What is Pinoy music?

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If there are things that elude strict definitions, Pinoy music is definitely one of them. It is romantic. It is gritty. It is funny. It is bone-deep agony.  It lives to sing out from the seas, leaves, wind and rain, but also echoes music chiseled from daily experiences in jeepneys, carinderias or watching “high” society.  We plunge in acrobatic youthful rhythms as well as in sweeping nostalgic melodies. We sculpt our emotional ground in solo ballads but also roll out our collective waves of spirit in ensembles.

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This is because Pinoy music is a cauldron – a “palayok” of many influences, internal and external, including colonial, as well as our own resistance to surrender our identity, as a whole, to anything.  This 8th year of Pinoy Playlist Music Festival, we acknowledge that Pinoy Music is first, a layered variety – halo-halo – of different flavors and sources; second, a spread of overlapping sheets of colored influences and inspiration across time – sapin-sapin - and; third, that Pinoys are all imbued with a deep musical sense to welcome all these simultaneously– sabay-sabay. We shall welcome a glorious cacophony of Pinoy Music for 2025.