Dam-mag

A Time of Passing

The passing of a loved one is always a sad affair among tribal peoples. Just like with other faiths, cultures and societies around the world, death heralds the transition of a soul from his earthly life towards the great beyond. From mortality to the immortal world.

woman playing agung

Among the Bagobo people, there are many practices as well as prohibitions during time of death. Chief among these practices is a musical ritual called “dam-mag”. During wakes, the dam-mag would be played announcing a death in the community. The playing involves the constant tapping of two large gongs usually in the same beat fashion and tempo, with a tapping instrument called ‘tap-tap”.

portrait

In the olden days as it is today, the dam-mag informs the people of the community of a death of a friend, neighbor and to someone even more important, a Chief or a Datu. Furthermore, the musical reverberation of the agung draws people from across mountains, rivers and valleys to congregate during the sad tidings.

a ritualist plays the dammag death ritual

During this time, it is expressly forbidden for the immediate family or any member thereof to take part in the ceremonies, rituals, or in the serving of the relatives and guests. Bagobos believe that should an immediate member of the family of the deceased even take part in the ceremony of the dam-mag, it would be tantamount to a making of a plea for those departed to take him with them in the after-life. This is a taboo that is being enforced among the Davao lumads even today.

agung drummers during a wake

Another common practice during the time of bereavement is the guarding of the physical body of the deceased. It is believed that once a body has been emptied of its rightful owner or soul, evil spirits called “busow” might enter the body and thereby possess it. Extreme care is also taken that the body is not jumped over animals like cats as there is another belief that when these happen, the dead person will suddenly rise.

When a person dies, they believe that his soul or ‘gimokod” travels to the region where the Chief of Souls whom they call Moivuyan resides. This region is named “ingod ni Moivuyan”. Moivuyan is the caretaker of souls who cross from life to death.

In this particular region too, a soul will be bathed in a place called’ “oweg no kolingawan”, in English known as “the water of forgetting”. The being who resides in this place will pour water over the passing soul and thereafter the soul forgets many things and concerns about its former life on earth. It is akin to that being disrobed of one’s garments after a long and arduous journey.

women sing praises and hymns

However it is also believed that from time to time, a soul is allowed to visit the earthly spheres to visit his loved ones and friends and in unusual instances, even permitted to interfere in the affairs of men by way of dreams, miracles or supernatural apparitions.

women folk dance to celebrate the deceased journey into the after life

Omet Onse, the Agung player

Bagobo giangan Omet Onse +, playing the agung (image taken in 2008 using N95 Nokia Phone model)

Bagobos are such prolific agung (ahung) players. If you had that chance of visiting Davao City here in Mindanao and checking out tribal communities in the area, you will find that some lumad families own an agung set. Chances are, it had been handed down from their ancestors, of whose agung set dated back from pre-colonial times. By tradition, a family who owns such musical bronze pieces was required that at least one of them knows how to play it.

In the upper Baguio district of Davao in the family of Onse, (descendants of Datu Abeng of Calinan), one such player was a Bagobo-giangan named Omet Onse. He was one of the two in the Onse family (Ambit Onse being the other and now deceased), who could still play the agung.  Omet played pieces from an almost bygone era of Bagobo life. Musical pieces that are familiar to many Bagobos would include the tagung-gu, sowroy, tinok-ka, inday-inday and many meaningful others. He was also a teacher to Dabawenyong Lumad.

But sadly, last Tuesday, this month of October of 2012, he expired on the account of a lingering illness, called cancer.

You see, here lies our predicament as a people: as we struggle to preserve our last remaining cultures, most of us are overtaken by disease, poverty and most of the time, death. Compounding the struggle is the aggressive advancement of both crass commercialism and aggressive evangelization into lumad communities. Truth be painfully told, new generations of lumad children are straying away from old traditions. Even knowledgeable agung players are fast dwindling.

The confluence of all these things grieves me and makes me reflect on how I can best help my own community in preserving a dying culture, using the talents and skills that I have earned from the best of both worlds: my culture and my modern education.

As for Omet Onse, he will be missed as with all the other Datus and Chieftains who have struggled to preserve the many unwritten stories, the music and the gallant way of life of the lumad.

Lumad Children

Lumad children are a very important part of the tribal community. They not only represent a family’s stature but more importantly, the continuance of the lumad way of life. Similar with other cultures from around the world, children are an assurance that life must go on: that a community will continue to thrive on its own ideals, culture and identity.

In the Bagobo way, children popularly learn by “doing or through oral instruction”. Adults typically show them how a thing is to be done and the children just follow suit. Planting crops, weaving, hunting or even using the guidance of stars and planets (baatik’ ) as basis for agriculture are taught directly through a demonstration of that skill.

In the past, before the coming of the Spaniards, there were no classrooms as there were neither formal education to speak of. Everything had to be learned from direct experience. As a way of example, old Bagobos “teach” their young not to hunt for frogs in the river at certain times of the month.

Typically considered a house meal during the past, frogs are hunted by the Bagobos in the river at night where frogs are easy to catch by “spearing them” (manuho’g bak-bak). However, during certain lunar cycles, when the moon is at its zenith, certain poisonous snakes hunt in the river and may cause untimely deaths among the people hunting in the vicinity. During the occasion, there will be a scarcity of frogs in that river and that the usual noisy and “croaky” ambiance of that area in the river will be replaced by a “deathly silence”. Here, frog hunting will have to be discouraged among the men and the eager young boys.

In many occasions too, children are taught during evenings, but this usually involves teachings of morality, belief and stories of their ancestors. Since the day is generally reserved for the demonstration of a physical skill or technique, the nighttime is used for giving oral advice to young people.

One of the special things that are being taught to children during the evenings are lessons on morality. They are taught to respect their parents, grandparents and other people in the community. They are being taught that respect is the foundation by which a community is built. Disregard it and everything becomes chaotic or even violent.

Children are typically chastised on the value of hard work (in the fields or house chores), to observe  fair speech that would not offend others, to learn to listen more so that one would learn more, to be careful with pranks and jokes as it might offend other people and that you might get hurt, or to be careful with whom you associate with as it will have an influence in your attitude (such as people who continually drink and fight), to not touch other people or other people’s property as it might offend their sensibilities and taboos such as not to laugh at animals since its spirit guardian might punish you and make you ill or even laugh during an ocassion of storm or lightning.

If for some reason children do not follow the rules being set by their elders, they are punished. Usually this involves a beating or whipping. Thin but hard rattan or bamboo sticks are a favorite whipping tool of the old people. On some rare ocassions, even an abaca whip can be utilized to inflict pain just to prove the point.

Today, lumad children are provided with free education, healthcare and are slowly being integrated into the mainstream of the modern society. Both the national offices for the indigenous peoples and the local government in Davao assist in the delivery of these multi-services to “cultural communities.” Ostensibly, the objective is to affect the eventual “assimilation” of tribal peoples into the modern society.

Assimilation has its pros and cons. But that discussion is for another time.

Meanwhile in the hinterlands of Davao City, Davao del Sur and North Cotabato, where the influence of modernization is less apparent, lumad children still learn, the hard way.

A lumad girl wearing an abaca (hemp) inspired dress. The abaca-woven dress is termed as “inabal” in Bagobo dialect. Note the girl’s colorful sash and the basket (lob-ban) that she carriesat her back.  See also the leg bands (tikos) worn by the girl.

Lumad children in their abaca-inspired garment pose for the camera.