?Dongadong,? ?tongatong,? ?balingbing,? ?saggeypo? ? Can you visualize these Filipino musical instruments? If you can?t, don?t worry too much about it because until recently, despite being an anthropologist, I wasn?t aware of them either. My excuse is that I took anthropology in graduate school, in an American university whose geographical specialization was Central America rather than Asia or the Philippines.

I suspect though that even if I had taken my anthropology in the Philippines, I would still be unfamiliar with the instruments. I learned to identify Western musical instruments in college humanities courses, but local ones were always distant and exotic, like the nose flute played by Gemma Cruz in a beauty contest. Even in the University of the Philippines, few people are aware of ethnomusicology, a field pioneered by the late Jose Maceda, whose ?Gongs and Bamboo: A Panorama of Philippine Music Instruments? I had to consult for a crash course on our own music.

I am hopeful this will change, with a growing interest in things Filipino. I would like to think, too, that the University of the Philippines (UP) will contribute through our restructured General Education (GE) system.

A few years back, UP moved into a GE system that allows students greater leeway in choosing what GE courses they want to take, as long as they earn 15 units of each of three clusters (social sciences, math and the natural sciences and arts and letters). Many of the new courses have enticing names. For example, our department formulated Anthropology 10: Bodies, Senses and Humanity, where we introduce anthropology by starting with the body, and focusing on the sensory delights of Filipino culture. Other course titles are simpler, and I?m quoting here from our university course catalogue: Music Literature 140 (Philippine Music I. A survey of Philippine music in its ethnic form) and Music Literature 141 (Philippine Music II. A survey of Philippine music in Western form).

Last week, to celebrate the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy week, our anthropology department teamed up with the College of Music to tap our GE students. I didn?t want another academic talk, so I asked one of our lecturers, Professor Arsenio Nicolas, to think of something ?for our jaded faculty and students.?

Arsenio?s appointment is actually with the College of Music, but his home unit allowed him to teach with anthropology starting this semester. He has an interesting background in ethnomusicology and archaeology, with a specialization in Southeast Asia, so I was still thinking he could lecture maybe about the musical instruments found in archaeological excavations. (These instruments have been found even in shipwrecks, a reminder that people have always loved music, finding ways to keep making music even on long voyages.)

Potpourri

But Arsenio came up with a brilliant idea: Why not do a concert? Back in the 1970s, working with Maceda, he had helped organize ?Udlot Udlot? on the UP campus, involving hundreds of students playing bamboo instruments. He suggested a scaled down version, training students in two of our Anthro 10 classes to use arnis sticks to play simple rhythms. To beef up their ranks, he recruited an undergraduate class from the Center for International Studies to join in. We thought we would dub the event ?Kalutang,? a term from the Hanunoo of Mindoro for percussion sticks.

We only had two weeks to prepare. Rej, an anthropology graduate student who is also into martial arts, knew just where in Manila?s Quiapo district to get the arnis sticks, and Andrew, one of our utilities people, was assigned to cut each of these rattan sticks into two.

Then Arsenio thought, why not bring in the students of Pat Brillantes, who had a Philippine Music I class. Note that these are not music majors. The College of Music graciously loaned us the bamboo instruments I named at the beginning of the article. The ?balingbing? is a buzzer, the ?saggeypo? a small pipe, and the ?tongatong? and ?dongadong? I will describe below.

As the date of our concert approached, Arsenio literally stumbled upon a group of UP Anido members, an organization of students from the Cordillera, dancing while playing the ?gangsa,? or gongs. It turned out that their adviser is Peach Mondiguing, who is also working on a PhD in anthropology.

In the end, our presentation became ?Sulyap sa Gangsa, Kalutang, Tongatong,? a glimpse into Philippine music. The students performed in the lobby of Palma Hall (?AS? to an older generation), seated on the floor. A public performance certainly wasn?t on the agenda of any of the students when they signed up for the course but they caught on quickly.

Racing off, jazzing up

There was very little publicity but because the performance was in the lobby, many students and faculty would pass by, and linger on. Some passersby asked if they could join in and we loaned them the extra arnis sticks, happy that we were getting students to appreciate music in a more natural setting. This is, after all, a generation that thinks of ?native? music mainly as colorful CDs of ?world music? imported from the United States and Europe on labels like Putomayo. This is of course screened world music, chosen more along the tastes of Westerners, and acoustically sanitized.

Performing in the lobby also allowed our ?musicians? to mimic village music, which is often impromptu. Two or three people decide they want to ?jam? and start something with whatever they have on hand, and if there?s nothing, the bamboo is available everywhere. A piece of cut bamboo, without any modification, would give you a ?tongatong.? Cut it to form something like the quill of a pen and you have a ?dongadong.?

?Kalutang? was intended to be fairly sedate, starting with slow beats that would accelerate, but Arsenio quipped after the performance that the students tended to race off. It?s probably a reflection of our times: Slow rhythms make people feel uneasy. Our graduate student, Rej, who plays the ?kulintang,? says that this tendency to use a quicker tempo is found also with younger ?kulintang? players.

?Gangsa, Kulintang, Tongatong? was a very small presentation but it has gotten our anthropology department thinking of expanding, maybe as more students take our GE courses, including Philippine music, of course. If the students decide they want to jazz up the beats, that?s fine. Edru Abraham and his popular Kontragapi, a student ensemble that handles different Southeast Asian instruments, have been doing this for years now.

Karaoke systems are here to stay, but what a shame it will be if we marvel at our own high scores (generated by screaming as loud as you can) at the cost of remaining ignorant of such wonders as the bamboo jaw harp (?barimbaw? in Tagalog), the shell trumpet (?budyong? among the Batak people) and all the variations of drums and fiddles (one-stringed, two-stringed, three-stringed) and zithers and gongs out there.

Visit the National Museum to learn about all this, or pick up Maceda?s book. Schools might want to order a set of ?Posters of Philippine Musical Instruments? from the UP College of Music at an affordable P300. Call +632 9527139.

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Email: mtan@inquirer.com.ph