The Filipino Harana

Two musical styles that became popular in the Philippines during the Spanish colonial period (1565 to 1898) are the Filipino Harana and Kundiman.


The Filipino harana is a lyrical courtship style based on Mexican-Spanish traditions and kundiman is a passionate form of Tagalog romantic song based on Spanish melodies and song structures. Musically, as we can sense from this video, the genre is based on the Spanish/Cuban habanera rhythm (BOOM…BA-BOP-BOP), and takes the form of love songs strummed on the guitar in public nighttime displays of romance, traditionally with a boy singing to woo the girl he loves.

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