A modern spin on ancient tradition
Pantayo’s unique debut album showcases kulintang music
Kulintang is the modern accepted term used to describe a form of ensemble music played by musicians on a row of various sized horizontally arranged gongs that carry the melody while accompanied by large suspended gongs and drums. Evolved out of signalling traditions of various cultures in Southeast Asia, the genre is played in regions of the Southern Philippines and elsewhere.
It is orchestral and based upon a five note pentatonic scale. Ancient and meditative, the tradition is one of the oldest of any of the gong-based forms found throughout the areas of the Philippines, parts of Malaysian and Indonesia. It is traditionally performed by female musicians.
Pantayo is a quintet of queer diasporic Filipinas who call Toronto home and the band is bringing kulintang to contemporary punk and R&B music on its truly unique eight-song self-titled debut that’s just been released. Developed over a three-year period from 2016 to 2019, the album was produced by sonic experimentalist alaska B from Yamantaka // Sonic Titan.
In the press release for the album, co-founder Kat Estacio says “One way that we can make this world feel like home for folks like us is to mix the kulintang music that we learned with different sounds and song structures that feel familiar to us.”
Here are five things to know about Pantayo.
1 DECEPTIVELY SOOTHING GROOVES
The album opener, Eclipse, rides in on an undulating pulse fed by muffled percussion and a firm bass thud before the chant-like vocals whisper in. Then the build begins as the gongs intensify and the rhythms begin to unfold in all sorts of different directions layered upon one another. By this time, the single vocal has become a swinging chorus backed by sweeping synths that sounds like a re-imagination of a ’90s-era trip-hop track from the Vienna school.
2 DIVINE
The second song is probably the most straight-ahead soul pop song on the album. It’s sweet with an ear-worming melody line and those flourishes of surprising gongs. One particularly deep-noted one acts almost like punctuation at the end of each chorus and it’s really sweet. Not surprisingly, it’s the leadoff single.
3 V V V (THEY LIE)
The second super-pop ditty on the disc is a bouncy number that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on any number of ’80s U.K. dancepop records. The way the lyric They lie/They will never tell the truth is echoed off into the distance suggests a much greater meaning behind the simple statement.
4 TARANTA
Hands-down my favourite song on the album. With its rap-like vocal and busy gongs and chiming, it’s a challenge to all comers to doubt the convictions of the creators about not putting up with any societal crap. This song begs for an extended club mix, big time.
5 BAHALA NA
Roughly translated from Tagalog as it’s up to you, this is the one midtempo, lush lover’s rock tune in the collection.
The percussion shift around the 1:30 minute mark is delightfully disruptive to the song’s seeming softness and never lets up after that. Pretty psychedelic, you can imagine the jams that led to this one being written.
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