What is a Filipino Music?

If someone would ask, “What is a Filipino music?” and I would answer him,

“Well, Joe, Filipino music are all sounds that is seems so ugly in your hearing”
I didn’t give much of a thought what a Filipino music was before.

All I knew was that they were only a bunch of indigenous song with nonsense lyrics and would give me a migraine if I heard even one song of them. I admit that I used to think that way.

“The way to write a Filipino music is to be a Filipino citizen and write all the music you wish,” sounds pretty weird but somehow there’s a truth about this quote, right? I realized that I could consider everything I heard here in our country as our own music. I realize that Filipino music is just like a portfolio of different music of various cultures. Everything as long as we Filipinos shared a specific music could be considered our own. I always hear in our class that “Filipinos are musically inclined” and I firmly agree that we are. Spaniards and Americans actually think the same.
Someone might argue that still it could not be consider our own. If we tell them that Filipinos are making variations with this music, do they will finally agree on us? Maybe an example will enlighten them more. The girls and boys in pastores tradition in Bicol for instance sings most traditional Spanish Songs but sometimes they change some phrase of the song, rhythms, melody and sometimes they alter the character of the original songs to suit local tastes.
What do I prefer, the indigenous music, Spanish music, or the American music?
I don’t have a definite answer on that one because there are some elements I like on this one music that don’t exist on the other one. Sometimes I think that the best choice will be to choose indigenous music because it is unique but not everything on their music is best for me. For instance, I don’t like the sound produce by their instruments like babandir. It feels like I only listening to a group of people working in a construction site but I do like the musical instrument called saggeypo. The sound is soothing and it feels like it takes away all my stress in acads. Kulintang music will also be the one of the best musical instruments because it helps in unifying a community; it shows respect, self discipline, serves as a channel of expression and etc.
In the Spanish music, I love the song sung in churches but the best music I heard from them was the tiple, a boy who sung solo. Oh God, I really love that one. I’m sure everyone who will hear that will be amazed. In order to have a voice like that you must be in a lot of training. Spaniards were even amazed and they said that it was just like the boys were really speaking Latin.
While Spanish music introduced this kind of music, American also introduced some music too. We don’t want to be holy all the time if we keep listening to church music, do we?
Americans introduced more alive music like bodabil, jazz, waltz and etc. What the funny thing was that Filipino sung waltz. (See, like I said Filipinos always make variations on foreign music.) “This titled Ang Maya”. It is very a nice song.
Now when someone asks me “What is a Filipino music?”
I will answer her proudly that
“Filipino music is unique. It was made by the influences of the different cultures that made it distinctive among the others.”