Traditional Song from The Philippines.
Performance: Lemuhen of Tboli Tribe.
Culture: The tboli tribe is are an indigenous group located in the southern Philippines, on an island called Mindanao. The man is playing some sort of dulcimer and the woman uses a membranophone of some sort, possibly a Dabakan. They are playing a folk song with improvisation.
The indigenous man is playing in a tune that is constructed by a pentatonic scale. Folk songs are examples of music that is learned through an aural process by tradition. In cultures that do not incorporate written notation for music, folk songs are passed along through generation, the performer presenting the piece to the audience. Through the performance, the music lives on, as the members of the audience or students are now possessors of the folk song. A problem that can be considered with this is that the original version of the song can be distorted or varied through constant manipulation from generations of musicians. After all, one person always interprets music differently than another, therefore, the folk song that is aurally transmitted will almost definitely be different than the original. The song these members of the Tboli tribe are playing could either be an original composition played for the first time, or a varied personal version that was taken through generations of aural transmission.
The string player seems like he is playing something that is pretty complicated and yet he is just playing it. This song sounds so good and the drum adds to it, but in a discreet way. The woman is not being loud with her drumming, rather following what the string player is doing. The woman is not doing anything very complicated, which compliments the sound that the string player is making. The woman was using some different hand techniques to play the drum, so that was interesting to see as well!
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