A gong is a percussion instrument originating in East Asia and Southeast Asia. A gong is a flat, circular metal disc that is typically struck with a mallet. They can be small or large in size, and tuned or can require tuning.
As it is a country with many different tribes and ethnic groups, the music of Indonesia itself is also very diverse, coming in hundreds of different forms and styles. Every region has its own culture and art, and as a result traditional music from area to area also uniquely differs from one another. For example, each traditional music are often accompanied by their very own dance and theatre. Contemporary music scene have also been heavily shaped by various foreign influences, such as America, Britain, Japan, Korea, and India.
Kulintang is a modern term for an ancient instrumental form of music composed on a row of small, horizontally laid gongs that function melodically, accompanied by larger, suspended gongs and drums. As part of the larger gong-chime culture of Southeast Asia, kulintang music ensembles have been playing for many centuries in regions of the Southern Philippines, Eastern Malaysia, Eastern Indonesia, Brunei and Timor, Kulintang evolved from a simple native signaling tradition, and developed into its present form with the incorporation of knobbed gongs from Sundanese people in Java Island, Indonesia. Its importance stems from its association with the indigenous cultures that inhabited these islands prior to the influences of Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity or the West, making kulintang the most developed tradition of Southeast Asian archaic gong-chime ensembles.
In the southern Philippines, tagonggo or tagunggo is a type of music traditionally played by male musicians dressed in their festive fineries.
A slit drum or slit gong is a hollow percussion instrument. In spite of its often being called a drum, it is not a true drum because it lacks a drumhead, the membrane stretched across the top of a true drum). It is classed instead as an idiophone in which the entire instrument vibrates, usually carved or constructed from bamboo or wood, in the form of a mostly closed hollow chamber with one or more slits in it. It is played by striking near the edge of the slit. In some designs, the slit is a single straight line; in others, the slit is used to create one or more "tongues", achieved by cutting three sides of a rectangular shape and leaving the fourth side attached. Most slit drums have one slit, though two and three slits occur. Tongues of different areas or thicknesses will produce different pitches. Slit drums are used throughout Africa, Southeast Asia, and Oceania. In Africa such drums, strategically situated for optimal acoustic transmission, have been used for long-distance communication.
The Maguindanaon people are an Austronesian ethnic group from the Philippines. The Maguindanaon are part of wider political identity of Muslims known as Moro, who constitute the third largest ethnic group of Mindanao, Sulu and Palawan. The Maguindanaons constitute the ninth largest Filipino ethnic group and are known for being distinguished in the realm of visual art. They have been renowned as metalworkers, producing the wavy-bladed keris ceremonial swords and other weapons, as well as gongs. The Maguindanaons historically had an independent sultanate known as the Sultanate of Maguindanao which comprises modern day Maguindanao del Norte, Maguindanao del Sur, Zamboanga Peninsula, Davao Region and Soccsksargen. The name "Maguindanao/Magindanaw" itself was corrupted by Spanish sources into "Mindanao", which became the name for the entire island of Mindanao.
The kagul is a type of Philippine bamboo scraper gong/slit drum of the Maguindanaon and Visayans with a jagged edge on one side, played with two beaters, one scraping the jagged edge and the other one making a beat. The Maguindanaon and the Banuwaen use it in the rice paddies to guard against voracious birds, using the sound it produces to scare them away. The Maguindanaon and the Bukidnon also used to use it for simple dance rhythms during social occasions. The rhythms were usually simplistic in nature, consisting of one rhythmic pattern sometimes combined with another. Use of the kagul in the former way is no longer practiced.
The agung is a set of two wide-rimmed, vertically suspended gongs used by the Maguindanao, Maranao, Sama-Bajau and Tausug people of the Philippines as a supportive instrument in kulintang ensembles. The agung is also ubiquitous among other groups found in Palawan, Panay, Mindoro, Mindanao, Sabah, Sulawesi, Sarawak and Kalimantan as an integral part of the agung orchestra.
The babandil is a single, narrow-rimmed Philippine gong used primarily as the “timekeeper” of the Maguindanao kulintang ensemble.
The dabakan is a single-headed Philippine drum, primarily used as a supportive instrument in the kulintang ensemble. Among the five main kulintang instruments, it is the only non-gong element of the Maguindanao ensemble.
A kendang or gendang is a two-headed drum used by people from the Indonesian Archipelago. The kendang is one of the primary instruments used in the gamelan ensembles of Javanese, Sundanese, and Balinese music. It is also used in various Kulintang ensembles in Indonesia, Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines. It is constructed in a variety of ways by different ethnic groups. It is related to the Indian double-headed mridangam drum.
Struck idiophones is one of the categories of idiophones that are found in the Hornbostel-Sachs system of musical instrument classification.
The kulintang a kayo is a Philippine xylophone of the Maguindanaon people with eight tuned slabs strung horizontally atop a padded wooden antangan (rack). Made of hand-carved soft wood such as bayug or more likely tamnag, the kulintang a kayo is rarely found except in Maguindanaon households which have a strong kulintang musical heritage. Traditionally, this homemade instrument was used for self-entertainment purposes inside the house, so that beginning musicians could practice kulintang pieces before performing them on the full-sized metal kulintang sets. Only recently have these instruments been used as part of a wooden kulintang ensemble. This ancient instrument is considered to have existed in the Philippines before the importation of metal gongs from China and therefore is considered a precursor to the present-day kulintang.
The kulintang a tiniok is a type of Philippine metallophone with eight tuned knobbed metal plates strung together via string a top a wooden antangan (rack). Kulintang a tiniok is a Maguindanaon term meaning "kulintang with string," but they also could call them kulintang a putao, meaning "kulintang of metal." The Maranao refer to this instrument as a sarunay, terminology which has become popular for this instrument in North America. This is considered a relatively recent instrument and surprisingly many of them are only made of tin-can. Like the kulintang a kayo, it is used only for self-entertainment purpose in the home, to train beginners on new songs before using the kulintang and in America, master artists have been training students en masse on these instruments.
The kutiyapi, or kudyapi, is a Philippine two-stringed, fretted boat-lute. It is four to six feet long with nine frets made of hardened beeswax. The instrument is carved out of solid soft wood such as that from the jackfruit tree.
Singkil is an ethnic dance of the Philippines that has its origins in the Maranao people of Lake Lanao, a Mindanao Muslim ethnolinguistic group. The dance is widely recognized today as the royal dance of a prince and a princess weaving in and out of crisscrossed bamboo poles clapped in syncopated rhythm. While the man manipulates a sword and shield, the woman gracefully twirls a pair of fans. The dance takes its name from the belled accessory worn on the ankles of the Maranao princess. A kulintang and agung ensemble always accompanies the dance. Singkil has evolved over time, with significant reinterpretations and changes introduced by the Bayanihan folk dance group, such as the incorporation of the elements from the Darangen epic, particularly the episodes involving Prince Bantugan and Princess Gandingan.
Philippine traditional musical instruments are commonly grouped into four categories: aerophones, chordophones, membranophones, and idiophones.
The Maguindanao kulintang ensemble is a musical ensemble in the kulintang tradition of the Maranao and the Maguindanao. Other forms of the kulintang ensembles are played in parts of Southeast Asia especially in the eastern parts of Maritime Southeast Asia — the Southern Philippines, Eastern Indonesia, Eastern Malaysia, Brunei and Timor. There are mainly five instruments on the ensemble: Kulintang, Agung, Gandingan, Babendil and Dabakan.
Samaon Sulaiman was a Filipino musician who is a recipient of the National Living Treasure award. The Maguindanaon is known for his mastery of the indigenous kutyapi instrument.
