Transmission, Pedagogy, and Education: A Critical Study of Asian Traditional Music Cultures in Post-Colonial and Post-Modern Times in the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand

• In Event: Transmission, Adaptation and Transformation of Traditional Artistic Practices in Southeast Asia

Abstract

Traditional musical expressions serve as a primary source of cultural identity to peoples and communities in Asia. In the post-colonial era, these traditions face new challenges as they evolve under changing institutional conditions at the beginning of a new millennium and a new era in Asian musical life. The present study is intended to formulate a broad perspective on the transmission and the teaching of Asian musical traditions and repertoires as reflected in changing pedagogical concepts, strategies and techniques. The adoption and transformative application of these strategies and techniques by local educators and modern culture bearers, may be seen as both direct reaction and creative responses to the challenges and dynamics of change (societal and social, political, economic, religious) in sustaining the continuity of, if not preserving, traditional musical practices and similar intangible heritage as sources of cultural identity and sense of selfhood. It investigates the traditional and indigenous techniques of knowledge transfer vis-à-vis the present formalized institutional structures for professional artistic training and education. While pursuing the initial assumption of the vulnerability of orally transmitted practices against the overpowering effect of formalized and literate teaching strategies in modern times, the study has found a much more complex phenomenon as it focused on three major factors by which musical traditions and their essential expressive and cultural properties could be either eroded and undermined or preserved and developed for future generations through imaginative and creative negotiation and exploration: a) the human resources, b) the institutional agency, c) and the social environment.

Author

• Ramon Pagayon Santos, University of the Philippines