Kasarinlan is composed of 12 to 24 music professionals and students, musically gifted amateurs, and members of
indigenous cultural communities in Cordillera and Mindanao. In its striving towards authenticity, Kasarinlan’s pursues a policy
of letting only the members of a Philippine subculture perform its own music. For instance, only Yakans are authorized to
perform Yakan music because its sensibility and gestalt qualities can never be faithfully understood and expressed by a
non-Yakan.