Abstract: Improvisation is a central feature of the Philippine bossed gongs and drum ensemble known as kulintang, yet challenges emerge as its transmission increasingly occurs within institutional learning contexts. Drawing on applied ethnomusicology, music analysis, and multicultural music education, this article investigates how institutional pedagogical norms shape transmission processes and may constrain improvisatory vitality. Using kulintang as a case study, the article critically reviews earlier analytical literature while clarifying the distinct scholarly purposes for which such studies were produced. It proposes a complementary theoretical–analytical approach oriented toward improvisatory process rather than fixed musical products, framing authenticity as a processual orientation grounded in stylistic integrity, improvisatory agency, and continuity of creative practice.
Abstract: Gong-chime music ensembles from the southern Philippines have been conflated as one monolithic genre of “Muslim Filipino music.” Several academic publications—dissertations, master’s theses, and articles—exist primarily for Maguindanao and Maranao traditions from Mindanao. Sama kulintangan music from the Sulu Archipelago remains understudied, however. In this article, I analyze the unique musical features of Sama kulintangan , in contradistinction to Maguindanao kulintang music. Using empirical data, I argue that Sama kulintangan music values communal partaking over individual virtuosity. This comparative study broadens scholarship on maritime Southeast Asian gong ensemble music by highlighting a lesser-known region of the Philippines.
Abstract: This study explores the evolving journey of Maranao kolintang music as both heritage and dynamic cultural expression. Grounded in “music performance as a cultural expression,” it examines kolintang ’s transition from ritual contexts into schools, competitions, theater, festivals, and global stages. Using ethnomusicological methods, 12 ensembles and troupes were analyzed to show how kolintang is preserved, adapted, and reimagined. Findings reveal that traditional groups safeguard authenticity, academic ensembles institutionalize knowledge, and contemporary groups experiment with fusion, digital media, and advocacy. Kolintang emerges as a living tradition that embodies continuity and change, sustains resilience, enriches heritage, and fosters intercultural dialogue.
Abstract: In , ethnomusicologist Usopay Cadar wrote about the burgeoning interest in kulintang in the United States, his hope for its growth, and his disappointments with Filipino American artists, arts groups, and community members. Since 1996 much has changed. My article foregrounds the maturation of kulintang arts in the United States by highlighting the significant and positive roles that cofounding members who are active in the Pakaraguian Kulintang Ensemble (PKE) play as practitioners, bearers, and co-owners of kulintang arts traditions in the United States; these cofounding members also exemplify what I call kulintang arts autochthonousity.
Abstract: Following a brief summary of how kulintang music performance was introduced to the United States in the 1960s and 1970s through academic networks by master musicians Usopay Cadar and Danongan Kalanduyan, the author posits sociopolitical and symbolic meanings undergirding its enthusiastic embrace by Filipino Americans over the next two decades. After Kalanduyan’s passing in 2016, North American kulintang practitioners realized linkages through shared artistic lineages. A 2017 festival playfully named Gongster’s Paradise gave equal attention to performance of “traditional” repertoires and cross-genre innovations. As kulintang-inspired creativity increased exponentially, Ron and Lydia Querian developed programs under the auspices of House of Gongs to help diasporic Gongsters navigate ethical issues that can arise in nonnative performance of Indigenous practices.
Abstract: In the propagation of pangalay ha kulintangan dancing in America, pangalay often becomes regenerative movements extracted from Suluk/Tausug aesthetics. The separation and distance from the Sulu Zone support an arborescent rootedness to a culture bearer who becomes representative of their own ethnolinguistic group, differing from rhizomatic systems that proffer multiplicity, generative practices, and interconnected webs of practitioners endemic to the Sulu/southern Philippine region. Where many American Filipinos utilize Indigenous Philippine traditions as a way of decolonizing, spaces of kitaniyu (inclusive “we” in the Tausug language) are cultivated by some American Filipinos to build community, deepening their practice individually and with others.
Abstract: Scholarly studies on Maguindanao and Maranao kulintang, Indigenous gong-chime ensembles from the southern Philippines, span over 60 years, representing a modest body of work on which researchers endeavor to expand the literature. laid the foundation in the field of ethnomusicology for the ways that kulintang is analyzed. Usopay Cadar, Danongan Kalanduyan, and their students from the University of Washington contributed articles in a special issue of Asian Music (1996) that widened the scope of scholarly knowledge about kulintang including its proliferation in the United States. Over the last 30 years, a new generation of researchers has built on this canon, addressing past issues and investigating new lines of inquiry such as kulintangan traditions in the Sulu Archipelago. This article introduces these works before putting them into conversation around several key aspects. It suggests areas in which more research is needed to expand knowledge about Philippine kulintang traditions.
Since just after World War II, Asian composers have started adopting music from their heritage, attempting a synthesis between East and West. While pieces from East Asian composers are characterized as intercultural, hybrid works of Southeast Asian composers are more accurately described as intracultural. Thus, by employing ideas from new materialism and Tagalog conceptions of processual difference, I pro pose intraculturality as an analytical framework that better weaves the inseparability of a composer's musical aesthetics and their complex relationships with nationality and communities. Through intraculturality, I examine the music and social entanglements of Southeast Asian composers Jos & eacute; Montserrat Maceda, Kee Yong Chong, and Rahayu Supanggah.-
This article explores the history, narratives, puppets, music, and practition ers ofwayang Sasak, the shadow-play theater of Lombok, Indonesia. Wayang Sasak was once an influential aesthetic tool to popularize Islam, but after reform movements, its position was problematic, and prohibitions were sometimes placed on its performance. Most artists and officials on Lombok assumed that the form could not survive globaliza tion and Islamization. But in the 2010s following political decentralization and the advent of social media, wayang became widely approved and a centerpiece of study groups. This article, focusing on movements and agents, uncovers the arduous journey to apparent sustainability.--
Drawing on ethnographic research at Itch & omacr;ken, a My & omacr;an shakuhachi (longi tudinal bamboo flute) place of learning, this article investigates kenteki-ritual "flute offering"-as a foundational yet underacknowledged practice of religion-making in contemporary Japan. Drawing on participant-observation research at kens & omacr;kai (flute offering gatherings), it theorizes how the corporate form of religion in Japan (sh & umacr;ky & omacr; h & omacr;jin) sustains sensible knowledge and ethics of sonic generosity, privileging Buddhist values over virtuosic performance. By foregrounding the aesthetics of oblation, it argues that kenteki is key to understanding the multiple affective, aesthetic, and symbolic va lences the shakuhachi in circulation.---
This article explores ch & egrave;o opera through a novel team-based, collaborative fieldwork approach conducted in situ. We advance three main arguments: (1) ch & egrave;o offers insight into complex intangible cultural histories, sometimes entwined with nation-building myth; (2) its satire reflects evolving Vietnamese moral values; and (3) expressive performance devices-such as h & aacute;t n & oacute;i (sing-speak), rhetorical gesture, and modal character representation-may bear traces of intercultural exchange with Western tra ditions via missionaries, merchants, and travelers. We argue that ch & egrave;o is a syncretic cultural form through which performers and audiences reflect on Vietnam's past, pres ent, and future. This study offers new insight into its role as living heritage.
This article contrasts previous field-based research by combining native and software-driven objective analysis of the Paiwan two-pipe nose flute (lalingedan) in con temporary performances. Tjuveljevelj Sauniaw, an inheritor of the lalingedan tradi tion and Western-trained musician, offers unique reinterpretations of this instrument through collaboration. Her insights, gained from interviews alongside software analysis, uncover previously unexamined musical characteristics. These key features, including duration ratios, pitch fluctuations, and voice inversion, are systematically explored. This collaborative approach enhances understanding of traditional elements, bridging past and present, and introduces novel discussions within Paiwan nose flute literature.
Ethnomusicologists have often shown how Indigenous modes of knowledge transmission tend to stagnate within formal music schools under the influence of Western models. Yet post-Soviet music schools in Turkmenistan present a counterpoint to these narratives. This article, drawing on the author's years of study at the D. Owezow Turkmen State Specialized Music College, argues that some strategies aim to subvert an institutionalized rupture. It begins by conceptualizing the meanings of pata (blessing) and gayybana sagirt (disciple in absentia), mystically imbued stages through which an emerging musician is conferred spiritual links to legendary masters of the past. Then, by illustrating the strategies in which these Indigenous methods of transmission find meaning within the state schools of Turkmenistan, this account challenges assumptions regarding the inadequacy of institutions for handing down tradition.-
The identities of Hongkongers have long been represented as homogenized in traditional media, cultural policies, and public discourses. As HongKonghas undergone significant social and cultural shifts in recent years, it has become increasingly important to critique homogenizing depictions of Hongkongers by investigating their diverse identities. If most scholarly examinations of identity in Hong Kong hold true, then Can tonese opera is an unlikely candidate through which to explore that diversity-it is regularly omitted from this scholarship, possibly due to stereotypes that position the opera as old-fashioned and irrelevant to contemporary social trends. In contrast, this article argues that Cantonese opera discourses and performances generate senses ofHongkong-ness, Cantoneseness, and Chineseness that resonate with but also challenge previous conceptions of Hong Kong identity. Moreover, these senses of belonging are shown to emerge through the subtle manipulation of authenticity discourses that reveals how identities in Hong Kong are often produced by understated processes that go unrecognized in favor of analyzing explicitly political themes.-
