Filipino Students Perfectly Sing Rasa Sayang, M’sians & Indonesians Debate The Folk Song’s Origin

Given our close proximity and to a certain extent, shared history, countries in Southeast Asia have a lot in common with each other, including language, food and tradition.

It’s also really heartwarming when other countries appreciate our culture and that’s definitely the case for this group of students in the Philippines as depicted in a viral video.

As shared by the Discover ASEAN Facebook page, a classroom in the Philippines can be seen perfectly singing the popular folk song in the Bahasa Melayu-speaking world, Rasa Sayang.

In the post, Discover ASEAN shared that the song is studied by Grade 8 students in the Philippines as part of their music subject.

In case you’re not familiar, Rasa Sayang, or Rasa Sayange is a popular folk song in the Bahasa Melayu-speaking region of Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Brunei.

While Filipino, a standardised variety of Tagalog which is the national language of the Philippines has some similarities with Bahasa Melayu, they both belong to different language families.

This just made the Filipino students’ rendition of Rasa Sayang even more impressive as you can hardly distinguish their pronunciation from a native Bahasa Melayu or Bahasa Indonesia speaker.

You can watch the video here:

In the comments section, many praised the students’ flawless singing of the folk song and how their voices blended together seamlessly.

However, like many things regarding a shared culture in the Bahasa Melayu-speaking region, it also divulged into a debate on the origin of the song by Indonesians and Malaysians, with both claiming that the folk song originates from their country.

Well, it looks like the debate was finally put to rest as Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim himself said that the song originated from Indonesia’s Maluku Islands during a talk in Indonesia.

As reported by Detik, Anwar said that this can easily be checked online and further asserted that while the song originated from Indonesia, it is a shared heritage in the Bahasa Melayu-speaking world.

So, what do you guys think of the video? Share your thoughts with us in the comments.

Also read: US-Based Colorado Children’s Chorale Goes Viral for Flawless Performance in Bahasa Malaysia