Since my only window into Filipino music is youtube, I’ll be cautious in making any statements about Filipino music that sound like I have any expertise whatsoever. Rather, my thoughts here represent a discovery exercise on youtube that I hope will prepare me with a few vocabulary words for my trip next month. First, I was most interested in discovering native musical instruments from the musical heritage of the Philippians. As I searched, I found mostly native drums, lute-like string instruments, and gongs and gong-chimes. The gong-chimes I found especially interesting, as they are very similar to those that I have encountered from the Indonesian island of Bali. One of our professors here at BYU has made Balinese music a focus of his research and travel for years, and has even established a Balinese Gamelan ensemble at BYU. The Filipino gong-chimes on the video’s I found were very similar to these instruments. The lutes are interesting to me – I’d like to find out more about
As an assignment for my culture class, and in preparation of my Philippines experience coming up this summer, I'm taking a moment to jot down a few conceptions which I currently have or which I have had of the Philippines in the past. I hope that after I travel and meet some people I'll be forced to update and revise my pre-conceived notions! I've known just one Filipino personally. She was a member of the church in one ward on my mission to Minnesota. She loved to cook, so I tried many Filipino dishes at her home. But she had also lived in the United States for many years, so I assumed that she had quite a bit of "Americanization" in her food preferences. As she would also team up with her Iraqi friend to cook for us, I admit that I probably labelled a few Iraqi foods "Filipino" and vice versa. Just a few weeks ago I spoke with a fellow member of the orchestra about the culture in the Philippines. He mentioned that the culture there is perhaps more