Mabuhay!

Welcome to your vintage and classic Philippine music channel at Youtube!

Philclassic set up this channel to present his PERSONAL COLLECTION of ORIGINAL vintage Filipiniana recordings so that the Filipino generation of today will discover and appreciate our beautiful Philippine music heritage which showcase a unique blend of western and oriental cultural influences.

Most of the old recordings here has been digitally remastered by Philclassic to restore and enhance the audio quality of the vintage recordings. Hours were spent in the process of creating the music videos presented in this channel.

Mahalin at tangkilikin po natin ang ating sariling musikang Pilipino!

Maraming salamat at mabuhay po kayo!

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THE DEVELOPMENT OF KUNDIMAN ART SONG IN THE PHILIPPINES

Long before musical instruments were invented, man had only his vocal mechanism to depend on in expressing his innate musical nature. He would beat two pieces of wood together or clap his hands and that already served as accompaniment to his songs.

Our Tagal ancestors, endowed with a natural gift for music, always turned to singing for self-expression. They had songs for home and labor called Diyuna and Talindaw. They had Uyayi as they lulled their little ones to sleep. For a boat song, they had suliranin, while Kumintang was a war song.

Centuries later, under the Spanish sphere of influence, other songs evolved, to mention a few like Tagulaylay, Awit, Balitaw and Dansa.

Above all these, however, it was the Kundiman which gained utmost popularity. Such might have been the case because the Kundiman best represents the peculiar sensibilities of the Filipinos. This typical song form, in fact, became so popular that the Philippines was referred to as 'the land of the Kundimans.'

The word Kundiman is a contraction of the Tagalog phrase "kung hindi man," meaning "if it be not" or if it should not be so. The phrase which denotes resignation on the part of a faithful and true but forlorn lover, generally dominates the lyrics of this magnificent love song.

Thus, when the Spanish colonizers cast anathema on anything that had to do with love of country, the Filipino natives adopted the Kundiman as their vehicle of expressing their unquenchable love for a woman who in reality was the Mother Philippines.

No wonder that the Kundiman, with its supposed to be romantic wordings has a decidedly nostalgic and passionate character that on the whole reflects extraordinary patriotism.

THE EMERGENCE OF KUNDIMAN ART SONG

The Kundiman which developed during the later years of the Spanish regime rose to its peak during the earlier part of the American occupation. That marked the golden era of this type of Philippine song.

Among the Kundiman composers during that period were Jose A. Estella, Bonifacio Abdon, Francisco Buencamino, Juan Buencamino, Leon Ignacio, Facundo Perez, and others. Then came Francisco Santiago, Nicanor Abelardo, Juan de S. Hernandez and Antonio J. Molina, who quickly rose to eminence as the foremost composers of the day, not only of Kundimans, but also of other musical forms like the sonata, concerto, suite and the like.

These were the men who saw and brought out clearly the rich potentialities of the Kundiman from the artistic view point. Writing in the Kundiman style with more technical facility and creative intensity, they, consciously or unconsciously, produced real art songs which, in the words of the American musicologist, Conway Walker, are indeed "graphic miniature music-dramas, small, yet susceptible of expansion at will, flexible as no other medium of emotional expression devised by man with the directness and exactness of an etching, and all-inclusive in its possibilities of emotional portraiture."


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DICLAIMER:

The materials presented here are not intended for commercial use or profit. Any commercial use may warrant royalties and/or compensation to the original publishers, artists and composers. The copying and distribution of materials posted here for commercial use is strictly prohibited by their original publishers.

This site is a non-profit resource and it exists strictly for the appreciation, restoration and preservation of vintage, traditional and classical Filipino music.

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