Filipiniana.net, the premier Philippine digital library, brings to the Internet "The World of Agusan Manobo Music," as it hosts Dr. José S. Buenconsejo's multimedia interpretation of an ethnolinguistic group that populate the eastern part of Mindanao — the Agusan Manobos. Focusing on the study of the sociocultural importance of the indigenous group's traditional instrumental music, this project contains audio and video files of songs and rituals that vividly reflect the ethnonational consciousness, societal structures, customs, traditions, belief system and other sociocultural institutions of the Agusan Manobos.

In society, music does not exist alone. It is multimedia. Instrumental music, for example, is linked to myths of nature, propels and synchronizes dance movements, and it can simulate speech. More importantly, Agusan Manobo unaccompanied, solo song tud-om is associated with shamanic ritual performances. This verbal art is obviously multimedia for in ritual performance, participants experience song along with visual and kinesthetic gestures and objects. Hence, it is experienced multisensorially.

Manobo ideology of song points to the essence of what it means to be a person in society. The meaning of this vocal expression is brought to light when comprehensively explored within the context of song’s ritualized performance. Voice--the medium--of song is ambiguous because it is imagined to be located at the border of nature/spirit and human worlds. Voice emits from the singer’s body (the most fundamental medium) to articulate acts of compassion, particularly expressing a local ideology of sharing for survival. Song is therefore not merely envoiced--mere words--but conveys a gesture imbued with particular meanings. Sung to an Other, whose difference is respected and related to, Manobo song presences a self to the natural and social worlds. It is an ethical engagement.

Serving as an index to a self-other relationship in the space of performance, song parallels the gesture of offering the ingredients of betel chew to an interlocutor during face to face meetings in Manobo everyday life. Elaborated upon and transposed into diverse forms of other ritual performances, the act of politeness, hospitality, and respect for other beings is evident in the display of a myriad of objects that bear witness to Manobos’ presences via-a-vis the specific locations of their performances in the cosmos. All Manobo ritual objects are signs of the doer’s/maker’s presences--recognitions of Manobo relationships to those worlds--be that of nature or of society. Salient among ritual objects are betel nuts, rice and pig. These are consumed in elaborate curing ceremonies that end with communal meals. Food consecrated in ritual brings much joy to the Manobos. The medium’s dance in Manobo ritual--as theater--dramatizes the transformation of the initial spirit hostility in the beginning of performance into that of happiness in the end. Akin to magical speech, ritual actions remake a harmonious Manobo social order.

Thus, to explore the interconnections between music and the Manobo world, is to examine the performative contexts of music as multimedia, expressing multifaceted social meanings. Voice, body (gesture), and objects interweave a complex texture that constitutes the Manobo experience of music from this faraway place.