Colorful indigenous costumes; graceful dance of a woman with fingers made long by janggay; a woman singing a lilting tribal song.
Watching and listening to these were a cultural delight one would rarely have. Besides, they were presented at a very apt venue—not at the Cultural Center of the Philippines—but in Tawi-Tawi, the southernmost province in the country.
Tawi-Tawi is one of the most undiscovered areas in the country. If traveled by plane, one would need two connecting flights before reaching the small airport of Sanga-Sanga. However, beyond the distance, the group of islands surrounded by rich waters is a pot of cultural treasures waiting to be discovered.
It is lamented that much of the country’s cultural knowledge and history have been focused on the tribes in the north and barely touched the tip of those in the south, such as the Sama tribe of Tawi-Tawi. Textbooks today could not explain the resilient culture being practiced in the region because of lack of ethnographic documentation.
But Tawi-Tawi’s Sama culture is set to take the center stage with the head start done by Dr. Jose Buenconsejo, former dean of the College of Music at the University of the Philippines in Diliman and a member of the National Research Council of the Philippines (NRCP) at the Division of Humanities, and Omarjan Ibrahim Jahuran, librarian at the Office of the Governor in Tawi-Tawi.
At the symposium on “Fusion of Science and Arts V.2” held at the Mindanao State University-Tawi-Tawi College of Technology and Oceanography (MSU-TCTO) last week, these experts presented their researches on the music and dances of different tribal communities in the Mindanao. The symposium was led by the NRCP, the provincial government of Tawi-Tawi and MSU-TCTO.
Arts and science
NRCP is the only Department of Science and Technology (DOST) council that provides funding and research for arts and humanities.
According to DOST-NRCP President Dr. Ramon A. Razal, “The arts are part of the original mandate of the law that created NRCP. It is not just about the basic and applied sciences but also, the promotion of the arts.”
The NRCP boasts itself as a holistic institution because it deals with people’s culture—a subject not being addressed by the other DOST councils.
“They say arts is the soul of science, hence, we need an artistic point of view for us to be able to do scientific research, because this makes people more concerned with the human value of what they’re doing,” Razal told the BusinessMirror. “It is indeed important to document our culture.”
Strong connection to nature, nonviolence
In the documentation, Seven Dances of Life, that was presented by Jahuran, he told the BusinessMirror that he and Buenconsejo created the segments of the Igal dance of the Sama tribe in Tawi-Tawi and Tabawan Islands, whose music and dance are distinct, including the “finger-style dance.”
Igal, which loosely translates to “dance,” is composed of the different rituals of the Sama Tabawan tribe. Buenconsejo and Jahuran categorized the rituals in the dance in the various themes they show—dance of offering, dance of the elders, courtship dance, bamboo dance and a mixed dance.
The ritual dance that particularly explores celebrations is called pagjammu, which means that a person is bound to the tribe, community and what they call “the others.”
In Buenconsejo’s analysis of the music of different tribes he had visited and interacted with, he said they “have shown distinct music which are still practiced up to now.”
In the video from “Nature’s Presence: Traditional Music of Indigenous Peoples in Southern Mindanao, Philippines,” he told the BusinessMirror that he “learned stories about the very old musical instruments in the Philippines, especially from the Manobo Dulangan, T’boli, Obo and the Tagakaolo communities in the south.”
One is the bamboo polychoral zither togo, a stringed instrument, and whistle flute sloli, a traditional ring flute that is used to show stories connected to nature, such as a bird dance that depict the story of creation.
“In the tribes around Lake Sebu, the common denominator in their music is the strong connection to nature. The stories I got was also about nature,” he said.
On another video, “Sound Tenderness: Music of the Nonviolent Pala’wan Community in Southern Philippines,” Buenconsejo found out the music “was used for social and group cooperation, and relationship of men and women of the Pala’wan tribe.”
He said the music of Pala’wan is very delicate and tender, and that negative emotions are not channeled through violence.
“Men, women and children never hurt each other. They keep emotions to themselves and use music to express their anger.”
Positive feedback, Urian Award finalist
According to Buenconsejo, the reception of the public to their documentations was “very positive.” The tribes themselves “were surprised and immediately recognized their own culture.”
There was good reception from movie critics as well. The Seven Dances of Life was nominated as one of the finalists for the Best Documentary award at the Gawad Urian Awards 2018 held on June 14 in Quezon City.
“I didn’t expect it at all,” Buenconsejo shared. “It so happened that one of the judges might have seen it at the premiere in Abelardo Hall at the university of the Philippines.” He explained that the audience was primarily composed of intellectuals and professors, and that they liked the documentation.
“I didn’t show music as an object. I showed it as part of human life and of society,” Buenconsejo added.
His goal was to document the culture and music of the different tribes for classroom use, as an educational material for the Filipinos especially the youth.
“The approach was vignette and each chapter has its own theme,” he said.
Buenconsejo’s research has received P1-million funding to put the different music of the various tribes into one documentary film and record. The former dean, who has started this kind of research in the 1990s, told the BusinessMirror that the product of this research was recorded into a CD and initially distributed copies to Jahuran for educational and research purposes in Tawi-Tawi.
In the forum during the symposium that was attended by teachers, professors and researchers, one participant said the documentation is very important so the people from the Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi areas can incorporate it in schools.
The participant added that most of the indigenous people’s (IP) cultures studied in schools and printed in textbooks are those from the north of the country, although there is an equally rich IP culture from the south.
The attendee said the Filipino culture has only been passed by word of mouth. Through this method, different variations can be relayed. But with proper documentation, the teachers and professors, can relay factual data and properly represent the tribes distinctly.
Ethnoscience research
The Filipino culture has a rich history and diversity. The Philippines, being an archipelago, has more than 175 different ethnic communities. Each has a distinct culture, as shown in their rituals, dances and music and has been resilient throughout the changing times.
Yet, despite the resiliency, most of the tribes have not shared nor documented in books or any medium their language, music and other practices.
One of the factors that affect the lack of cultural documentation in the country is the inaccessibility of the tribes in the far-flung areas. However, the lack of researchers and resources, such as finances, is not among the constraints.
According to Buenconsejo, who presented his research video documentation, Music from the Margins, which featured the music of different tribes in the Philippines, ethnoscience in the Philippines is a way of adapting to an environment through decoding different historical figures and texts.
“We have a rich utilization of coconut in the environment as we can see rituals through dance and music [using coconut] since time immemorial,” he added.
The Tawi-Tawi symposium highly regarded the arts and humanities in the outputs and put importance on the ethnoscientific methods in doing the researches.
“Ethnographic method is part of science because we, as researchers, use qualitative research in our study,” Buenconsejo told the BusinessMirror. “I look into culture and know how I can transmit different ethnographic rituals, dances or symbols.”
Buenconsejo added that doing ethnoscientific research is building the knowledge for art creation.
“Our different cultures are intertwined to each other because culture can be constructed, maintained or changed through our different language. In order for us to understand this, we need this kind of [ethnographic] method,” he said.
Ethnoscience, as defined in the web site iResearchNet, “is the study of what native people know about the world around them. This discipline is concerned with the cultural knowledge and classification systems in a given society.”
Its goal is to “reproduce a cultural reality as it was perceived and lived by members of a society.”
“The scientific [ethnoscientific] method that we injected in this documentary process is doing field work and involvement of the community,” Jahuran said, adding that they did a participatory research through inquiry and drawing out facts from people.
Buenconsejo added that ethnoscientific method is a soft version of the scientific method. “It is interpretative and that the process is intersubjective.”
He told the BusinessMirror that “this is not the science done in a laboratory where observations are detached. Here, we have to include the participation of our subjects at the same time.”
For Razal, this kind of scientific method is important “to validate the findings we do in the arts and humanities.”
He added: “If anyone would like to do replicate what has been done, the information must also be replicable.”
The ethnoscientific process, like any other scientific process, must be used to prove the credibility of the results in the investigation either in the arts and culture, or most especially in the basic and applied sciences.
Bill on Department of Culture
The NRCP is supporting bills and laws in promoting different sciences, including arts and humanities.
Last year senators, led by Sen. Loren B. Legarda, filed a bill that would create a government office that would emphasize on the role of our indigenous tribes. Senate Bill 1528, or the Department of Culture Act, aims to establish the Department of Culture and put appropriating funds to function and harmonize the different agencies handling arts and culture
For Buenconsejo, the bill is a good step toward the creation of a governing body overseeing the indigenous tribes and culture of the Filipinos.
“It is about time that we have to establish this institution as the existing agencies that do Philippine culture are already segmented.” Buenconsejo referred to the various institutions that support indigenous and cultural projects, such as the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, National Museum, National Library and Cultural Center of the Philippines.
Buenconsejo hopes that when the Department of Culture is established, it can harmonize not just the various agencies but also the different tribes and recognize their role in shaping the society.
Image credits: Stephanie Tumampos