BANGSAMORO VIRTUAL MUSEUM
 Maguindanaon |  Tausug |  Maranao |  Yakan |
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Kuwintangan Kayu
It consists of five long, round, graduated round wooden beams hung on a tree or in the porch of the house if the field is nearby. This is played during night and day after the planting season, from the time the seed has sprouted until the rice is about to bear. The sound produced is believed to give joy to the palay, to hasten its growth and cause it to bear more fruit. It also helps the farmers work quickly and continuously without getting tired.
Yakan
Yakan refers to the majority Muslim group in Basilan, an island province just south of Zamboanga peninsula. “Basilan” may mean “the waterway into the sea” or may derive from the Yakan word for “the way to the iron” because of the presence of minerals in the island. It measures 1,358 square kilometers, the largest in the Sulu archipelago. Located at the northern end of the Sulu archipelago, it is bounded in the north by Zamboanga City; in the south by the Sulu archipelago, with Jolo as the major island; in the east by Mindanao; and in the west by the Sulu Sea and Sabah (North Borneo). Basilan enjoys good weather because it is located below the typhoon belt. Abundant rainfall throughout the year keeps the soil wet and fertile.
The island province has a mountainous terrain, with some peaks up to 1,000 meters high. There are three main waterfalls that provide waterpower: Kumalarang Falls, Busay Falls, and Bulingan Water Falls. The land is fertile and abounds with coconut, rubber, and fruit trees. However, this island province has not been spared the ravages of environmental abuse. Basilan’s virgin forests are virtually gone. It suffers from water shortage because of unabated illegal logging, which has destroyed Basilan’s forest reserves at the rate of 2,000 hectares annually. Forest denudation has reduced by over half the water outflow from its watersheds, caused heavy siltation, and dried up the two main rivers, Busay and Aguada.
Basilan is part of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). It is inhabited by five ethnic groups: the Yakan, Chavacano, Sama, Tausug, Sama Dilaut or Badjao, and Visayan. The 2000 government census reports a total Yakan population of 153,635, with 137,545 in Basilan and 16,090 in Zamboanga City. They compose 41% of Basilan’s total population of 332,828, thus outnumbering the four other ethnic groups in this island province.
The Yakan have Malay features. They are small in frame, with brown skin, slanting eyes, and black hair—characteristics similar to the Dyak of North Borneo, leading to speculation that they originated from this race.
They speak a language known as Bahasa Yakan, which is closely identified with Sama Dilaut and a variant of the Sama and the Tausug languages. These languages all belong to the Malayo-Polynesian family of Austronesian languages. Bahasa Yakan is written in the Malayan Arabic script, with adaptations to sounds not present in Arabic