BANGSAMORO VIRTUAL MUSEUM
 Maguindanaon |  Tausug |  Maranao |  Yakan |
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Gabang
The Tausug xylophone, consisting of series of bamboo bars, played by being struck with a wooden mallet. The sound produces when it is being played by a man or woman is called tahtah. It has become the popular musical instrument in Sulu. It is used to accompany Tausug vocal music as the sindil (a love song, sung in dialogue between two perfomers, one of which is a female playing the gabbang and the other a male playing the biyula (violin), usually performed during a wedding celebration or political rally; purely for entertainment) and kissa (story/ballad, emphasized the glory of the prophet and the Tausug warriors, and often narrates an account of creation of origins, of peoples, institutions, historical events and the important heroes involved). The same is also played during the wedding ceremony.
Tausug
People speaking Tausug (Bahasa Sug) arrived at the Sulu Archipelago some 8—years ago, in the estimation of the linguistics community. The language has the highest cognacy with Butuanon, a language of the northeastern Mindanao from where the Tausug speakers originated. Tausug, Butuanon, and Cebuano are classified as Central Philippine languages. The historical record is replete with information about the fast, vigorous emergence of the Tausug people in Sulu as early as the 13th century as a Muslim community abiding by the central authority of a sultanate, engaged in global commerce, literate in jawi and linked by alliance across the ports of Southeast Asia. This busy context rendered Tausug identity formation as, according to anthropologist Jowell Canudan, “a trajectory rather than as unchanging fact of being…a rooted cosmopolitanism that does not necessarily constitute a singular condition but rather a contested and distinctively multifaceted phenomenon.”