BANGSAMORO VIRTUAL MUSEUM
 Maguindanaon |  Tausug |  Maranao |  Yakan |
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Agong
This particular instrument is traditionally for male only. Somehow, thru the ascend of the days, women now are allowed to play the agung. The Agong, among the Maguindanon is only played by one person, while the Meranao play it by pair by pair. The agong, even it is one, two or three is played by only one person. A standard size of an agung is about 8 to 24 inches in diameter and about 10 to 12 inches ream.
Maranao
Ranau, the Austronesian root word of the language and the ethnolinguistics group Maranao, signifies “body of Water “ in multiple registers: lake, floodplain, sea, Me-is “to be”, inflecting thus Maranao with a notion of becoming vis a vis a water-dominated environment. The particular reference is the lake called “lake” – Ranau the rift lake, among the 15 archaic lakes in the world, cupping water in an elevated region of north central Mindanao. The language Meranau has no known dialect and is 87% intelligible with the language Iranun: 25% with the language Maguindanao. Together, these three languages comprise linguistics sub-group, the Denau languages. In isolation in a tropical rainforest ecosystem surrounding a lake with a substantial number of endemicfish, the Islamicized Meranau developed a material culture distinguished by virtuosity in ikat and tapestry on sil and okir arabesques in wood, brss and silver.