Being Filipino

These are songs that celebrate or depict our struggles, hopes, and aspirations toward a Filipino identity and sense of nationhood.

The Filipino struggle for freedom identity and dignity has a long and continuous history since the 16th century when Spanish colonization began. The Filipinos were the very first Asian peoples to wage and win a war in 1898 against Western colonialism in Asia. We were also the first Constitutional Republic in Asia. A commitment to one’s country and pride in being Filipino, though only discernible among a minority (thus, a subculture), is as alive today as it was in the past, and this devotion has always been well-served by the musical expressions of the nation, particularly the kundiman, a song of devotion to a selfless and noble cause. It is the kundiman that has always embodied the Filipinos’ intense and lofty patriotism, as in the songs Bayan Ko_, Jocelynang Baliwag_, and Sariling Bayan.

The kundiman is a tenderly lyrical song in moderately slow triple meter with melodic phrases often ending in quarter and half note values. It is mainly a song of selfless devotion to a loved one, the motherland, a spiritual figure, an infant, a lofty cause or an object of compassion.