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Sweetest Darling Who I Love

This week we learned about “Jocelynang Baliwag,” a famous “kundiman” (Spanish-era love song) popular in the late 19th century, during the Philippines’ independence movement. Just like the original, our version, “Sweetest Darling,” is a love song. Just like the original, the object of the song sounds like it’s a person, but in fact we’re all singing about how much we love the Philippines: “Sweetest darling who I love, purest flower of delight, You have been the only one to give me hope in the dark of night, In the morning I adore you, all day long my heart beats for you, Oh my darling who I love won’t you love me too?”

 

The Most Famous Kundiman

Filipino Kundiman is a genre of romantic folk songs that emerged in the late 1800s, toward the end of the Philippines‘ Spanish colonial-era.


A typical Filipino kundiman has a “triple meter rhythm” (1-2-3, 1-2-3), starts in a minor key at the beginning and shifts to a major key. A song we sing in class, “Jocelynang Baliwag” (“Sweetest Darling”), may well be the most famous kundiman. This song is from the late 19th century and was popular during the era of the Philippine independence movement. On the surface it’s a love song dedicated to  Josefa “Pepita” Tiiongson y Lara, a lovely woman from Baliwag, but in reality everyone understood the object of the songwriter’s longing to be the nation of the Philippines.