Kumintang

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KUMINTANG

The kumintang is the name given to several distinct styles, techniques and forms in music and dance probably originating in the areas used by early Spanish cartographers and chronicles to denote a large province centering around what is known as Batangas. Early 19th-century travelers' accounts often mention the kumintang as a Tagalog "chant national", describing them as dance-songs performed by pairs of men and women, with texts concerning love and courtship. All accounts mention a glass of coconut wine passed from hand to hand by the dancers as they sing.

Jean Baptiste Mallat describes it as a pantomimic dance where the man runs around and gestures to a woman(not always decently), and finally pretends illness to get the woman's full attention.

In the 20th century, Francisca Reyes-Aquino dubbed as kumintang the circular hand and wrist movement also known as the kunday. Among present-day afficinados of musical and dance events called awitan and pandangguhan in and around the city of Batangas, kumintang also refers to a guitar-plucking style, considered the most melodious and beautiful of all guitar styles accompanying the old kinanluran style of pandangguhan dance songs.
E. R. Mirano.


Source: CCP Encyclopedia of Philippine Art
Volume V - Philippine Dance


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