Philippine National Anthem

As Filipinos living abroad, it is often dificult to introduce our children to Filipino culture. Recently, I have been teaching my three-year-old how to sing the Philippine National Anthem. Since this has been my interest, I went online to search for a sound file that I could use for her to listen to. Oh boy, did I find out a lot about my country's anthem.

I knew that the Tagalog version was composed by Julian Felipe to use for the establishment of the first Philippine government under Emilio Aguinaldo. However I did not know that the lyrics weren't written by Felipe. The original lyrics was, in fact, written in Spanish by Jose Palma, a year after the marching band anthem was played in 1898. Later, a bloke by the name of Felipe de Leon translated it into Tagalog in the early 1900s.

During what my grandparents called peace time and after the Japanese war, an English version of the Philippine anthem was written and had been what my grandparents sang in school.

Here are the webpages that helped my in my anthem quest:
an MIT page
The Wikipedia
And a site that has an MP3 audio file

But the main reason of this posting, and why it is here under "Amber's Nanay" section is because it seems, my daughter has had a new take in the songs lyrics and even a bit of deviation from the original melody.

Here side by side are the original Tagalog (first stanza) and my daughter's own:

The Tagalog version Bayang magiliw Perlas ng Silanganan Alab ng puso Sa dibdib mo'y buhay

Amber's own Bayan may giliw Pera sa Silangan Lab nya ang puso Sa didib may Dubai

But she later changed Dubai to buhay when everyone guffawed at her attempts, sensing not only dischordant notes but irregular lyrics as well. But it was a blast listening to her. Hmmm, maybe an audio file of Amber's version? In the next post perhaps....