Kundiman

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Kundiman... a modern Filipino sees a gentleman serenading his love with a guitar and flowers below his love's balcony or bedroom window. The lady smiles and listens to his song. The gentleman smiles back. Eventually, the lady's mother comes out and throws a pale of pee on the gentleman! Tomorrow night, the gentleman sings and everything will happen again.

Kundiman is a genre of traditional Filipino love songs. The lyrics are written in Filipino. The melody is characterized by smooth, flowing and gentle rhythm with dramatic intervals. Kundiman is also a main genre for serenade here in our country because of its mellow tunes.

The kundiman came to the fore as an art song at the end of the nineteenth century and early part of the twentieth, when Filipino composers such as Francisco Santiago and Nicanor Abelardo formalized the musical structure and sought poetry for their lyrics, blending verse and music in equal parts.

The melody and sentiment of the kundiman tends not only toward the melancholy but also the cheerful, and the commitment of the heart to passion is celebrated in every piece. The singer of the kundiman expresses the pain and beauty of love felt by every listener, for the kundiman is not merely entertainment but an embodiment of collective emotion.

Endowed with such power, the kundiman naturally came to serve as a vehicle for veiled patriotism in times of colonial oppression, in which the love for a woman actually symbolized the love of country and desire for freedom.

It is also a common street name in Metropolitan Manila.

[edit] Examples of kundiman

Officially known as "Musica del Legitimo Kundiman Procedente del Campo Insurecto (Music of the Legitimate Kundiman that Proceeds from the Insurgents)", "Jocelynang Baliwag" was said to be the favorite kundiman among the revolutionaries of Bulacan during the Philippine Revolution of 1896 - earning it the title "Kundiman of the Revolution". In the guise of a love and courtship song, it features lyrics dedicated to a young and beautiful Filipina idolized in the Bulacan town of Baliwag named Josefa 'Pepita' Tiongson y Lara.

[edit] External links

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