The Arts...MUSIC, DANCES AND SONGS
Filipino music, dances,and songs unquestionably antedated the coming of the Spaniards. The Spaniards who came to the Philippines in the 16th century had observed and had written down their observations on Philippine culture including the native customs and traditions. Pigafetta, the official historian of the Magellan expedition, himself witnessed four young women in Cebu harmoniously playing with the native cymbals which they called platiles. A member of the Villalobos expedition attended a stately banquet in Samar where he noticed the native girls dancing to the music of a local orchestra. Ancient Filipino dances and songs were primarily done as serious occupations of the natives. Each tribe had its own musical instruments, songs and dances. The pagans of Northern Luzon had the nose flutes, bamboo mouth organs, harps called subing or aphiw, gansa or brass gong, bansic or flute, and colibao or long drum. The Visayans had the lantoy or flute, subing or a bamboo harp, paiyak or water whistle, bugtot or guitar, kudyapi, and sista. The Tagalogs used the barimbaw, kalutang, bigwela and kudyapi. The Ilokanos, likewise, used the kutibeng which is very similar to the Tagalog bigwela. The Moros from Mindanao played the gabbang similar to a xylophone, agong which is a bronze gong, tugo or a drum, lantuy or flute, etc. The songs were usually melancholic and woven around themes of love, woman and war. They were highly spiced with romance and poetry. The natives had war songs, festival songs, melancholy songs, religious songs, love songs, folk songs, ballads, heroic songs and different kinds of songs for harvests, for building terraces and houses, for catching fish, animals, etc. The kundiman, the kumintang and the balitao (a dance) at the same time were among the most popular songs. The Ilokanos had a ballad-epic song called dallot, depicting the life and heroism of Lam-ang, who according to his people, conquered the primitive tribes of Luzon.
In precolonial Philippines, songs were very closely associated with dances, so that a singer was also a dancer and vice versa. The most primitive dances could be traced to the war dance in order to incite the "warlike" enthusiasm of the natives. Natives performed the dances primarily to please the god and the anitos, and the spirits who, it was believed, were always jealous of the actions of the natives. They danced much in the same way as our modern pantomimes.
In religious dances, the dancer or the priestess danced to exhaustion, until she fell to the floor foaming in the mouth and was believed to be possessed of the spirits. Prehispanic Filipinos also danced to please themselves during their festivals and other merry-making occasions.
TM
