” or “that”, that there is indeed physical presence between persons

in that very moment. In other words, the spirit appears to demonstrate an interpersonal relationship. It is a spectacle for participants to see

the transformation of spirit’s difference into an agreeable being. This is the action--portraying the overall theme of morality in spirit pos-

session ritual--that encapsulates the desired human reciprocal relations that ritual performance renews or remakes.

Parts of Agusan Manobo Ritual

! Manobo ritual consists of two parts and this structure is felt by participants using all their sense faculties (sight, hearing, olfactory,

touch, taste). Nonetheless, two senses predominate: sight and hearing, the former being more important than the second.

! Ritual is a form of witnessing objects, tangible things that are put on display as gifts to spirits, but obliquely to persons attending

the event as well. These objects are manipulated, consecrating them in the process.

! Participants listen to the voices that the medium speaks and they watch the vision of gestures that the medium mimes, points to,

and dance. The medium is the spirits’ puppet. A number of spirits, like stock characters in ancient theater, animate the medium’s body.

But because spirits are controlled by human rhetoric, then ritual must also be understood as a work of human imagination. Like song

which indicates the taking place of persons encountering with one another, different spirits are unleashed in ritual performance as embod-

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ied correspondances to the various forms of actions that participants make and to the topics of human-spirit conversations. It is in this

sense, that one can construe spirit’ voices, gestures and objects as a form of writing. They are concrete, embodied expressions. Ritual

conversations between humans and spirits center on the causes of illnesses and on how to address them. Divinity speaks to participants

through spirits’ voices and gestures. These are corporeal signs that have substances.

! After the singing spirit, the male elder, a symbol of customary justice, enters the the body. It is this spirit which kills the animal

sacrifice so symbolic exchange is materialized. This spirit originates from the mountainworld and it expresses the authority of Manobo

customary justice.

!Hard rhythms accompany the repetitive medium’s dance. It is mimetic of the war dance, depicting the spirit’s hostility.

! In a chicken sacrifice, it glances at the audience sideways as if looking for human victims…and then sees the patient. Instead of

“eating” the patient though, the chicken is substituted.

! The medium is given the fowl. He waves this around the patients’ body to depict that harm is transferred to the chicken. This

chicken may or may not be killed. In the latter case, it serves as a payment that the medium takes home for his services in the performance

event. In the former where the chicken is killed, it is first made to make contact with the body of the patient so that a symbolic transfer or

some kind of “transubstantiation” of the ill-causing substance is materialized. This is displaced from the patient’s body to that of the ani-

mal victim. The spirit eats the patient and then the sacrificial substitute, thus dramatizing the social experience of illness through concrete

symbols.

! In everyday life, Manobos perceive spirits to be neither good or bad, but when a spirit desires a person, i.e., if it is perceived to be

attracted to a person, the spirit is dangerous for its approach is taken to be some kind of attack or invasion, making the human host ill. The

restoration of health is, of course, the main goal of curing ritual. In the more elaborate one where a pig is sacrificed, the same symboliza-

tion of transforming spirit’s hostility to amicability, though horrible the scene might be to the participants, is witnessed when the pig’s

fresh blood is drunk by the medium and then he is given liquor. Consequently, the sacrificial blood is wiped on ritual structures, on the

patients’ body, and of other participants. This act is done to prevent harm from occurring to those bodies. In blood-smeared bodies,

blood-thirsty spirits will no longer yearn for their deaths. They have already witnessed blood and life.

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! In some kind of intermission between first and second parts of ritual, the pig is cooked. Then, the head of the pig is put on the ele-

vated altar outside the house. Other fresh pig’s meat is arranged in the “lowly” altar where it was killed. These raw offerings are for nature

spirits, but those that are cooked and displayed on top of rice grains are for personal spirits. The act of displaying the gifts automatically

unleashes the spirit of the same act. This happens when the spirits are invited to eat the cooked food offering.

Then, the medium dances again, seven times with joy at the sight of the offerings. Less tremblings in the medium’s body occur now.

! The ritual is climaxed when the medium dances the plates containing cooked food offerings. Here the rhythm suddenly becomes

soft. The community is bonded through the consecrated substance of flesh and wine passed on to the audience.

! Aside from the sacrificial meat, other ritual objects are manipulated to create magical effects. In the first part, the betel nuts laid on

top of rice grains of fertility are sprinkled with lime and offered to spirits, especially for those from the mountain world. Spirits are also

offered drinks and these, in turn are passed on to the main ritual sponsors or to other visitors.

! All these ritual actions are mimetic of ideal human conduct, of appropriate relations between guests and hosts. They are acts of

goodness that express the same universal ideas of sharing and redemption from illness and inevitable death.

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The Christian Compadrazgo Relations

! The authority that a medium performs in ritual upholds the appropriate Manobo concept of exchange as this was adaptive to the

once extensive hunting-gathering activity, swidden agriculture and domestication of pigs and chickens in the past.

! This is not the case, however, at present with modernity that is characterized by an economy based on cash, the necessary medium

of exchange in a completely sedentary lifestyle, intensive wet rice agriculture and in the commerce of natural resources where paper

money is used instead. Nonetheless, both old and new economic-related transactions are suffused with personalism, a cultural value that is

present in both Manobo and Christian Philippine societies.

! In the town where the Visayan mode of cash economy is almost total, personalism is manifest in the suki or patronage system

where deference and loyalty to patrons is recognized. This system is reinforced by the compadrazgo set-up where persons of the same

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generation express, during Christian rituals of baptism and marriage, a promise to help each other. In compadrazgo, interdependence

among patrons and clients is constructed and maintained. Such rituals have made the system durable and universal in the country.

! As elsewhere in Christian Philippines, parents seek the sponsorship of neighbor-friends, usually their non-kin and those they have

known intimately in the workplace. They are requested to stand in as ritual sponsors because they are perceived to be helpful in their lives

as well as in their children’s in the future, guaranteeing emotional support, job placements, recommendations, source of loans in times of

need and crises.

! It is this personal network that can get things done, as in the wedding I documented in 1997. Ritual sponsors thus become some

kind a social capital.

! After the wedding and baptismal rites in Roman Catholic church, feasting and drinking parties are held in the houses of the cele-

brants; the families of baptized and wedded children (the hosts) and the families of ritual sponsors (guests) bond with one another. There-

after in everyday life, patrons and clients call each other kumpare and kumare, co-equals despite the real material asymmetry that might

exist between them in terms of wealth and class. Ritual parents address their ritual children as ina-anak, and, conversely, they are called

ninong and ninang. Relationships between these roles are friendly for they constitute a mere simulation of kinship relations, like the word

kuya and ate, tita or tito, bro and sis in Philippine public cultures. They are not based on true blood, descent or marriage. The com-

padrazgo system therefore cross-cuts divisions in social ranks based on status and prestige, language, and lifestyle.

Everyday ritual of friendship via amplified sounds and drinking parties

With the introduction of electricity to the place since the mid 1980s, feastings that cap Christian

rituals such as baptisms and weddings and those that are held in conjunction with birthdays and as

thanksgivings for personal achievements are publicised in the neighborhood via loud

electronically-amplified sounds.

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Of course, these sounds are channelled via public address systems, which are integral to events sponsored by the church, school and local

government entities.

! In domestic settings, amplified sounds in Karaoke TV singing, are a more invasive type of broadcasting presence. Tinged with

prestige, they honor the family or sponsor hosting the party to the neighborhood. In Visayan culture, one’s personal honor is measured by

the amount of “hearing” that is spread to distant places.

! The use of amplifiers may well just be functional as rumors in disseminating presence. A Visayan saying goes: “The streets have

ears.” Perhaps this is the reason why the louder the amplified sounds, the better. They trumpet the honor in the neighborhood. The cul-

tural value of having a wide interpersonal network in baptismal and wedding rites draws a similarity; the celebrant is shamed for having few

guests, a network of people who are valued as social capital and security.

In everyday life, friendships between Manobos and Visayans are nurtured in drinking parties.

These can occur at home with or without amplified sounds.

!Drinks are of course found also in neighborhood stores that attract customers via their ear-blasting karaoke TVs.

The Incarnation of Visayan Presences

! In the not so distant past, Manobo experience of friendship with the dominant settlers has been interestingly written upon in the

medium’s body in possession rites that I documented a decade ago in the town center. Here we have a case of marginal culture, an enclave,

incorporating the authority of dominant culture right at the center. As expected, this form of inscribing the experience of a new type of

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friendly social relationship happened only in performances done by mediums residing in the town center where, naturally, the Visayan

settlers have lived side by side with Manobos. Two spirits are incarnated: the Visayan spirit and the mute spirit.

! The Visayan spirit is a copy, a mimicry, of the persona of the Visayan-speaking official, a local leader, speaking in public. In one

type of Manobo ritual where this spirit is incarnated, offerings to the spirit are salted and put on a table, just as in drinking parties. The

spirit also dances to rhythms on the guitar. He is invited to participate by a drink and then cigarettes.

! In the other type of ritual, the same spirit is confident, gives commanding orders such as forcing ritual sponsors to admit and con-

fess sin and offers advices similar to those heard in modern, usually government-sponsored civic, public spectacles called prugrams. In

Manobo ritual, the Visayan spirit is incarnated like the male Manobo elder who expresses authority. However, there is difference between

the vocal exchanges between the male Manobo elder who is addressed with a kin term, apoq or grandfather and the Visayan spirit who is

addressed “amigo” or “friend”. The spirit of Visayan modernity gives paternalistic moral lessons that a local Visayan-speaking leader is

supposed to give, without the symbolic sacrificial animal that the male Manobo elder stands.

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! The Visayan spirit is often accompanied by its foil, the mute spirit. This has a bad temper, constituting noise, and seems to coun-

teract the assimilated authority of the Visayan spirit. It is as if this mute spirit contests the authority of the assimilated modern Visayan

identity in the medium’s body.

! In short, the medium in Manobo ritual reflects the reality that Manobos experience at present. The friendly address of the Visayan

spirit resonates with the compadrazgo relations. Despite the difference between this spirit and the male elder spirit, the transformation of

the spirits’ difference to one of human identity based on moral economy is similar. Human rhetoric performed in ritual transforms their

difference into an image of humanity that ritual makes. Hailing a Visayan spirit, a stranger in Manobo landscape, partakes of the same

process. When called an “amigo,” it becomes a subject of Manobo Will; its distance is bridged. Its identity become a subject to Manobo

language and norms.!

! In the context of the ongoing profound Visayanization of the town, Manobo sacrifical rituals have been delegitimated and driven

to the margins. Some Visayans even ridicule them. It is interesting to note, however, that this Visayan denigrating attitude is ironic be-

cause the Visayan cult of saints is, in fact, parallel. The personalistic devotion to saints resembles, in a number of ways, to the care that

Manobo mediums attend to their spirithelpers. They are given food in exchange for favors that deal with folk healing. In other words,

meaningful relationships between medium and spirit and between devotee and saint are founded on the same experience of easing suffer-

ing due to illness and of averting it and death. In the context of inequality of social power between Visayans and Manobos, the domination

of the former is manifested in the silence of Manobo tud-om and of the ritual drum and gong music in the town center. The sentiment of

shame for Manobo culture accompanies the silence of tud-om and ritual performance in the Visayanized world for these have been de-

moted to become signs of idolatry, paganism or of the “uncivilized” past.

! Yet, despite the unperformability of song and ritual performances in the town, they continue to be held at present in seclusion, in

homes beside swiddens in the forest, away from Visayan hearing.

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Town Ethnic Festival

Back in the center, a reverse process of cultural appropriation is apparent, completing the social exchange full circle: Manobos imitating

Visayans imitate Manobos. There have been recent attempts by the government and other non-governmental organizations to teach Ma-

nobos to be proud of their heritage. For three years in a row since 2006, Umayam Ethnic Festivals, featured street dancing competitions

among National High schools. Obviously in keeping with the fashion of staging festivals as attractions from money-bearing tourists, these

festivals integrate out-of-the-way places to the national and regional cultures by encouraging them to re-invent their traditions in a modern

setting.

! In the sphere of politics, the government has been encouraging the participation of Manobos by instituting local tribal associa-

tions under the administration and management of datuship since 1997.

! Manobos in general have welcomed the introduction of datuship. Through the organization, the Manobo is given a voice in the

government, a form of local empowerment. In Loreto, this new institution is limited to political matters such as the expropriation of ances-

tral land claims and the like.

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Unlike other places in Mindanao such as Davao City or General Santos City, there has not been the institution of an heritage in-

dustry in which the production of commodified Agusan Manobo material culture is absorbed by the expanding market of “touristic” eth-

nic goods in the cities .

! In the costly ethnic festivals held in Loreto, the audience was predominantly local. Perhaps, the cost did not justify the benefit of

enticing tourists into Loreto, which is a far-flung place. High-school students performed side by side with Manobo elders who simulated

animal sacrificial rituals. The authenticity of the latter cultural production is arguable for, in its original performance context, Manobo sac-

rificial rituals are held for the benefit of the sick and not for a collective patient called “municipal government” or “tribal association.”

Thus, Manobo culture is enframed as a modern spectacle with the original aura and power associated with healing ritual now channeled to

enchant a modern institution like local government.

The Mimicry of Modernity

! Despite the claims for the continuity of their heritage in modernity, the incarnation of spirit as in the mimicry of Manobo heritage

would still, I believe, be anachronistic. Spiritguides belong to the realm of intimate interpersonal relations, divination, and healing, while

spirits in modern spectacle serve a different end. In the latter, the potency of ritual is canalized to serve a geopolitical goal. One could thus

say that without the incarnation of spirit as substance—a matter that is, nonetheless, inherently possible even in the modern context--there

was a new and value-added meaning into the borrowing of heritage. This appropriation is perhaps akin to the cutting and pasting of urban

images from magazines bought in from highway towns and incorporated in Manobo homes.

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Manobos experience these objects of modernity by watching images of KTV, seen in performance, but disjunct to their day to day life ex-

perience.

! When high school students imitate the ancient form of Philippine agriculture, for example, they learned of it more as a pictorial

representation in schools than doing the planting of swiddens themselves in their everyday life.

! Manobos also experience modernity through beauty pagents, a practice cultivated by the occupational bakla group. These beau-

ties are viewed from afar by Manobos as spectators, with no interpersonal depth, although their shimmering glamour can certainly bring

much pleasure to Manobo bodies.

!

For the poor Manobos, the unreachable status of beauties prevents them from desiring, but it is most likely that they do not necessarily

feel sad for not possessing them either. For those who can afford them, modern spectacles give consumers much delight. These images are

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entertainment and useful for decorating the house, brightening it up, even masking the gaps of walls. Though it involves the world of illu-

sion to beauty, no value for goodness in the context of interpersonal relation is involved.

CONCLUSION

As I recollect and reminisce the experience of doing research in a faraway river town in Agusan Valley, I

remember the modern noise brought in by and which is part of Visayan modernity in this riverine place.

That noise created zones of silence that corresponded to the three ways by which Manobos have coped

with modernity. One is the complete erasure of the sounds of aboriginal culture as concomitant to the

Manobos’ eager and almost total incorporation of outside cultures.

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! Second is the displacement of aboriginal noise to the margins, to the places beside swiddens, which have provided a space for its

continuing practice, thanks to the resilience of Manobo culture. And yet, in another context, modern Visayan noise has led to the incarna-

tion of its authority in Manobo ritual performances held in the town center.

Cultural transformation is inevitable and the loss of myth that accompanied the enchanted perception of the once heavily wooded,

part desolate marshes and grassy riverbanks had given way to the myth of the modern with its sounds of oil-dependent machines like the

motor that drives passenger motorbikes, river boats, chainsaws, and so on.

! With the ancient Manobo creation myth in my mind, I can imagine the stillness

and silence that grips one’s senses as one passes through those meandering long wind-

ing stretches of river that the original inhabitants of the place must have experienced as

they navigated the river using their small,

non-motorized canoe.

It must be this sensation of solitude that

forms the basis of the story of the creation

myth in which a crocodile, stuck in a

stone at a river bend, once a human being but transformed into a crocodile after struck by

lightning for violating a taboo, cries in despair in the wilderness.

The crying is longing for human union and it is as imaginative as the allegory and belief in the Fall of Eden or the destruction of the tower

of Babel.

! The plaintive, melancholic sound of this mythic crocodile is simulated in the lip-valley flute by men during times of aloneness. The

aesthetic of this sound with its continuous drone-like quality and undulating melodic contour is similar to the harsh, guttural ritual song,

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which is uttered to express human compassion. It is for this reason that it is at the heart of Manobo culture for their song embodies the

value of personhood above all else. Sadly, these musics are no longer heard in the town center where modern noise reigns.

! But Manobo traditional music need not be degraded and the work of intercultural understanding must therefore continue. Ma-

nobo ritual’s messages of redemption from sickness and death via the exchange of material substances, and the value for human respect

and sharing is as universal as love and salvation taught by the religions of the Book. Manobo tud-om is a form of recognizing persons as

persons and the spirit appears because it embodies human presence. It is that spirit that connects people. No devil would do likewise nor

display and pass consecrated food to the participants, which is the most beautiful act of Manobo ritual. The sheer otherness of spirit is in-

verted to become a human being who responds to the moral economy of equality and dignity.

! In its incarnation, the spirit conveys the ethos that it is in

every conceivable view a human right for a person to be recog-

nized as such.

Reference:

Buenconsejo, Jose. Songs and Gifts at the Frontier: Person and Exchange in the Agusan Manobo Possession Ritual, Philippines. New

York and London: Routledge, 2002.

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