Philippine Folk Music

The traditional music of the Philippines, like the folk music of other countries, reflects the life of common, mostly rural Filipino. Like its counterparts in Asia, a lot of traditional songs from the Philippines have a strong connection with nature. However, much of it employs the diatonic scale rather than the more "Asian" pentatonic scale.
Traditional Philippine music is reflective of the country's history as a melting pot of different cultures. Among the dominant cultural strains noticeable today are Hispano-Mexican, American and to some extent Chinese, Indian and Islamic. It is thus difficult to strictly classify the whole corpus of Philippine music as either Western or Eastern.
A frequently used system is to classify it according to ethno-linguistic or cultural divisions: for example, traditional Tagalog music, which is somewhat more Hispanic in flavour, differs from Ifugao music & Maranao kulintang music.

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