Tag Archives | Philippines

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.

Going Gaga over Kulintang Gongs

Today we meet kulintang and “talking gongs….”

Filipino music tells the story of the Philippines‘ always-international history through its melodies, rhythms and choice of instruments. While some Filipino styles, such as Philippine gong music, retain distinct Asian origins, many traditional Philippine styles either originated during the Spanish period or became popular during Spanish rule by blending local traditions with Spanish melodies and rhythms. Among the most traditionally Asian of the Philippines’ musical styles, “Philippine gong music” comes in two general varieties — a “flat gong,” known as gangsa, that originates from Cordillera in the Northern Philippines, and a “bossed gong,” which comes from Islamic and animist groups in the Southern Philippines. In this video we see a kulintang gong ensemble, a tradition that exists in Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia among animist, Christian and Muslim groups.

Follow us to the Philippines

In our online class this week we visited the island nation of the Philippines — 7,107 islands to be exact — which is unique among Southeast Asian countries in the fact that its colonial history brought it under the control of both the Spanish and the United States. Filipino culture is a mix of Spanish, American and indigenous strains, with influence from others in the region such as China, Malaysia and Indonesia thrown in for good measure. Over the course of the next week we’ll clang gongs, flap our arms like butterflies and sing a surreptitious song about love.

What would you trade for a bagoóng?

“Sitsiritsit,” or “Sitsiritsit Butterfly,” is a Filipino folk song that is of unclear origins, but which may date back to Spanish colonial era of the 1800’s.

This “butterfly song” song likely refers to a flirtatious woman who tries to convince a shop owner that he is going to fall victim to ants if he doesn’t give her credit. Also, this Filipino folk song suggests ways the woman may exchange her child in the store for either a doll or a bagoóng, a Philippine food made of fermented fish. In the version we sing in class we forego the ants, dolls and fermented fish, but we do sing about butterflies and some of the other extraordinary bugs in the Philippines. This video offers a fantastic version.

A Political Filipinio Song about Pigs

Irreverent, challenging, farcical and in-your-face political, the Filipino band Radioactive Sago Project blends spoken-word poetry, punk and jazz to create a new, funky Filipino-global sound.

The band has been making musical waves since they formed in Quezon City in the Philippines in 1999, challenging convention with clever social commentary and twisting international styles fluidly in their songs. We don’t usually quote Wikipedia, but here we can’t resist: says the Radioactive Sago Project page, “In 2000, the band released its first single, ‘Gusto Ko Ng Baboy,’ about a young man’s fascination with pigs since his childhood. As the song progresses, it becomes a political tirade against corruption.” In this video we see them perform “Ayayay Sis Bumbay,” which features fewer pigs.

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.

Sitsiritsit Butterly, Sitsiritsit Butterfly

This week in our online class we sing our version of “Sitsiritsit,” a folk song from the Philippines and actually have a premonition. Soon we’ll be enjoying a season of songs from East and Southeast Asia, traveling, musically, to a dozen nations as we experience songs from ancient court music to the must innocuous modern pop. The video of this Filipino butterfly song leans toward the latter, but, dernit, those kids are cute.

Making Music in Manila — the Biggest Choir EVER

This week’s theme chases churchy music around the world, celebrating the fact that people everywhere celebrate it in their own way. Here we see a video of lots and lots and LOTS of singers celebrating; this Manila megachurch set the World Record for largest gospel choir.