Philippine Music - Influences Of The Music In The Philippines

Some things to know about Philippine Music. Check out below!

PHILIPPINE MUSIC – Here’s a historical overview and the cultures that influenced the music in the Philippines that you should know.

Music can do both things – describe your feeling and name your unnamed thoughts and emotions. Music can make one feel that he is not alone. But when it comes to this, it is also essential to know and look back at its history.

And in the Philippines, since we’ve been colonized by people coming from various countries, our music was a mixture of little things from these various cultures. The music in our country has a mix of European, American, and native sounds.

The Philippines is overly influenced by the West having been colonized by the Spaniards for over 300 years. The Americans also dominated the country for 45 years.

There are three divisions:

old Asian influenced music or the indigenous
religious and secular music from the Spanish and European
American/European-inspired classical, semi-classical, and popular music

We know nothing about the music before Ferdinand Magellan discovered the country but the friars, civil servants, and travelers did tell us that there were musical instruments before them. There are things made of bronze, bamboo, or wood.

Also, gongs of different sizes already existed before the colonization. There were also drums, flutes of different types, zithers, lutes, clappers, and buzzers. The songs were about gods, epics, and others that were related to planting, harvesting, and fishing. There were also songs about rituals and celebrations.

But when the Spanish-European culture came during the 17^th to the 19^th centuries, the music became more about religion. To recall, one of the greatest influences of the Spanish on the Philippines is Christianity.

And as for the Americans, they introduced to us other types of music like stylized folk songs, theater music, and instrumental music. We were also able to adapt to the pop culture resulting in Pinoy Pop. We now have folk songs, dance tunes, ballads, Broadway-type songs, rock’ n’ roll, disco, jazz, and rap according to a post from NCCA.