THE FILIPINO SOUL IN MUSIC

Felipe M. de Leon, Jr.

The very essence of the Filipino soul is the genius in

connecting with anything full of life energy and vitality.
Anything alive attracts the Filipino tremendously! This is
the source of our tremendous joie de vivre and boundless
resilience as a people.
Filipinos of all faiths and from all walks of life
unconsciousy tap into this creative living energy by
connecting to people, who, of all the beings that walk upon
his earth, seem to be the most intensely alive, active,
sensitive, conscious and open to lifes infinite possibilities.
Hence, oneness with the vital force makes Filipinos highly
relational and participatory in essence, a soulful, heartoriented people. These principal values find their most
lucid mirror in the arts, especially in song, which is the
most soulful of art forms.
Lets begin with the voice. The Filipino voice is a most
expressive one. It is mellifluous, natural, intimate revealing the desire to connect not the athletic,
distancing, powerful vocal projections of operatic singing.
Wika nga, ang marahang pangungusap, sa pusoy
nakalulunas!
Filipinos love to have their souls touched/massaged
through the emotional directness of song. They love to
sing and be sung to. We like a song to be felt as deeply as
possible. Magaling dumama ang Filipino, gusto natin, feel
na feel!

Sociableness, wanting to connect to others, will result in

sentimental songs and songs that are light in mood,
nothing morose and heavy. In the ballroom this could be
the lilting rhythms of the waltz. Light music is the music of
social connections.
The gregariousness of the Filipinos makes them excel in
the social arts: furniture making, fashion, food, dancing,
singing, and the like.
We like to connect notes whenever possible. Filipino
melodies are full of curvilinears in their use of melismas,
microtones and smooth progressions mga hagod indicating not only emotional sensitivity and desire to
connect to others but flexibility and adaptability. We do not
like angular leaps in our music.
Related to our preference for tasty foods, many-colored
designs, melodic speech accents, fondness for jokes,
anecdotes and endless stories about other people, is the
strong Filipino tendency to perform because performance
is the best way to connect to others. Thats why maliit pa
tayo pinagpeperform na tayo. Our culture is virtually a
theatre laboratory.
Exploring feelings is exploring and making connections,
relations. Thus, it takes very little prodding for the Filipino
to open up and rhapsodize his emotions or bare his
feelings. Magaling sa pakikipagpalagayang-loob.
Oftentimes, the Filipino lover begs for pity in the desperate
effort to make a connection! This is emotions to the max!

The Filipino popular love song par excellence is the danza

or forms derived from it like the contemporary middle-ofthe-type of ballad that has been around since A Million
Thanks To You by Alice Doria Gamilla, followed later by
keyworks like Ernani Cuencos Gaano Kita Kamahal and
George Cansecos Ngayon at Kailanman, to the
quintessential contemporary ballad such as Louie
Ocampos Ikaw Lang Ang Mamahalin and Ikaw.
In the dansa, we can feel the sweetness and warmth of
romantic love. The dansa may regarded as a musical
portrait of worldly love. The kundiman, on the other hand,
is better understood as a song of devotion because of its
more spiritual character. Being in triple meter, for instance,
gives the kundiman an otherworldly quality unlike the
duple rhythm of the danza that makes it a more natural
extension of the duple rhythms of the human heartbeat.
This but to be expected since the dansa is a Filipinization
of the very sensual tango, which we transformed into a
song of the heart!
Truly, Filipino song is the most faithful mirror of the Filipino
soul!