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The kutiyapi, or kudyapi, is a Philippine two-stringed, fretted boat-lute. It is four to six feet long with nine made of hardened beeswax. The instrument is carved out of solid soft wood such as that from the jackfruit tree.
Common to all kudyapi instruments, a constant drone is played with one string while the other, an octave above the drone, plays the melody with a kabit or rattan pluck (commonly made from plastic nowadays). This feature, which is also common to other related Southeast Asian "boat lutes", also known as "crocodile lutes", are native to the region.
It is the only stringed instrument among the Palawan people, and one of several among other groups such as the Maranao and Manobo.
In dinaladay, several tiers of difficulty revolve around main compositions: Patentek, Patundug, Banutun and Minudel; Patentek being the most straightforward, Minudel being the most-challenging.
Binalig scale pieces include several archaic compositions now not played on the kulintang, and of these pieces Malapankuno (cock crowing) and Mapalendad are included.
Any piece with a kinukulintangan affixed to its name is one that imitates the style of the kulintang instrument, of which the Sinulog a kinukulintangan; a piece that embellishes the main melody of the kulintang's Sinulog a kangungudan, is the most popular.
The Kutiyapi may or may not be accompanied by one of several types of flutes; the palendag, suling, insi or tumpong. Singing is usually reserved for courtship purposes.
The Kudyapi (kotyapi) has also been as one of the instruments in several older light ensembles, including that of the kasayao-sa-singkil/kasingkil ensemble, the original musical accompaniment to the singkil dance (now rarely used in favour of conventional kulintang ensembles). This ensemble pairs the kotyapi with a jaw harp (kubing), suling, a pair of small double-headed drums known as kendang (a drum now rarely used among the Maranao in favor of the single-headed dabakan) and a single kulintang, in accompaniment to the bamboo poles used in the dance.
Another archaic ensemble where the kotyapi was included was the Kapanirong, or courtship ensemble, in which the kotyapi was used with a kubing, small insi flute, a two-stringed bamboo zither serongagandi, and a brass-tray tintik.
With the advent of globalization, the importance of the kutiyapi has waned as artists have taken up the guitar instead, as it is louder.
A characteristic difference between Mindanaon Moro people kutiyapi and the non-Islamized Lumad equivalents is the style and set up of vocal accompaniment. Among the Lumad groups, the kudyapi player and vocalist are separate performers, and vocalists use a free-flowing method of singing on top of the rhythm of the instrument, whereas among the Maguindanao and Maranao, there are set rhythms are phrases connected with the melody of the kutiyapi, with the player doubling as the vocalist ( bayoka), if need be.
Subsequent records by Spanish friars Diego de Bobadilla, S.J. (1590–1648), and Francisco Colin, S.J., who were both in the Philippines during the first half of 17th century, echoed the same thing in their writings when describing the instrument and its use by Tagalogs, but unlike the first two, Colin only mentioned the instrument having "two or more strings", not explicitly four. The instrument's spelling has varied among the different dictionaries and records made by Spaniards, with Chirino originally using the term culyapi, de Bobadilla's cutiape, and finally in the Vocabulario de la Lengua Tagala where it is variably written as coryapi and codyapi. Pedro de San Buenaventura's Vocabulario compared the instrument to both viola and guitar. Francisco de San Antonio who came to Pila, Laguna, in 1624 also equated kutyapi to rabel, writing " Rabel de los naturales (rabel of the natives)".
It is not known precisely when the instrument lost its place in Tagalog culture, as most dictionaries until the 20th century still have entries of coryapi/codyapi.
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