Voice (yageng or tingeg) among the Agusan Manobos is phenomenal sound heard from and produced by living beings in the world. As such, Agusan Manobos categorically differentiate animate sounds from inanimate ones, e.g., those produced, intentionally or not, by lifeless objects like tin can, bamboo, plastic ware, metal, wood, and stone—including the electronically amplified sounds of the radio. These are referred to instead as tanog. When asked if they could understand the language (ikagehenen) and messages (kalitukan) of animals, say birds or monkeys, Agusan Manobos readily agree that they could not, obviously describing the uniqueness of this vocal faculty—speech--to human community. Humans and other living beings have voices because they posses the vital principle of life. This is called the ginhawa of a human being.

The lack of inherent ginhawa in Manobo instrumental music seems to be the reason why Manobos have not been very musically creative in it. Yet despite this, it still  imperative for us to understand Manobo instrumental music in terms of local knowledge.        

    Instrumental music can be categorized into three groups based on the sonority of the music and therefore not exclusive to instruments per se. In the first group are instruments--jaw harp (kubing), ring flute (saguysuy), and bowed one-stringed lute (kogot)--that can simulate speech. In the second are instrumental music that is characterized by continuous drone-like sound (e.g., lip-valley flute pendag and, overlapping with the first category, the bowed lute). The repertoire of this group of instrumental music sonority is very small and most are simulations of animal and insect sounds.

    This contrasts with the third type of instrumental music sonority which articulates many dance-rhythms (lisag) (i.e., jaw harp, bamboo struck parallel zither takumboq, and the paired drum-and-gong or gimbæ and agung). Dance-rhythms invoke and evoke the sensation of joy and pleasure in the dancers.

    In rituals, particularly during the break when everyone waits for the cooking of the ritual food, participants take turns in dancing accompanied by the paired drum and gong. Most are mimetic secular dances and these, along with those danced by the medium in the ritual proper, are identified as having either “hard” or “soft” qualities, metaphors for the aesthesis or sensations of bodily gestures, particularly referencing the depiction of the transformation of spirit’s potential hostility in the beginning of ritual to agreeable hospitality in the second part when food is communally eaten.

    Thus, the three types of instrumental music point to the fact that Manobos never experience nor contemplate music in the abstract. Each instrumental music has specific connotations that do not exist apart from the normative performative context in which each instrumental music is articulated. Manobos do not mix one category of sound with another one (e.g., jaw harp with flute or song with dance-rhythm instruments) because ideas about musics’ sonorities are linked to the musics’ inherent performance contexts and meanings.