If you search "Dulangan Manobo" on Youtube, one of the top results would be a video that claims to feature a song for the dead of the Dulangan Manobo. The video shows two women in tribal garb, their backs on the camera, facing a coffin and singing in a tongue that would have been mellifluous had the circumstances been different. I had goosebumps while watching the video. Also, one question kept bothering me: Are the singing women really Dulangan Manobo, or is the video erroneously labeled?
I know a very few Dulangan words and I've heard some Dulangan speak among themselves using their own tongues, but my knowledge and experience is not enough for me to determine if the language in the video is indeed Dulangan. The setting itself is suspect. The wake is that of a non-Manobo man—a Christian, to use the word loosely—who had probably endeared himself to the tribal people while he was alive, so the scene is not a traditional
lumad funeral. The deceased,
a former communist leader and later government official, might have engaged with a lumad community for some time, but the tribe was probably B'laan, not Dulangan Manobo, as one short
biography of his states. Lastly, the clothes the women in the video are wearing, though tribal, do not seem Dulangan to me. The long-sleeved blouse of one woman is bright gold, and Dulangan women rarely wear such a color. The patterns of the skirts are also a little too fancy. They must be malong from Indonesia or Marikina.
At the end of the video, one of the women explained to the other mourners the meaning of the song. The audio is not very good, but I can figure out enough words to judge that she's speaking in Hiligaynon with a thick tribal accent, and she is speaking the same way the Dulangan of Kulaman do when they use Hiligaynon! The singers for the dead might indeed be Dulangan. I'm confused.
