Filipino Dance Music

Skyline College’s Kababayan Program hails the Filipino spirit with the performances of Barangay Dance Company and Kababayan Dance Troupe.

ONE of the ways to be one in learning a culture is through dance and music. The melodies and movements bring a person to a heightened learning experience, making it easier to connect with his roots.

Such is the Kababayan Program at Skyline College goal—0to be able to reach out to not only their students, but to the community. A transfer and community support program at Skyline College, Kababayan focuses on the Filipino and Filipino-American student experience, which includes cultural experiences and community service. The program also aims to create a feeling of campus affiliation for students and motivate students to learn about their culture.

True to its goal in celebrating the Filipino cultural heritage, the Kababayan Program at Skyline College presents Kaugnayan, on Saturday, October 24 at 3pm at the Skyline College Theater. Featuring the performances of the Barangay Dance Company and Kababayan Dance Troupe, Kaugnayan promises an afternoon of Philippine folk dances and music, as they come together to celebrate the rich cultural heritage of the Philippines. The event is also in commemoration of the Filipino-American History Month.

Kaugnayan means connected or united, which reflects the spirit of all the participants. Barangay and Kababayan will present various regional dances of the Philippines—from the dances of the lowland Christian groups, to the dances of the northern Cordillera and southern Islamic tribes.

Barangay Dance Company, a San Francisco-based Filipino folk dance organization founded in 1987, has actively represented the Fil-Am community at numerous events including multicultural festivals such as the annual San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival and Asian-American Tradewinds Series. Under the artistic direction of founder Bonifacio Velera, Barangay continues to foster the development of Filipino folk dancing in the Bay Area. They also offer free community workshops on Philippine dance, reaching out to many young Fil-Ams, many who have no prior dance training or experience with the Filipino culture outside of their homes. Most recently, Barangay has developed a fruitful partnership with the Kababayan Program which led to the birth of the Kababayan Dance Troupe.

The Kababayan Dance Troupe of Skyline College is the newest component of the Kababayan Program. Formed in 2008, the group was organized to provide the Skyline College community an opportunity to experience the Filipino cultural heritage through the arts of Philippine folk dancing and music. It also aims to provide the college’s students, faculty and staff a vehicle for cultural and artistic expression, as well as introduce the fundamentals of traditional Filipino dance techniques, styles and performance with an emphasis on the cultural origins.

Experience a celebration of Philippine culture through Kaugnayan on Saturday, October 24, 3pm at the Skyline College Theater, Building 1, 3300 College Drive, San Bruno. Barangay and Kababayan will be joined by St. Thomas More 8pm Choir, tenor Leon Palad, soprano Tracy Sarmiento and the American Center for Philippine Arts rondalla sting ensemble.

Kaugnayan is sponsored in part of the President’s Innovation Fund and co-produced by the Kababayan Program at Skyline College. Tickets are $20 at the door. For tickets and more information, please contact Barangay Dance Company at (415) 333-4133, Kababayan Dance Troupe at (650) 738-4271 ext. 19347, Liza Erpelo at (650) 738-4119 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

( www.asianjournal.com )

( Published October 22, 2009 in SF Magazine p. 2 )

The whopper sound of Asian vibration of the indigenous tribes dance customs earthquake sound echoes with it’s thunder through out the Barangay culture tradition and the long-established deep-rooted autochthonous past. For the countries entire quantity of occupancies this time-honored filipina dance traditional ethnic spectacle show is always glorious, a most great familiar exiting time for the whole jam-packed swarm of people to boogie, bob and prance around to. All around the world of these small cramped south pacific tropical islands, there is numerous types of folk dance styles that will enchant you, capturing the imaginations of young filipina and old people alike all coming to join in with the Filipino traditional parade celebration night to trip the light fantastic in this wild jungle hullabaloo of a holiday fiesta occasion.

Constantly all across the Phils native island resorts and busy cities locations there are dances traditional festival family occasions happening most of the time throughout the year, with the best Pinoy band songs playing the most loved favourite music folk dancing traditional cha-cha, Bohol Pinoy love songs beautiful ballads along with lively Jubilant demonstrations of exceptional well coordinated choreography. There is a great-fun filled carnival atmosphere present at the extravagant Philippines festivals featuring multiple Tagalog folk songs and most colorful vivid rainbow weaved cloth dress customs of the native Filipino province tribal dances. The Palawan Pinoy folk songs are playing a nice easy beat to keep you in rhythm with their bamboo band and it’s gracefulness of tempo on the elegance cultural dance instruments swing the rise and fall of the chorus synchronized hypnotic beats. All along the street there are small stalls sell fish ball, holo holo a kind of fruit cocktail but with every thing you can possibly think of stuffed init and hot corn on the cob. This oriental south pacific island hosts an evolutionary multitude of spoken dialects in the Philippines tradition of home grown linguistics on the individual remote tropical island. Each group of the isolated islands will have title to its own inherent orthodox different dialect identifications for the indigenous Filipino inhabitancies residing there.

The native Filipino tradition includes the following list from parts of Luzon’s Cordillera region.
The Pallor, Sallisid and Lumagen all from Kalinga,
The Bendayan from Benguet,
The Dinuyya from Ifugao region,
The Idudu from Abra the family life tune.
The historical native dancing is a very prominent inspected in the countries provinces way of life.
Many inbound tourists visit just to have a quick glimpse on this stupendous Mardi gras spectacular. The history dance tribe is one of the best because it distinguishes one from the other. The Asian culture dance costumes are also very similar to the Filipino national dress costumes.
This well established Pinoy music calendar covers a mismatch of different kinds musical vibes like the original Pinoy music (opm), Pinoy rock music, country songs and Tagalog songs with a myriad of multitudinous obscure rhythmic sense of timing style compositions and other ethnic harmoniums singing about influences.
A native festival fair in the country can be seen celebrated in various places in the whole year. Some of the major prominent festivals are namely panagbenga annual flower festival in Baguio cities sunshine capital, which is celebrated in the summer month of February. The gerontogeous exhibition flower gala get down with its lavish parade arrangements is one of the biggest merrymaking events on the Barangay social calendar in the Luzon northern part of the country. This well acknowledged florally decorated jubilee mainly is covering the Cordillera Mountain dwellers Igorot folk history of dance tribes. The customary dinagyang festival in Ilo-ilo that is celebrated in the month of January and numerous others from the virus’s remote provinces locations. The earth shacking party in the Philippines customs are strictly followed with fine attention focused to detail of the carnivals performers fashionable vintage clothing and original headdress to create the Orients brightest visual experience. All of this had work, toil and effort that has been done, is to recreate the folk traditional dance province ways of expressing them selves, to the shanty Tagalog music sound Asian harmonies.
There are contradistinctive categories and types of Philippines folk dance origins incorporated in a played program as part of the standard operating procedure golden oldies in the Pinoy wedding customs in the Philippines represents different traditions and some times even social status. The jollification of Pinoy folk dance festival events in the Philippines province customs are frequently also covering a modern standard format of theme in the vibrant carnival parades procession. There’s a good cross section of corporate sponsored floats often housing its own musicians giving a steady tempo but mostly with raises to volume sound earthquake intensity spreading its boogie down vibrations in to the local heaving crowds, who have gathered with those on looking spectators seeing the time-honored native Philippines dance traditional customs and rituals deep-seated goings-on.
There are some exceedingly distinguished historic characters like Dr. Jose Rizal who is the national hero of the Filipinos. Rizal fought for the freedom of the mass and long-lasting Asian Filipino traditions during the Spanish occupation in the Philippines. He used his righting pen and his new bright ideas to resist the Spaniard infiltration
If you’re ever thinking of travelling to the Orient for a none-everyday racial holiday experience its well worth your while to find out the dates when one of the native Philippine traditional dance music festival Asia shows are taking place. On arrival you will receive a very warm welcome from the people here and you will soon get accustomed to the jungle groove way of life and the none-conventional approach to living.