Folk music in the Philippines exists as more than a categorical label for a set of sounds; it is a living repository of intergenerational knowledge, binding hundreds of distinct Indigenous and local cultural groups across the archipelago’s more than 7,000 islands to their histories, their lands, and one another. This broad category of expression encapsulates the wide range of community-centered traditions that have developed independently and in conversation with one another across Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao, each shaped by the unique environmental, spiritual, and social priorities of the communities that nurture them.