Lutes, Gongs, Women and Men:

(En)Gendering Instrumental Music in

the Philippines
Manolete Mora
Gender relations in island Southeast Asia are largely based on studies of Bali, Java and
the eastern Indonesian islands and are often characterised in terms of binary opposites or
complementarities. However, the issue of gender is multifaceted and goes beyond a two
column representation of gender, one defined by and limited to biological divisions.
Among the Tboli of the southern Philippines, complex dynamics interpenetrate
masculine and feminine principles across almost all areas of cognitive, social, cultural
and aesthetic domains, including music. However, gender complementarity and
difference between women and men carry a degree of ambiguity and mutual
inclusiveness as illustrated in the constitution and performance of the two genres
associated with courting and marriage, the seguyun and the sebelang.
Keywords: Gender Relations; Symbolism; Complementarity; Philippines; Tboli;
Instrumental Music; Lutes; Gongs
Introduction
1
Feminist approaches to understanding the relationship between gender and music
have yielded some of the most challenging musicological work in recent decades.
Studies of Western music and popular music have explored the relationship of gender
to music performance, to expressions of sexuality and eroticism, to the symbolic
and structural dimensions of musical sound, and to music theory and aesthetics.
However, whilst women as music-makers have been routinely discussed within
Manolete Mora is Associate Professor at the University of Hong Kong. His research interests include the music of
the Philippines, Bali and Ghana. He has published in various musicological and anthropological journals and
has produced recordings for Rykodisc and UNESCO. His book on myth, magic and mimesis in Filipino music
won the National Book Award for Folklore and was runner up in the Gintong Aklat Award for Social Science in
the Philippines. In 2006, he was appointed University Teaching Fellow and in 2007 Universitas 21 Fellow. Mora
is also an active musician, mainly in the performance of Balinese gamelan and Cuban music. Correspondence to:
mmora@hkucc.hku.hk
ISSN 1741-1912 (print)/ISSN 1741-1920 (online)/08/020225-23
# 2008 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/17411910802283900
Ethnomusicology Forum
Vol. 17, No. 2, November 2008, pp. 225247
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ethnomusicological studies, relatively few such studies have investigated the relation-
ship between cultural conceptions of gender and the more elusive dimensions of
musical practice, particularly indigenous musical theory and aesthetics. The matter is
of particular significance not only for our understanding of the relationship between
gender and music but for the broader understanding of gender relations in insular
Southeast Asia. Some scholars have argued that there exists a paucity of symbolic
expression of gender differences in the region which has contributed to the neglect of
the study of gender relations (Errington 1990, 5). In insular Southeast Asia, gender
differentials are not always easily socially visible; they are not marked in ways that are
easy to recognise. Observers, therefore, have tended to focus on the outward
appearances and behaviour as signs of difference between women and men while the
symbolic and aesthetic expressions of gender relations have received relatively little
attention.
This article is an attempt to address this problem by examining the ways in which
gender relations are represented within the aesthetic and symbolic dimensions of
musical practice among one particular ethnolinguistic group from the southern
Philippines, the Tboli.
2
The Tboli case illustrates the existence of a dialectic
relationship between gender construction and music-making. On the one hand,
music participates in the very construction of gender relations, while on the other
hand gender construction helps to shape music. Crucial to describing and
interpreting Tboli musical thought and practice are two interrelated issues which
have been at the centre of feminist and anthropological debates concerning gender
relations in Southeast Asia and beyond, namely, sexual asymmetry and gender
complementarity. The principle of complementarity has often been noted in accounts
of gender difference in island Southeast Asia. However, it is inadequately understood,
firstly because most of the ethnological case studies have come from particular areas,
most notably Bali, Java and the eastern Indonesian islands (M. Rosaldo 1980; R.
Rosaldo 1983; Eberhardt 1988; Atkinson and Errington 1990; Tsing 1993; Weiss
2006), and secondly because most case studies have been concerned primarily with
gender relations within the more easily observable contexts of social and economic
structures and institutions. As Ong and Peletz point out in an edited volume on
gender and body politics in Southeast Asia, the relative hegemony of themes of
gender equality and complementarity in Indonesia (the focus of Atkinson and
Erringtons volume) and Southeast Asia as a whole thus needs to be explored rather
than presumed (1995, 8). For these scholars, ideologies of gender complementarity
are concomitant with the binary oppositions of prestige and stigma, the spiritually
potent and the spiritually weak, the disciplined and the disruptive, and so on (ibid.,
8). Moreover, they see such pairs of opposed values as creating the sort of social
interdependencies that bred ambivalences between and within gender identities
(ibid., 5). This view of gender complementarity in Southeast Asia is concerned with
investigating gender hierarchies rather than exploring the role of complementarity in
the negotiation and accommodation of difference. Moreover, whilst queer studies
have in recent years pursued more flexible views of gender construction in Southeast
226 M. Mora
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Asian societies, such as the third sex (see, for instance, Andaya 2000), this approach
has similarly failed to provide a more nuanced understanding of gender comple-
mentarity.
It seems, then, that we still do not understand the full range of possibilities, the
subtle ways in which insular Southeast Asian cultures conceptualise and express
gender difference. In order to more fully grasp the nature of gender difference and
complementarity in the region we need to investigate these issues within a wider
range of societies and within the realm of expressive culture. In the volume by Ong
and Peletz mentioned above, Suzanne Brenner advocates an approach to gender
analysis that aims at a more nuanced understanding of the ambiguities, paradoxes
and multiple layers of meaning that attach to ideas about maleness and femaleness
(1995, 22). The current analysis of indigenous Tboli conceptions of gender reveals
such ambiguities and complexities as they exist within ideologies of complementarity
expressed through musical aesthetics and symbolism.
Notions of female and male, feminine and masculine, complementarities exist as
conceptual categories and organising principles in almost all areas of cognitive,
aesthetic and material cultural domains of Tboli society. However, complex
dynamics interpenetrate feminine and masculine principles across and within social,
cosmological, economic, cultural, aesthetic and musical domains; and difference and
complementarity between women and men carry a certain degree of ambiguity and
mutual inclusiveness. This is revealed in the selected instrumental genre case studies
presented here, namely, seguyun and sebelang, which centre on courting and marriage
respectively. In these two contexts musical practice reveals arrangements concerning
gender that are not so easily recognised in other aspects of society. Courting and
marriage practices bring a particular focus to the way gender relations work
simultaneously on a number of integrated levels. Beyond this, there are many other
more subtle ways for engaging with gender in Tboli society which are not always
readily apparent; but sometimes they are audible.
Gender Difference
The Tboli are concerned with gender differentiation from the moment a child is born.
Various gender-specific ritual objects are offered to the midwife to ensure that the
childs soul is kept safe and that it develops the skills necessary to survive as a female or
male adult. Gender-specific knives, gongs and betel nut boxes are also offered as gifts
to ensure an attachment to the mother or father as well as to the family more generally
(Forsberg 1988, 1004). In addition, differences between women and men are seen in
the activities in which they engage and the kind of social and symbolic status that
attends such activities. The cultural differences between women and men in day-to-
day social routines are clearly evident. Young men are taught to gather firewood from
areas beyond the immediate community, such as the forest, while women are taught to
collect water inside the locality. Throughout adult life the daily work of husbands and
wives is shared or divided into tasks based on gender. For instance, men hunt while
Ethnomusicology Forum 227
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women cultivate garden plots around the house. In one of the most important
activities, rice production, specific rituals and work processes connected to rice
farming are seen as complementary and cooperative. The division of labour, however,
is not just a means of making rice production more efficient, it is also integral to ritual
process. These differences in gender are embedded in Tboli notions of lembang and
lemnek. Taken together, they define the basic conceptual relations of complementarity
between female and male and signify particular aspects of the socially enacted
dimensions of person and gender (Errington 1990, 1518).
Briefly, lembang denotes large or broad, and metaphorically refers to activities
which project the male into an extended public or extra-domestic social arena. Men
play a central role in the marriage negotiations which involve wealth exchange
(sesunggud) and their prominence is expressed musically in the special role that men
play in the setolu (singing debates) during the course of negotiations. Men also
participate, to the almost total exclusion of women, in the less formal system of
exchange called sewa, in the settling of disputes (sekukom), in community leadership
via the datu system, and in the control and direction of ritual, especially the grand
ceremonial exchanges known as moninum. A major activity of Tboli men is not so
much the provision of daily sustenance for self or the household as the accumulation
of food and other valuables for the purpose of entering into exchanges with other
men. And men may carry such influence with them into the public, inter-community
sphere of transaction.
Lemnek denotes small or tiny and refers to a wide variety of detailed tasks and
productive activities that women routinely perform. Such activities and their
products primarily meet the needs of the immediate family. They usually occur
within the confines of the household and in the garden plots or the familys rice
fields. Traditionally, women are responsible for the cooking, caring for members of
the household, looking after children, gardening, embroidery and ornamental bead
work. They are also responsible for the most time consuming and exacting task of all:
the production of tnalak cloth, which involves tie-dying and the back-strap loom
method of weaving. Tboli women, I was told, concern themselves mainly with
domestic activities because they are mothers; since women care for children and the
household they cannot participate freely in extra-domestic economic and political
arenas, nor can they travel widely. While some women work individually, others co-
operate as co-wives, or work in small, loosely organised, neighbourhood reciprocal-
help groups. And even when the fruits of womens labour are distributed extensively,
the inter-community distributive institutions are normally managed by men. Tboli
women can and do exert influence on the negotiation and distribution of material
wealth, but they normally do so through familial, intra-community mechanisms. The
economic activities of Tboli women then are defined to be less public and less wide-
ranging than those of men.
The Tboli case provides a classical instance of the notions of public and
domestic as expounded by Rosaldo (1974). Rosaldo uses the structural opposition
public/domestic to identify and explore the place of male and female in
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psychological, cultural, social, and economic aspects of human life (1974, 24).
Domestic refers to those minimal institutions and modes of activity that are
organized immediately around one or more mothers and their children; public refers
to activities, institutions, and forms of association that link, rank, organize, or
subsume particular mother-child groups . . . (ibid.). However, as Rosaldo maintains,
this opposition does not determine cultural stereotypes or asymmetries in the
evaluation of the sexes, but rather underlines them, to support a very general . . .
identification of women with domestic life and of men with public life (ibid., 24).
This has clear parallels with the pattern of complementarity that pervades Tboli
cosmology and should not be viewed exclusively in terms of prestige and power.
Public negotiation, transaction and instrumentality are not the sole or principal
markers of power and prestige in Tboli society. In some Western societies, the
tendency is for power and status to be identified with economic control and, as a
result, any status or prestige not linked to it we tend to conceptualize as empty
prestige, mere symbolism (Errington 1990, 5). Tboli women attain considerable
status within a locally constructed prestige system (ibid., 10). The products of
womens labour are highly valued. For example, the elaborate tnalak weaves may be
used as a form of economic exchange as they are sold into the international tourist
trade in Manila, the nations capital. The women weavers who produce this cloth,
especially those ranked highly for their technical and creative skills, earn much
prestige within their community. Up until the time of her death in 2000, Ye Lo was
one of the most esteemed weavers in the Lake Sebu area. She held considerable
authority in her community of Lemehek, not only because of her splendid weaves,
which were a valuable source of income for her family, but also because of her
persuasiveness and persistence as a spokesperson for her community, particularly
through her long-standing relationship with the Santa Cruz Mission, an organisation
that held considerable political and economic authority within the Lake Sebu region.
Ye Lo supplied the Missions handicrafts trade with her superb weaves, and she was
consulted by them on important community matters. Sometimes she would seek my
support in the expectation that it would enhance her social capital.
Women who are highly skilled in the performing arts are also accorded prestige.
Thus, the famous epic singer Mendung Sabal, the lute player and dancer Ganay
Delikan, and the alluring Ye Gas, a singer of a more recent style of flirtatious and
provocative courting songs, are famous in their own right. Mendung Sabals
reputation, in particular, extends well beyond her community of Tubialla. Her
performance of the Tboli epic song, the Tudbulul, has been recorded and heard
beyond the Tboli region. She was commissioned in the early 1980s by Manuel
Elizalde, former confidant and ally of the then President of the Philippines, Ferdinand
Marcos, to perform for him privately. Elizaldes discovery of Mendung attracted the
kind of positive attention he needed to justify his self-appointed role as cultural
caretaker of tribal Filipinos, which he executed through his organisation, PANAMIN
(Presidential Assistance for National Minorities). Mendung also performed, along
with South African diva Miriam Makeba, for the former Prime Minister of Australia,
Ethnomusicology Forum 229
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Paul Keating, at a private function that concluded the 1997 Brisbane Biennial Festival
of Music. After I introduced Mendung to Keating at the event, she addressed him as
bong datu (grand chieftain) and improvised a song that simultaneously praised him
and asked for his support. Her singing has been recorded by ethnomusicologists (see
Mora 1997; Nono 2002) and her biography and epic singing is the subject of an
extensive study (Mora in preparation) Mendung now works for an NGO in Davao
city as a weaver.
Women of prestige, such as Mendung Sabal, Ganay Delikan and Ye Lo, are exalted
with the title of boi, the female counterpart to the status of datu (powerful, wealthy,
chieftain). The concept of boi is embedded in the creation myth of Lake Sebu (Tutul
Sebu), a long spoken tale that recounts the creation of the cosmos and the ascension
into the upper world of the female ancestral deity, Boi Henwu, who bequeaths the
arts of weaving, music and embroidery to the Tboli (Mora 1987, 2005). Finally, the
Tboli also recognise a womans prestige as principal wife and they give women equal
access to highly valued spiritual power as mediums, dreamers and healers, a feature of
their society that differs from other parts of Southeast Asia, such as Java, where
spiritual power is normally reserved for men (Brenner 1998).
Alongside the Tboli women who have gained prestige within traditional social
structures is an emerging group of younger, formally educated women who exert
significant influence on community matters. Some of these women earn salaries and
practise professions that have earned them social and political capital within and
outside the Tboli region. They work beyond the confines of the domestic setting, in
government or missionary schools, health clinics and other modern institutions
introduced into Tboli society in recent decades. A case in point is Maria Gandam,
Chairperson of the Executive Committee of the Santa Cruz Mission in the poblacion
of Lake Sebu, a position previously held by an American Passionist priest, Rex
Mansman, for almost 30 years. Another case is Myrna Pula who has worked for the
past 20 years as a librarian and researcher of Tboli culture for the Santa Cruz
Mission. She has also worked as a translator and tour guide, as a broker for the
production and selling of local artifacts, as a representative for the Tboli at the
National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women, and as an ethnographer and
research assistant for scholars, including myself. She has undertaken these
responsibilities while also managing the family farm and making ends meet on a
daily basis. The diverse tasks that such women perform may be viewed as a
contemporary adaptation of the traditional female role of opportunistic forager,
which once involved anything and everything from tending to garden plots around
the house, to harvesting wild fruits and berries and shell-fishing in the upland forests
and lakes. Through their work and influence Tboli women like Maria Gandam and
Myrna Pula earn prestige and authority; but their accorded status also means that
they are expected not only to meet the requirements of their extended families but
also to help, wherever possible, other individuals who are part of an extensive social
network. Over the many years of my association with the Tboli, I have witnessed the
capacity of these women to fulfil the expectations both of their kinsfolk and of other
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members of the community, and the subsequent respect that they have earned. These
women have attained prestige and power in a similar way to the Wana women as
reported by Atkinson and Errington, that is, they have not so much transgressed
social codes as overcome the odds (1990, 83), a point also noted by Cannell (1999,
50) with respect to the social and political status of women in the Bicol lowlands of
the Philippines.
What these cases indicate is that the dynamics of gender in Tboli society are
changing and that scholars need to take account of the new forms of knowledge and
power that are part of an emerging Tboli modernity, one where traditional modes of
social behaviour and thought exist alongside those recently introduced through
intensified contact with lowland Filipinos. Nevertheless, the important point in
relation to traditional social practices and womens artisan activities is that the use of
their skills and the distribution of their products normally lie within the domain of
the public, inter-community activities of men. In this sense, as Rosaldo succinctly
puts it, the women are providers and the men transactors (1974, 24). The work of
women and men is part of a universe where social behaviour, symbolic values and
prestige are predicated upon difference and complementarity, as expressed in the
concepts of lembang and lemnek. Yet the public/private schema is not one that should
be understood in terms of a rigid dichotomy. Even in the more traditional contexts
the two domains interpenetrate as we shall see in relation to Tboli musical practice.
The Gendering of Musical Instruments
The social categories of lembang and lemnek are mapped onto instrumental
performance; they form the conceptual or organisational principles of the instru-
mental tradition as system. The affective, symbolic and social attributes that are
ascribed to women and men are considered to be analogous with the particular
acoustical qualities and limitations of musical instruments and, by extension, their
social functions. The similarities between the attributes ascribed to gender and
musical instruments resonate with the extensive use of analogy and metaphor within
the cultural and social life of the Tboli. The Tboli notion of heled is the general term
for the use of analogy, allegory, metaphor and simile in a wide range of social
situations. Tboli chieftains (datu), arbiters (tau mogot) and debating singers (tau
lemingon setolu) are particularly adept at using analogy and metaphor when
attempting to influence an audience through rhetoric. Ballads and stories are replete
with metaphors and similes that describe the physical attributes of a lover in terms of
natural phenomena such as mountains, trees or flowers. The characteristic behaviour
and attributes of particular species of wildlife serve as metaphors and allegories for
human strengths and weaknesses or as cautionary tales. The heavenly bodies,
especially the sun and moon, are metaphors for fundamental cosmological principles,
including those manifested as human attributes and gender differentiation.
Metaphors are also used to describe musical attributes and processes. Such practices
are, of course, not unique to the Tboli; they are a constitutive cognitive phenomenon
Ethnomusicology Forum 231
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general to humanity, but the Tboli are particularly adept at extending the meaning of
a word or concept from its core context to another (see Mora forthcoming).
Thus, the acoustical qualities and aesthetic attributes of musical instruments are
located within the broad gendered framework of lembang/lemnek. That is to say,
instruments are classified according to whether they exhibit lembang or masculine
qualities (for example gongs and drums) or lemnek or feminine qualities (for
example lutes and zithers). In performance, this means that musical instruments
have a tendency (though not exclusively) to appear in public or private contexts
respectively.
The renowned epic singer, multi-instrumentalist and shamanic healer, Mendung
Sabal, indicated the close connection between instruments and their affinities with
gender attributes. Mendung elaborated upon these associations with close reference
to the two most popular and widely distributed musical instruments, the two-
stringed lute (hegelung) and the set of large suspended gongs (slagi):
It is easy to learn the gongs because you can pick it up easily, but the lute is difficult
to learn. It is like the work of a woman, lemnek. It is true that the work of a woman
is not heavy, not so painful, but it is very lemnek, just like the utom [composition]
of the lute. The gongs are like the work of a man, like ploughing the fields and
cutting trees. All of that is easy for men to do even though it is heavy. But it doesnt
compare to the work of a woman, just like the lute. Ma Sembalod [Gloyan Kan]
says, that if I hear the sound of the gongs it brings to mind kimu lembang [big
property]. But the lute is like nawa lemnek [refined emotion], it is like Ye Lo
[mother of Lo]. She is always occupied with many fine things; she is like two lutes!
The gongs are like the nawa [lit. breath, but can also mean character, disposition
or emotion] of man, and how he feels for a woman. But if we think about the lute,
it is like the nawa of a woman and her feelings for a man.
3
The differential technical demands, degrees of musical complexity and expressive
capacity of the two instruments are likened to the feelings, character and work of
women and men. They also stand, more generally, for the two basic categories of
instruments, the lembang and the lemnek. The former category embraces the larger,
louder, more vigorous and communal instruments such as gongs, drums,
percussion beams and pounded rice troughs; the latter includes the smaller, softer,
more subdued and intimate instruments such as lutes, zithers, flutes, jaws harps
and spiked fiddles. Mendung aptly chooses the references to Gloyan and Ye Lo, for
these individuals have provided model examples of traditional notions of male and
female personhood and success. Gloyans reputation as a headman was widely
known in the Lake Sebu region. His standing in his community of Bluno depended
on his ability to accumulate valuables, such as gongs and horses, through extended
exchange networks, as well as his generous and righteous character (heyu nawa).
Mendung focuses on Gloyans comment about the sound of gongs bringing to
mind big property because it highlights the economic value of gongs, as well as
the nostalgic associations their powerful sounds have for Gloyan and many other
Tboli. They recalled for Gloyan a personal history of extended movement into far
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away communities, of engendering new affiliations and strengthening existing ones.
Ye Lo, from the community of Lemehek, on the other hand, was a weaver
renowned for her unsurpassed skill in making beautiful, intricate and valuable
woven cloth. Her meticulous skill, patience and industriousness earned her the title
of boi, the first wife of the famous headman within the Lake Sebu region, Datu
Mafok. The important point here is the allusions to the complementary values and
attributes that mark a successful husband and wife team, as illustrated in the ideal
types of Gloyan and Ye Lo. This characteristic complementarity pervades Tboli
music-making and aesthetic sensibilities. Lembang and lemnek instruments are
musical analogues of the complementary social role of women and men and the
cultural values that attend them.
The Aesthetics of Complementarity
Gender complementarity is marked in music-making in ways other than in the
symbolic categorisation of instruments and their association with particular social
contexts. Complementary difference extends to theories about pitch differentiation,
to syntactical musical processes and to more general aesthetic dimensions of music.
First, let us explore how the metaphors of lembang and lemnek are interwoven with
another set of basic concepts, megel and lemony, which are also linked to the domains
of men and women, respectively signifying hardness and refinement. Thus, Tboli
musical instruments are distinguished through two sets of categories*lembang/
lemnek and megel/lemony*which provide a framework for the co-relations between
the symbolic and aesthetic attributes ascribed to instruments, their music and the
social contexts with which they are commonly associated. Figure 1 provides a
summary of the manner in which Tboli instruments are classified according to the
lembang-megel/lemnek-lemnoy dichotomy and their principal means of sound
production.
However, it should be noted that the categorisation of instruments according to
gender attributes does not determine the actual gender of the performers. As shown
in Figures 2 and 3, women may play gongs, which are lembang or masculine
instruments, while men may play lutes, which are lemnek or feminine instruments.
In this sense, Tboli women and men do not occupy separate expressive spheres in
music-making as indicated in many other studies of music-gender relations (Koskoff
1989, 1). Let me demonstrate this through two specific instrumental genres, seguyun
and sebelang. I will illustrate that while complementary difference, as manifested in
the categories of lembang and lemnek, is a powerful cultural theme that underpins
musical poetics, social categories and cosmology, it does not place absolute
restrictions on the musical behaviour of women and men in performance. Rather,
lembang and lemnek are aesthetic categories which underline a broad association of
women with domestic life and men with public life and the differential activities and
work styles that attend those realms. In addition, as we will see, Tboli
complementarity goes beyond the level of two-column analysis; in the Tboli
Ethnomusicology Forum 233
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234 M. Mora
D o w n l o a d e d B y : [ T B T A K E K U A L ] A t : 1 5 : 3 4 3 F e b r u a r y 2 0 0 9
context, few things belong to one category exclusively. As noted previously, gender
divisions in insular Southeast Asia are not strictly maintained, and when individuals,
actions or objects somehow cross the gender divide it is to be understood as more a
case of beating the odds rather than transgressing societal gender strictures (Atkinson
and Errington 1990).
Gendered Musical Contexts
Part of the reason why men and womens roles and activities are seen as
complementary and not subject to asymmetrical valuations by the Tboli has to
do with the particular nature of their dualistic cosmology and worldview. At a
conceptual level, the qualities, characteristics and entities ascribed to the female and
the male do not fuse dialectically into one higher form or entity. Rather, Tboli
Figure 2 Women playing the (male) suspended gongs.
Figure 3 A man playing the (female) two-stringed lute.
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dualism depends upon the coexistence and (inter)dependence of two entities in
relations of tension and mutuality which in turn undergird the efficacy of magic,
which is constituted by pairs of opposite and conjugal components. This dualistic
relationship is also intrinsic to the collective healing that is realised through the
complex cycle of marriage and renewal ceremonies called moninum. This
ceremonial complex reinstates and reaffirms both cosmic and social equilibrium
through the attraction and conjunction of the fundamental opposites of the female
and the male (see Maybury-Lewis 1992); for the ceremony not only reaffirms the
bond between bride and groom, but also their extended families and communities.
The power inherent in the conjunction of opposites, in particular gendered ones, is
also recognised in the beliefs and practices that surround the natural phenomenon
of syzygy (that is, when the sun and moon may be viewed in the sky at the same
time). The sun and the moon are celestial expressions of female and male difference
and the complementarity that underlies spousal relations (yehenen); they are
regarded as the eyes of the supreme deity (Dwata). When these heavenly bodies
look at one another (tengel bulon; syzygy) it signifies a portentious, magical and
creative moment in the Tboli calendrical cycle. The world, then, was created in
difference and is viewed in terms of the coexistence and complementarity of
opposites.
Many instances can be cited where female/male symbolisms are at work. However,
before elaborating my point about the specificity of Tboli gender complementary
difference through the two case studies, it is necessary to outline the basic
components of instrumental composition and their realisation in performance.
Musical Genres
In performance, all instruments manifest two basic, complementary compositional
components called utom and tang, which may be glossed here as figure and ground.
The figure provides the variable component, that is the melodic-rhythmic permuta-
tions, while the ground provides the stable, invariable component, that is the tonal-
rhythmic frame of reference, which is normally the lowest available pitch (Mora
2005). There is a cultural predilection for what I call individual and leader/helper
modes of performance. Individual mode is when one player plays both figure and
ground simultaneously. Leader/helper mode is when a lead player plays the figure and
another player supports with the ground. Let us pause for a moment, to consider the
underlying social basis for cultural preferences. The Tboli engage in both individual
and collective forms of work. For example, one of the primary economic activities of
women, namely weaving, normally involves one woman working alone; and it is
common for a man to work alone, for instance preparing a swidden at the boundary
of a forest. On the other hand, women may also work in small groups as co-wives or
as neighbouring relatives when weeding or harvesting the swidden, while men may
farm or hunt in small groups in a leader/helper relationship.
236 M. Mora
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Generally, there is an emphasis upon individual and leader/helper work activity.
If we look at the goals or motives rather than the outward behaviour of the
collective work cited above, we may discern an emphasis on an individual or a
leader. Collective activity, as Mead points out, is not necessarily the same thing as
co-operation. To understand the difference between collective activity and co-
operation it is necessary to consider the overt behavior of group participation as
well as the motives of the participants (1961 [1937], 1617). In Tboli forms of
collective activity, it is relationship between the helper/s and the individual whose
goal is served which is primary and not the goal itself. We may refer to this kind of
collective behavior as helpfulness as distinct from co-operation where it is the
individuals relationship to the goal itself which holds the co-operating members
together (ibid., 7). For example, when a Tboli man obtains help in preparing his
swidden, often from neighbouring male relatives, he is under no obligation to share
the products of the labour with his helpers, although he normally does just that.
Rather, he is obliged to reciprocate with his labour. The same condition of
reciprocity applies to a group of women working a swidden. Thus, in the mode of
helpfulness, there is an emphasis on the relationship of the helper to an individual
or leader. This emphasis is clearly indicated in the Tboli term for reciprocal
helpfulness or setobong (from se, signifying reciprocal relations or associations
between one and another, and tobong [lit. to help]).
4
As Buenconsejo suggests
(2002), reciprocity in the context of the moral economy of another indigenous
group, the Agusan Manobo, relates to arrangements of sharing which are different
from the relations of indebtedness and obligation postulated by Mauss in relation
to gift societies. Buenconsejo argues that sharing arrangements among the Manobo
are a force for social bonding and social inclusion, yet sharing also provides for a
measure of individual autonomy since it involves an act of will. Similarly, Tboli
acts of helpfulness do not diminish individual autonomy; they do not necessitate a
cycle of reciprocal acts, though the Tboli do have such gift-giving structures that
operate in different socio-economic contexts.
There is also an emphasis on the individual in Tboli instrumental music-making,
not only as evidenced in the prevalence of individual modes of performance but in
terms of the relationship between musicians in leader/helper modes of performance.
The Tboli view the person playing the ground (tau metang) as supporting or
helping the person playing the figure (tau mutom). Figure 4, an example of slagi
setang, illustrates the relations between the two components of figure and ground: the
vertical axis represents variation in pitch (from low [bottom] to high [top]) while the
horizontal axis represents time (left to right). Note the regularity and informational
redundancy of the ground (rhythmic/tonal frame of reference) and the variability of
the figure (main melody). Tboli instrumental music exhibits a wide variety of
combinations and permutations of figure and ground. The case study genres, seguyun
and sebelang, provide unique configurations and have been selected to illustrate
gender and musical ambiguity, in particular the interpenetration of female and male
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Figure 4 Slagi setang, utom slagi semfefay (the composition criss-crossing on the
gongs) illustrating the relations between the two musical components of gure and
ground. The transcription, taken from the authors eld recordings, is read from left to
right and down the page along each paradigmatic axis. The notes with upward stems
indicate the part played by the tau mutom (the person playing the main part), while
the smaller notes with downward stems indicate the part played by the tau metang (the
person playing the single-pitch ostinato). Kebuten refers to the start and kedengen the
end. The transcription uses a modied form of staff notation; the three lines represent
the relative pitches of the three suspended gongs.
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categories and the diffusion of each through the other within the broader
classificatory framework.
Seguyun
In the context of courting, the seguyun genre is performed using the two-stringed lute
(hegelung) and the polychordal bamboo zither (sludoy), which are played by a man
and a woman respectively. It may be recalled that these instruments are regarded as
possessing lemnek and lemnoy qualities; they are of the feminine and private or
familial class of instruments. However, the performance is a public expression in
that it broadcasts the fact of courting to the community at large. Thus, the seguyun is
identified with particular social meanings and contexts wherein the instruments
retain their essential femaleness and domestic characteristics, even as they are
performed publicly.
Tboli aesthetic sensibilities require that ensemble-based genres such as the seguyun
consist of instruments belonging to the same class. Essentially, this means that
ensembles comprise either masculine instruments or feminine instruments. The
differential aesthetic, affective and acoustical attributes of these classes of instruments
militate against their mixing in ensemble performance. The principle of male/female
complementarity is still operative but in recursive form. In the seguyun courting
context, the lute becomes an index of the man and the zither an index of the woman.
As James Fox points out, the principle of recursive complementarity recognises
the potential for one component of a complementary pair to contain elements of
its complement; thus, male contains female, female contains male, inside contains
outside, and outside, the inside (1992, 4446) and lembang performance contains
lemnek instruments, and so on. Marina Roseman identifies another complementary
phenomenon in relation to Temiar ritual performance whereby gender distinctions
are maintained but reversed. For instance, the free-ranging male of the everyday
domain becomes the earth-bound male of the ritual domain, whose consort is the
ritually free-ranging female component. Gender is retained, but the valences are
switched (1989, 145). The same principle of recursion, as we shall see later, applies to
the other genre examined here, the sebelang.
Returning to the seguyun courting ensemble, as illustrated in Figure 5 the lute and
zither performers each play his or her own figure and ground at the same time; no
leader/helper relationship between the woman and the man is involved here as in the
case of the gongs mentioned earlier. The composition is rendered by the ensemble
heterophonically, that is each performer plays the same composition but with
individual and unique variations without an attempt to play in unison. Since the
Tboli emphasise the individual in instrumental practice, an inherent conflict or
tension arises when two performers, each employing the individual mode of playing,
are brought together in performance. This situation gives rise to the musical
ambiguity that stems from a degree of autonomy in musical performance.
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At the same time, a favourable evaluation of seguyun performance hinges on the
performers ability to play the composition as one (sesotu utomle). It should be
stressed, however, that this does not mean unison playing; rather it means playing
with co-ordinated tempo and producing complementary and compatible rhythmic
and textural patterns. A performance which is not one, in this sense, is considered
selayok (fragmented, asunder). Yet, whilst each player adjusts his or her pitch for
internal consistency, there is no attempt to tune each instrument to a single pitch
reference. The lack of conformity to pitch in the seguyun genre, however, is at
variance with normal Tboli practices in lute and zither performance.
5
Sebelang
The sebelang features two pairs of performers playing at the same time. One pair
comprises the gong ensemble discussed earlier (slagi setang); the other pair consists of
Figure 5 The seguyun courting ensemble.
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drum and percussion sticks (tnonggong ne kasal). As shown in Figure 6, each pair plays
in leader/helper mode, that is one performer (the leader) plays the figure and the other
(the helper) plays the ground. Recursive complementarity is also found here. The
combination of the pairs in the ensemble is indexical of the conjunction of the bride
and the groom and their respective clans in the marriage complex even though the
instruments are classified as possessing masculine attributes or lembang (Mora 2005).
Another unique aspect of this genre is that each ensemble plays a different
composition or utom simultaneously, yet another instance of musical ambiguity and
autonomy. This practice normally results in two different tempi being played at the
same time. In contrast to the seguyun, then, conformance to tempo is not part of the
evaluation process despite the fact that this music is always performed with a dancer.
Indeed, any conformity to the same tempo appears to be more a matter of chance than
of intention.
6
What, we may ask, are the possible explanations for these apparent musical
ambiguities? In addressing this problem, consideration needs to be given to the
interrelations between musical structure, social contexts and underlying cultural
tropes. To begin with, the two genres are located within a common social contextual
frame. The seguyun is traditionally performed in the context of courting (sewol) and
the sebelang is connected with the traditional sequel to courting, namely marriage, or
more specifically the grand ceremonial exchanges known as moninum. Tboli society
is an exchange society that is based primarily on reciprocity and one where the entire
system of marital exchange they practice is predicated on the distinction between
Figure 6 The sebelang ceremonial ensemble.
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male and female (Errington 1990, 39). Hence the construction of a wide variety of
symbolic forms in terms of complementary opposites is socially motivated.
Courting and marriage are established within this framework of alterity; indeed,
social dissonance is sometimes implied in the relationship. That is to say, a
conjunction is sought between the most basic and dichotomous of social categories:
women and men. The intrinsic tensions in the male/female relationship are amplified
and elaborated in Tboli culture. Marriage is exogamous and the bride and groom
may come from communities where the potential for antagonism is present.
7
Inherent inter-community tensions and conflicts are dramatised during the
moninum, wherein the sebelang ensemble is performed. Among other things, the
respective communities of the bride and groom come together to renew and reaffirm
their post-marriage and inter-community affiliations. During the three-day ceremo-
nial climax (mulu), full and intense public expression is given to inter-community
competition. The tensions thereby generated are expressed through the practice of
sekoya or competition. Competition and rivalry are evident in various ways: in the
making of ritual presentations, in the singing debates (setolu) used for negotiating
marriage gift-exchanges, in the ritual horse fights (seket kuda) where combating
horses symbolise the polarity between the respective communities of the bride and
the groom, and in the dancing and instrumental musical displays (see Mora 1987,
2005). The sebelang manifests this tension through the association of complementary
yet quasi-autonomous pairs of musicians with the bride on the one hand, and the
groom on the other. The convergence of these events is tropologised by the Tboli as
sebelang or together, at the one time, from whence the ensemble gets it name. The
trope sebelang entails simultaneity of action. It refers to the multiplicity of voices and
ritual movements that are a feature of the moninum. The simultaneous performance
of distinct ensembles, as in the sebelang, is indexical of the multiple dialogues that
emerge from the convergence of the female clan and the male clan during the event
(ibid.). Thus, there is a simultaneity, but without any merging of action, in that the
musical agents of each clan maintain an autonomy and distinctiveness and,
simultaneously, a relationship of complementarity and mutuality. This dynamic of
mutuality is key to understanding Tboli gender construction and to understanding
Tboli musical aesthetics and organisation, from the classification of instruments and
their combination in performance to the compositional musical elements themselves.
Other Gendered Contexts
As already noted, gender difference is clearly marked in Tboli society, unlike certain
lowland Christian Filipino societies such as those found in Bicol where gender
differences are considered relatively unmarked (Cannell 1999, 50). The Tboli
recognise particular visible, surface aspects of anatomy and physiology as meaningful
signs of the social categories of male and female. For instance, the differential vocal
qualities of women and men are read as signs of gendered difference and pairing.
Elsewhere, I have discussed how the Tboli identify such signs in nature more generally,
242 M. Mora
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and how these are incorporated into mythical and poetic practices (Mora 2005). In the
creation myth, for instance, the paired, sexually dimorphic Crimson Breasted Barbets
(fu) embody the cosmological principle of complementary difference. The high and
low, antiphonal, interlocking pitches of the barbets are assigned to the female and male
bird respectively. In the myth, these paired birds are associated with female and male
ancestral deities, normative social relations and musical poetics. Thus, the outward
signs of voice pitch, as well as other physiological aspects such as colour, are connected
to notions about gender difference and complementarity. Concepts of dimorphism in
sex and gender roles, then, are fundamental to Tboli society.
8
Female and male genitals are another significant example of the cultural
elaboration of biological difference in humans. Genitalia do not simply refer to the
reproductive process but are interpreted as a fundamental condition of gender
complementarity and difference. Again this is illustrated in myth, in the origins of
women and men, of the sex organs and their connection to the social ritual of betel
nut chewing. When human beings were first formed, the agent of the supreme being
(Dwata), the Bowi bird, gave to men the betel nut (beliboy) which transformed into
the penis, and between the legs of women was placed the iko leaf which became the
vagina. Thus, pregnant women practise the ritual of rubbing a betel nut on the area
around the womb when a boy is desired and conversely rub the iko leaf on the womb
when a girl is desired. Both betel nut and leaf are the principal ingredients in the
preparation of betel nut chews (mamak), the consumption of which is a common and
important social ritual. The betel nut is wrapped in the iko leaf. When chewed, the
resulting compound produces a red-stained, fibrous liquid with a spicy taste and
piquant odor. The pairing of these female and male components and the resulting red
liquid is the mythological source of menses: the mamak red liquid and menstrual
blood are symbolic equivalents. The originary betel nut-penis and leaf-vagina, and
their blending, are also connected with the social transgressions of illicit sex, adultery
and murder. As epic singer, Mendung Sabal, explained:
From the iko that were taken by the Bowi without the permission of the spirit
custodian (funen) came those women who are deceived and mistreated. Men make
love to them in a stealing manner in the grasses, in the forest, anywhere but in the
house. But from the iko that was taken with the consent of the spirit came those
women who remain untouched until they are provided with the bride price
(sunggud).
And from the betel nut that were taken without the permission of the spirit came
those men who commit adultery. From the betel nut that were taken with the
consent of the spirit came those men who will touch a woman only when they are
wedded.
9
Genitalia, then, are not only signs of gender difference and pairing; they carry
metaphoric entailments that link to basic cultural notions of exchange and reciprocal
moral order. They embody cultural prescriptions about normative female and male
behaviour. When paired properly, under the appropriate conditions of exchange, they
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may bring about harmony and stability, but when paired improperly, without
recourse to principles of exchange, they are potentially chaotic and disruptive. As
Errington maintains, the bodys visible signs, such as genitalia, may point outward,
toward behaviour and social expectations (1990, 16) which constitute part of a
persons social identity and normative behaviour (ibid., 17).
This complementary pairing is found in the practice of magic when two spouse
components (yehenen) are combined to form powerful antidotes to evil, to attract
good and to protect the well-being of individuals and the family. Such pairing is part
of the broader recognition that the conjunction of difference, more specifically the
making of spouses, gives motion and movement to the world. It is partly this pairing
which gives ritual and magic its efficacy and power. This same quality and sensibility
underlies music-making. The pairing of female and male musical components and
qualities underpins the magical power attributed to reproductive substances, a
principle not unlike the cosmic dualism found in the mythologies of the ancient Near
and Far East, for instance in Zoroastrianism and Taoism.
Gender difference and complementarity are crucial to the creation myth, the great
rupture and rapture of mythical times (see Mora 2005). The fracturing and attraction
of opposites found in the convergence of female and male clans in the moninum is the
operation of a cosmic principle writ small. The musical ambiguities characteristic of
the sebelang ensemble arise from the recognition of gender difference and from the
maintenance of the various dimensions of difference rather than their conflation in
metaphysical or musical unities. This is an aspect of Tboli musical culture that
concords with the cosmological recognition of complementary difference, and where
oppositions are not fused into neat Hegelian syntheses but are in constant tension
one against the other.
Conclusion
The Tboli and their music exhibit some of the typical features concerning gender as
reported by anthropologists studying insular Southeast Asia. So what can we learn
from the Tboli, their music and its connection with gender? Firstly, the Tboli case
provides us with insights into how music-making works as a kind of performance of
gender by enacting the aesthetic, affective and symbolic attributes that are ascribed to
women and men (George 1993). In this sense, Tboli music-making can be said to
reproduce patterns of gender difference. At the same time, it provides ways of
countermining those differences; it provides avenues for women to participate in
aesthetic realms that would otherwise be occupied by men or for men to participate
in realms that would otherwise be occupied by women. Tboli music-making also
illustrates how practices that are considered to lie in one realm or another co-exist in
holistic ways.
The processes of gender complementarity and difference illustrated in Tboli music
exemplify the feminist position that gender is performative rather than biological,
and that what are recognised as distinguishing features of female and male behaviour
244 M. Mora
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are culturally and socially constructed in prescriptive and normative ways. As Judith
Butler reminds us, what we take to be an internal essence of gender is manufactured
through a sustained set of acts, posited through the gendered stylisation of the body.
In this way, it [shows] that [what] we take to be an internal feature of ourselves is
one that we anticipate and produce through certain bodily acts . . . (1990, xv).
At the same time, we should be mindful that as researchers we run the risk of
perceiving the relations of difference and complementarity between women and men
in other cultures as analogous to the unequal and hierarchical asymmetries that we
perceive in our own (Sarkissian 1999). The reproduction of complementary
difference in Tboli musical practice is quite literally a performance and is underlined
by patterns of gender relations that have provided, until recent times, social stability
and harmony. As traditional lifestyles have become disrupted, gender differentiation
informed by complementarity has become blurred and music aesthetics and
performance as a strategy for representing and reinforcing gender relations has
become increasingly contingent upon changing circumstances.
Notes
[1] This article is based on more than 20 years of eld-based research among the Tboli of the
Lake Sebu region. The research experience included an initial, general anthropological and
ethnomusicological survey of a region covering around 2,000 square kilometers, intensive
eldwork from 1983 to 1984, and again in 1985, as well as shorter periods of eldwork in
1992, 1994, 1997 and between 1999 and 2006. The author maintains regular contact with
various Tboli through internet and telecommunications.
[2] Around 90,000 Tboli occupy settlements scattered over numerous hills located between 300
and 900 metres above sea level and covering an area of about 2000 square kilometres. Prior to
the 1980s, the Lake Sebu highlands were the Tboli demographic and cultural heartland. In
the 1970s, the total population of the Tboli was estimated to be between 50,000 and 60,000.
By 1983, however, the records of the Santa Cruz Mission of Lake Sebu estimated the
population count to be approximately 70,000. Currently it is estimated at between 80,000
and 150,000. The wide variety in current population estimates points to the need for more
reliable census taking. Despite the relative isolation of the Tboli in the hinterland of Lake
Sebu, the wider region of south-western Mindanao is in fact a melting pot of numerous
religio-cultural groups including indigenous Muslims, immigrant Christian Filipinos and the
Chinese who live in the lowland areas, as well as numerous ethno-linguistic groups which
retain animistic or pantheistic beliefs and practices and who live in the highland regions.
Other groups which inhabit the Tiruray Highlands in addition to the Tboli are the Tiruray,
Manobo, Ubo and the much publicised Tasaday group. Many Tboli are still shifting
cultivators living in small communities of between ten and 50 households. Politically, their
society is traditionally decentralised with a chieftain (datu) serving as spokesperson for his
community and leading by persuasion rather than coercion. Datuship may run in the family,
but is normally achieved by men who have demonstrated leadership qualities such as bravery,
courage (lobo), skill in the settling of disputes, rhetorical ability and an extensive knowledge
of customary law (adat) (see Mora 2005).
[3] From an interview with Mendung Sabal, December 2002. Translated by Myrna Pula and
Manolete Mora.
Ethnomusicology Forum 245
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[4] The concept is similar to the Javanese and Balinese notion of gotong royong, community
reciprocity and co-operation.
[5] Before playing, a lute or a zither performer expends much effort and concentration in the
adjustment of frets and the tuning of strings for internal consistency. Similarly, gong players
often spend much effort in choosing, adjusting and setting their gongs for the appropriate
sound.
[6] Again, it is not the case that the Tboli undervalue attention to tempo coordination. We need
only consider the example of the gong ensemble, slagi setang, to appreciate the precision
which the musicians performing the gure and the ground respectively achieve in playing
together to a common, rapid pulse.
[7] See Mora (1992) for a case study of such antagonism which arose out of adultery and which
developed into a protracted series of inter-community feuds.
[8] Andaya (2000, 45) argues that sex and gender dimorphism in the West is largely a social
construction of scholars from the nineteenth century onwards. The Tboli evidence shows
that such dimorphism can emanate from more fundamental sources in other cultures.
[9] From an interview with Mendung Sabal, December 2002. Translated by Myrna Pula and
Manolete Mora.
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