The Cordillera mountain range of Northern Luzon is the home of many indigenous tribes isolated by rugged and sloping geography.  They celebrate grand feasts, peshits or kanyaos, with mimetic presentations of dance and ceremony accompanied by a complex orchestrated rhythm of hammered flat gongs called gangsa, flutes, and drums. 

The Philippine rondalla, featuring mandolins of 14 strings and guitars, provides a romantic backdrop to the dances of yesterday. The lute shaped bandurria, the octavina, and the laud accompanied the guitar and bajo de unas, arriving from Spain around the 16th century.

In as early as the 13th century, settlers from the Malay Peninsula and Borneo brought molded knobbed gongs called Kulintang into the Southern Philippines. These gongs laid-in-a-row are complemented by lower register gongs called Gandingan, as well as a drum called Dadabuan (also Dabakan).

These musical instruments and music forms were influenced through outside influence, adaptation, and experienced unique isolation to become uniquely Filipino.