The Sounding Pantheon of Nature. T'boli Instrumental Music in the Making of an Ancestral Symbol

Lutes, Gongs, Women and Men: (En)Gendering Instrumental Music in the Philippines

“…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 T'boli (Mora 1987(Mora , 2005. Finally, the T'boli also recognise a woman's 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).…”

“…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 1987Mora , 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.…”

Som e música. Questões de uma antropologia sonora

“…Assim os T'boli do sul das Filipinas evitam a categorização de instrumentos isolados. Em contrapartida conhecem um sistema complexo para descrever e classificar os seus principais conjuntos rituais, sistema este ligado aos princípios religiosos e de cosmologia nativa (Mora, 1987).…”