Why are Filipinos so talented as singers and dancers?

Adelaimar C. Arias-Jose

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Registered and licensed attorney in the Philippines Updated 2y

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Why are Filipinos so talented as singers and dancers?

I will not generalize and say that Filipinos are “so talented” as singers or dancers. I do not think that we are any more talented than other nationalities.

What I would say, however, is that we like singing and dancing and when people have a lot of practice with these skills, they get good at it. When singing and dancing become a means to get fame and fortune, it fuels more singing and dancing.

So, why do Filipinos like to sing and dance?

1. Our history was largely oral and not written. Those oral histories were sung or chanted. That was how histories were transmitted intergenerationally. Our myths were also sung as opposed to recited. Filipinos have indigenous peoples who still continue the practice of singing their myths and stories to this day.
2. Philippine history is rich with examples of protest songs and protest dramas and operas. For example, during the American colonization of the Philippines, they allowed Filipinos to stage komedyas or zarzuelas — without realizing that the zarzuelas were dramatizations of the Philippine colonization and the subsequent yearning for independence from the colonizer. Singing and dancing were forms of protest. Filipinos took a received art form and revised it to suit their taste and need for self-expression.
3. Philippine indigenous peoples use singing and dancing in their rituals. For instance, there were songs and dances of rememberance for when they bury their dead or when they commemorate deaths, courtship, marriage, harvest, and even war songs and dances.
4. This practice was continued during the Spanish colonial period when Christianized celebrations of feast days were observed with songs and dance. If you go to the Visayas, the biggest Catholic feast days for the Child Christ (the Sto. Niño) are commemorated with community/street dancing. This is because songs and dancing are part of community get-togethers even in the pre-colonial times. About 80% of Filipinos profess to be Catholics but, they have not forsaken traditional beliefs and so, Catholic celebrations partake of the nature of folk Catholicism.
5. Even Filipino courtship includes singing. We have a practice called “harana” where a young man gathers his friends and goes to the house of the woman he intends to court. He serenades her. This practice has very nearly died out but when I was a child, I went to church camps and the young men serenaded the women they fancied.
6. Our love and courtship songs are usually ballads called “kundiman”. These are songs that use minor chords and are very emotional and soul-stirring compositions. They speak of sadness over a loved one's death or infidelity. They even sing about patriotism. I have never heard of a happy sounding kundiman. There is always a wistfulness, a melancholy in a kundiman's melody.
7. The happy songs Filipinos used to sing are those they sang while working the fields during harvest. Because farming was not mechanized during the colonial and post-colonial periods, whole clans or communities came together to harvest rice. Women threshed and pounded the rice, they sifted and separated the chaff from the grain. While doing this, those of their party who were resting picked up a guitar and started singing to make the work a lot less boring.
8. When the Americans came, they used propaganda songs such as “Magtanim ay ‘Di Biro” (Planting Rice is Never Fun). This song was meant to entice people away from farming in the countryside and become factory workers or unskilled laborers in cities. America wanted to modernize the Philippines and transform our agricultural society into a commercialized and mechanized capitalistic society.
9. Where Spain introduced dances such as the waltz and the polka, America also used music in their soft imperialism. They introduced dances such as the boogie, the jitterbug, the chacha, the swing, and the foxtrot during the period of 1900–1939 in the era called as the Peacetime. Our first Philippine President, Manuel Luis Quezon' favorite was the tango.
10. Campaign jingles are usually part and parcel of Philippine elections. Politicians commission songwriters to write them an upbeat and singable or danceable ditty. This identified the politician and helps with name recall. Consider Ramon Magsaysay who ran as President in 1953 and died in a plane crash in 1957. He was a virtually unknown candidate but people voted for him, in part, because of his catchy jingle which went like this: “Mambo, mambo, Magsaysay, Mabu-mabu-mabuhay. Our democracy will die, kung wala si Magsaysay.” When I was a child, my mother told me that when she was a child, people could tell who will win the election: the candidate whose campaign ditty the children sang when they played.
11. When politicians campaign for office, they must look nice, speak bombastically during campaign speeches, and even sing and dance. This is expected of them. Ferdinand Marcos used to make his wife Imelda sing “Dahil sa Iyo” a kundiman, when he went on the campaign trail. In remote barrios, when politicians visit, the political rally is not only an opportunity to discuss issues but also a form of cheap and free entertainment. Some politicians sponsor movie showings or invite popular singers or dancers and other television celebrities to host/perform in their campaign rallies. The celebrities also endorse the candidate and follow the candidate on the campaign trail, offering their services as entertainers.
12. Consider also that during Martial Law, one way that the Marcos dictatorship tried to achieve legitimacy was through music. In the mornings, all school children gathered for a flag raising ceremony. I was one of those school children. I was 5 years old when Martial Law was declared in 1972. We sang the National Anthem and then, we also sang the Bagong Lipunan song and the Pilipinas Kong Mahal. Needless to say, the Bagong Lipunan song extolled Martial Law. The Pilipinas Kong Mahal stirred nationalistic fervor. The objective of making school children sing those songs was for them to associate the Martial Law dictatorship with stirring melodies, making it more palatable.
13. When Benigno Aquino was assassinated in 1983, during his burial and in the protest rallies that followed, the one song that galvanized the protesting masses were the songs, “Tie a Yellow Ribbon” and “Bayan Ko”. Obviously, the Tie a Yellow Ribbon song was about a man who was imprisoned and upon his release, he wonders if his wife still wants him. If she does, she is to tie a yellow ribbon around their old oak tree. If he doesn't see a yellow ribbon around the oak tree, he will stay on the bus, forget about the woman and blame himself. This was thematically appropriate to Benigno Aquino's experience. He was imprisoned during Martial Law, exiled from the Philippines and when he tried to come back home, he was shot. Filipinos tied yellow ribbons everywhere to show their support of Benigno Aquino and their anger at his assassination. The song Bayan Ko was later also used to show support for Benigno Aquino's widow who ran in an election against Ferdinand Marcos. Its chorus evoked the longing for freedom from the dictatorship: “Ibon mang May layang lumipad, ikulong mo at umiiiyak. Bayan pa kayang sakdal dilag, ang 'di mag nasang maka-alpas. Pilipinas kong minumutya, pugad ng luha ko'y dalita. Aking adhika, makita kang sakdal laya.” (Even birds who can fly free, cage them and they will cry. How much more a nation not yearn for freedom? Oh, fair Philippines, the nest of my all my poverty and tears, my goal is to see you free at last.)
14. In response to this, the Marcos Dictatorship employed the song “Ako ay Pilipino” which put forth the myth propagated by them that the Philippines is of noble stock (dugong Maharlika). Also, during Martial Law, Imelda Marcos tried to use music as a means to uplift Pilipino culture. She began the Metro Pop Music Festival where original Pilipino music were written and performed. This was to wean the Pilipinos from their taste for American Top 40 songs, especially when the American Top 40 songs were so called protest songs by Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, Joan Baez, etc. and the rebellious rock and roll music of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, etc. They wanted a Filipino sound. The period of Martial Law was beneficial to the original Pilipino music (OPM) industry and an impetus for its growth.
15. If you watch Philippine television, you can see that there is a proliferation of singing contests. Tawag ng Tanghalan was one such singing contest which started in the 1960s. Every noontime variety show beginning with Student Canteen in the 1960s had a singing contest. Even before American Idol, America's Got Talent and The Voice became popular, Philippine television already had its singing contests.
16. It is not difficult to see why these types of shows abounded. If you want to know why, consider the story of Nora Aunor. She was a short and dark woman who had a rich soulful singing voice. She used to entertain train passengers in Bicol to entice them to buy water from her. She joined Tawag ng Tanghalan and became grand champion. This opened up for her a movie and television career. Her win and stardom were phenomenal when one considers that the Philippine movie and television entertainment industry was dominated by American and Spanish mestizas and mestizos (half-breeds). Singing contests became a way to make money and jumpstart a singing or performing career.
17. Even in schools, there were singing contests and dancing contests. We even had field days when whole classes sang or danced together. In the month of August, all the songs and dances must be native Filipino songs and dances. At Christmas, students must sing and dance to Filipino Christmas music. In my husband's time in high school, there were convocations where the entire school attended, and social hours for each class where students sang and danced. In my children's time, just as in my husband's and my time, one classmate or two will bring a guitar to class and during recess or break times, kids played and sang the songs at the top of the charts.
18. Even the smallest and remotest towns, barrios, villages and barangays had a singing, dancing or beauty contest at least once during the year on their fiesta. It was a chance to display talents and hone them so that singing, dancing or performing may become a way to claw out of poverty and disrupt the boredom and monotony of life.
19. Musical talents (singing and dancing) became a viable means of migrating as entertainers and earning a livelihood for Filipinos since the 1800s. This is according to an article by Prof. Lydia N. Yu Jose. HTTPS://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.835.1469&rep=rep1&type=pdf This migration of musicians, singers and dancers to work in Japan was continued to the 1920s-1930s. After the second World War, Filipino entertainers were encouraged to work and perform in Japan during the American occupation of Japan as part of the efforts of the US to infuse American culture into Japan. To this day, Japan is still the nation that issues the most number of work visas for Filipino entertainers in the world.
20. Aside from allowing Filipinos to earn a living from singing and dancing, when Filipinos began migrating to work in other countries, they just brought their penchant for singing and dancing with them in their everyday life. Every birthday is celebrated with karaoke and dancing. Every holiday is an excuse to drink, eat, sing and dance. Groups of Filipinos in a locality organize singing, dancing and beauty contests to showcase Filipino talent and culture wherever in the world they may be. They hold and celebrate traditions such as fiestas, santacruzans and Flores De Mayo with singing and dancing within Filipino migrant communities abroad.
21. So many Filipinos abroad join the franchised singing and dancing shows such as America's Got Talent or Britain's Got Talent. When they win, their countrymen abroad and in the Philippines laud their triumph.
22. Filipino universities often support chorale groups and raise money for them to train and eventually, compete abroad to bring honor to their school and to their country.

Singing and dancing are great forms of exercise. Both encourage good breath control and neural coordination. A good singer must memorize the lyrics and the tune. The singer, must know the beat and the tempo. If accompanied, the singer must be mindful of the timing and the accompaniment. A dancer must also keep time with the accompaniment and if dancing with a partner, dancers must dance in coordination with each other. Singing and dancing are a good cognitive exercise and is recommended for the elderly to stave off symptoms of dementia or Alzheimer's.

The way I see it, all cultures have their songs and dances. But here in the Philippines, we not only like to sing and dance, we also view singing and dancing as a means of upward social mobility. We use it to gain entry into and approval of higher social circles. We use it to showcase our culture when we are abroad and promote patriotic cohesiveness among our communities in other countries.

Best of all, it is the “Filipino dream” to win a national singing contest and land a recording contract, win a house and lot, a car, or a scholarship to school. We sing and dance because it embodies our hopes and desires for a better life. Our songs and dances express what we value most, what we pine for, what we cry over. And singing and dancing fuel more singing and dancing.