Extending Sightlines and Soundlines: The Gong-Chime of the Sulu Zone

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel Proposal Application

Abstract

The post-national present has witnessed diverse grass-roots concerns about identity and belonging. In Southeast Asia ethnic groups, heretofore collapsed into structures of nation-states by colonial or post-Pacific War circumstances, are now looking beyond national constructs to identify cultural resonances and shared histories with other communities. Minorities so designated by their nation states are becoming more aware of close links with groups located in other nations, themselves often designated as minorities within their own nation. In Island Southeast Asia Warren’s claim for a Sulu Zone of shared cultures and histories (James F. Warren, The Sulu Zone, 1768-1898, 1981) offers an alternative way to understand interrelationships in the area. Taking gong-chime music and its performed culture, this panel interrogates music of the Sulu Zone in historical and contemporary settings. These include intercultural geographic connections, diverse meanings in diverse settings, and presentations in cross-cultural spaces. The panel addresses “Horizons of Hope” through considerations of a post-national future for gong-chime music, the emergence of new meanings and signifiers, and its appreciation by new publics through presentations outside the region. The panel brings together a diversity of scholars of different academic ranks (junior, mid-career, senior), countries (Malaysia, Japan, U.S.), and institutions (pedagogical, museum, research). The panel speaks across a range of perspectives concerning aspects of the sonic and the organological for the Sulu Zone.

Area of Study

• Southeast Asia

Session Organizer

• Ricardo D. Trimillos, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

Chair

• Yuanyu Kuan, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

Individual Presentations

• The Sulu Zone Gong-Chime Complex: Enduring Cultural Links Through Synchronic Soundscapes - Mayco A. Santaella, Sultan Idris Education University

• Meaning-making and Multiple Identities for the Kulintang Gong-Chime in the Philippines - Ricardo D. Trimillos, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

• Beyond the Sulu Zone: Presenting Gong Music to an East Asian Museum Public - Yoshitaka Terada, National Museum of Ethnology