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Philippines Music and Dance
Several different strands of music and dance from varying genres come together in the Philippines, drawing inspiration from the past and from present fashion.
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Tribal Music and Dance
Music and dance are an integral element in the life of the indigenous people. Songs and dances mark the major events in life - birth, circumcision, baptism, the onset of menstruation, courtship, marriage, sickness and death - and also daily tasks such as planting, harvesting and fishing, where singing and dancing get everyone 'in the mood'.
War dances were especially important when preparing to do battle, and tribes involved in the practice also had elaborate rituals around head-hunting. These dances may be stylized re-enactments of mock battles. This was both to reinforce good practice and to educate the young.
Instruments
There's a veritable orchestra of instruments in this musical world, most often simply made with natural products found locally in the region. Common instruments have different names in each of the regional dialects. However, there can be marked differences between the ensembles of Northern Luzon and the ensembles of Mindanao in the south.
Wind Instruments
Flutes are fabricated from slim sections of bamboo. The standard three-hole flute is played with the lips (the kaldong in Kalinga or pulalo in Manobo), while several groups also have the nose flute (the tongali in Igorot). Flutes can also be put together to produce polyphone pipes or panpipes (the diwdiw-as in Igorot and saggeypo in Kalinga), with several chambers of different lengths strapped side-by-side.
Stringed Instruments
The zither is a stringed instruments made from a section of mature bamboo with narrow strips of bamboo raised by wooden wedges to create strings. These instruments are knwon as kolesing in Ilongot or patting in Ifugao.
Lutes (hegalong in T'boli and kudyapi in Bukidnon) are common, but much smaller than European versions and they usually have two strings.
Bow-played instruments include several types of spike fiddles (named because they have spike coming out of the bottom on the body), including the duwagey, used by the Bilaan, and the biola, used by the Tausug. Spike fiddles have no fixed fret but fingers act as a moveable fret.
Jew's harp is the common name given to a small lyre-type instrument where the string is held between the teeth and struck with the finger and the tone of the sound is altered by changing the shape of the mouth around the string.
Percussion
Idiophones (instruments which vibrate to produce a sound when shaken, struck or scraped) or percussion instruments are used a great deal.
The kagul of Mindanao is one of the largest indigenous instruments. Five logs up to 2.5m (3 yards) in length are shaped and suspended, then struck with sticks to produce a range of tones. There are two players, one for the bass and another for the melody.
Bamboo tubes with seeds inside act as background percussion, while the bamboo 'buzzer' (balingbing or bunkaka in Kalinga) is a bamboo tube split at one end. Tapping the split end against the player's palm produces the sound. The buzzer is supposed to be particularly effective in driving bad spirits away, especiallu when groups of people get together to play it.
Metal gongs (gangsa in Igorot, agung in Manobo) are the most important idiophones and common to all tribes. In the south they have generally have a boss, whilein the north they are flat. The kulintang is a series of eight gongs in a row with a varied tone scale, very similar to instruments from Indonesia to the south. In the north two conical drums from the rhythm section to which flat gongs are added. This formation is more influenced by the drums of China and surrounding countries.