FOLK SONGS FROM THE PHILIPPINES

Taxonomy is something we usually learn in our Biology classes. Small animals, plants, fungus and all that has breath are sorted out according to their commonalities. It is with taxonomy that we came to know that we - human beings - are hmmm... distant relatives of apes, monkeys, gorillas, baboons, and yes, even the huggable tarsiers of Bohol, Leyte and Samar! Now look at yourself in a mirror and see for yourself whether taxonomy confirms it or not.  Keep the answer to yourself, you only need to be honest with your finding. Taxonomy is such an appropriate term to borrow if the need to classify, group and arrange things according to their shared characteristics, arises.  Philippine folk and traditional dances cover the far and wide and span colonial experiences.  It gets constantly updated and breathed with new interpretations. Pervasive influences from near and far continues to reshape (or rather, re-choreograph) whatever is extant and vibrantly performed in many commu...

The study of Philippine history during the Spanish colonial era is never a task solely relying on digging of chronicles, travel accounts, books published during that time, letters, government documents, statistical reports, catechisms and various ethnographic reports written (and most were published) by the frailes  themselves.  While the invaluable pieces of information the aforementioned offered can't be discounted, something  as paramount and as encompassing are on vernacular dictionaries and lexicons! The foreword written by Fr. Jose M. Cruz, S.J. for   prolific writer William Henry Scott's book  Barangay: Sevententh Century Philippine Society   mentioned the importance of dictionaries in the reconstruction of 17th century Philippines Society and culture: Dictionaries figure importantly in this book.  in the sixteenth century, there were only about a million and a half natives and only a small number of missionaries.  Aware of t...

To the Visayans of Samar and Leyte, where this blogger came from - san sadto pa daw literally means (approximately) "the ways back then".  Of course, the expression is uttered with longing, reminiscing, or feeling sorry for something lost or wasted!  I'm not a "prophet of doom", certainly.  I only want something to happen.  Something, which is not worth a good night sleep because it quickened me to start doing a thing - writing on a blog. For the present-day Filipinos' consumerist attitude, nothing is more exciting than earning a living and having our needs and wants satisfied.  A consumerist myself, such attitude proved that a little box - smallest of its kind - seem to restrict me from knowing the breadth and depths of who am I, a FILIPINO.  With perennial problems hounding us all, will this blog which is intended to discuss Philippine dance culture be of paramount importance or relevance?  Well, any answer will be correct.  'Yes', 'no'...