ANTHROPOLOGISTS DEFINE music as a communicational practice that organizes sound through melodies, rhythms, pitch, timber, duration, and loudness. Indigenous music, then, is this form of communication that belongs to a sphere of practice in a particular culture, community, and environment.

Yet the act of recording, producing, and selling musical artifacts such as CDs has severed music from communities and from ritual. This has opened the gateways for immense changes in the ways that indigenous music can be heard, played, and created.

	[photo by Padma Perez]

In academic circles, there is a notion that indigenous music must be “traditional.” Domling, who traces his roots to Sagada even though he grew up in Baguio City, allows, “Indigenous music comes from the ancestors. It is passed on to succeeding generations and taught hands-on, orally, through practice. You don’t learn it from written texts or musical sheets.”

Domling himself says that although he participated in traditional dance performances in the Catholic elementary school he attended, it was actually in high school that he developed his ear for the music of his ili and learned to discern rhythms and melodies he heard played on different occasions. He says the elders took notice of him and approved of the way he held himself while dancing or playing the gongs.

Bimuyag, though, remarks, “I think it’s a misconception to say that indigenous music is only old traditions. This disregards new things coming out of indigenous communities.”

“Indigenous musical pieces were composed before and then they were used from generation to generation, so they became tradition,” he points out. “If we make new compositions now, coming from our roots, and if they are accepted and used by the community, then they will also become tradition in the future.”

To Bimuyag, traditions at one point were also innovations. If a new rhythm or melody has community approval and acceptance, and if a community uses it over time in their celebrations and rituals, then it could still be considered indigenous, he argues. It would boil down to the source of the music, and the social fabric of the music — the contexts in which it is played.

Tumapang, meanwhile, comments, “You cannot put a limit on peoples’ creativity.” He says that the feeling and emotion of the player have a lot do with what makes music indigenous when playing the flute or the kulittong.

“With the flute or the kulittong, you cannot judge someone as good or bad,” he says. “It’s not proper. You can only say that someone knows how to play, because every one has his or her own style and different feelings come out of you each time you play. Also, with these individual instruments you can never repeat a piece and make it come out identical every time. It changes with how you feel. It’s like extemporaneous speech.”

In the meantime, indigenous music is being transformed in other ways. For instance, in the past, women were not allowed to play gongs. Nowadays, in community celebrations, it is not unusual to see an elderly woman pick up a gong, and, with a mischievous smile on her face, rally other women around her to play. Community members know this is “not done,” but nobody stops the women.

	[photo by Padma Perez]

Still, there are certain limits to change. A flute made to the Western scale, for example, cannot play indigenous melodies, and vice versa. Tumapang and company are also adamant that people who borrow indigenous music for their own purposes should not “bastardize” it. It should be treated with respect, say the three Cordillerans.

All three are helping make sure of that through their work at the Center. Their commitment to their ili music has even taken them abroad, where they have performed with other Cordilleran musicians and dancers.

But Bimuyag has an extra-special reason to keep alive the culture — and music — that more than once nursed him back to health. He and his wife Irene, who is from Kalinga, have a young son they have named Sapi Kabbigat Yawi, or Sky for short, and they aim to complete for him the rituals that accompany the growth and development of a child in their respective communities. These rituals, says Bimuyag, will foster in Sky a unique sense of belonging as a member of both Ifugao and Kalinga communities, and will create for him a wealth of goodwill for his future.

Bimuyag stresses that music will play a vital part in cementing the relationships that these rituals establish. After all, indigenous music is, as he puts it, “we” music — music that belongs to a community.