Ramon Santos

Ramon Santos
Ramon Santos | @nccaofficial

Ramon Santos (National Artist for Music – February 25, 1941)

Greetings to National Artist Ramon P. Santos on his 82nd birthday!

Ramon Pagayon Santos, composer, conductor, and musicologist, is currently the country’s foremost exponent of contemporary Filipino music. A prime figure in the second generation of Filipino composers in the modern idiom, Santos has contributed greatly to the quest for new directions in music, taking as the basis non-Western traditions in the Philippines and Southeast Asia.

An active musicologist, Santos’ interest in traditional music cultures was heretofore realized in 1976 by embarking on fieldwork to collect and document music from folk religious groups in Quezon. He has also done research and fieldwork among the Ibaloi of Northern Luzon. His ethnomusicological orientation has but richly enhanced his compositional outlook. Embedded in the works of this period are the people-specific concepts central to the ethnomusicological discipline, the translation of indigenous musical systems into modern musical discourse, and the marriage of Western and non-Western sounds.

Read more: https://ncca.gov.ph/about-culture-and-arts/culture-profile/national-artists-of-the-philippines/ramon-p-santos/

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