Joey Ayala is a contemporary pop music artist in the Philippines. He is well known for his style of music that combines the sounds of Filipino ethnic instruments with modern pop music. His professional music career started when he released an album recorded in a makeshift-studio in 1982. To date, he has released six albums. Some of the Filipino ethnic instruments Ayala is known to use include the two-stringed hegalong of the T'Boli tribe in Mindanao and the 8-piece gong set, kulintang of the Maguindanaoan tribe, also in Mindanao.