Rosas Pandan, Music of the Filipino culture

 have taken on the Visayan language for the first concert of the season in the selection Rosas Pandan.

This is a great high energy choral arrangement of a popular folk song. Popularized on the album "Philippine Love Songs" by Pilita in 1974,
the song talks about Rosas Pandan who comes down from the

mountain to celebrate with a community. She brings a song and a dance; and causes a little drooling from the boys. The choir in large part is representative of an instrumental accompaniment with the sopranos singing most of the Visayan text:

Here is Rosas Pandan
Just arrived from the mountains
To be with all of you
To celebrate the fiesta

This song is my livelihood
An inheritance from my parents
A most ancient song
The pride of our hill country

Dika ding dika ding dika ding
Hey!, our song
Is still nice to dance to
Like fog on a cold day

Dika dong dika dong dika dong
Hey!, also the young man
He's looking at the young lady
His drool is falling

Ayayay ayayay ayayay
Hey!, my song
Is it nice to dance to
Like fog on a cold day


Visayan is the name of the language family in the central islands of the Philippines. It is also known as Bisaya, as technically there is no "C" in the Philippine alphabet. Visayan is comprised of several distinct languages. Sometimes the names Visayan and Cebuano are substituted for each other, but Cebuano is really a subset of the Visayan language family.

Filipino (Pilipino) is a language based on Tagalog, renamed and modified in order to create a national language. Before 1989 Pilipino was the national language. Filipino is said to be a combination of all the different Philippine languages, but is essentially Tagalog. In the Manila and the surrounding area, Tagalog is the primary language. Filipino and English are the official languages in the Philippines. Taglish is a combination of Tagalog and English. One word used in English, boondocks, comes from the Tagalog word bundok, meaning mountain. Tagalog is spoken natively by people living on the islands, Marinduque, Mindoro, and large areas of Palawan. It is spoken by approximately 70 million Filipinos, 96.4% of the household population. About 22 million of the total Philippine population, speak it as a native language. Here is an example of the spoken language: Hot and Cold Here is a short article about the popularity of Filipino Choral Music around the world: Choirs around the world take on Filipino classics