ICTMD 2023

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Letter Songs and Translocality in Music: The Emotional Voyages of Mappilas Migrants of Kerala
(Department of fine arts, University of Kelaniya Sri Lanka, 2023) Shibinu, S
Integration and absorption of migrants and their descendants into society’s cultural realm has long been a wonderful topic in the social fabric of Kerala. Muslims form the largest minority community in India. For decades, Muslims in Kerala have migrated to Gulf countries. The Muslims of Kerala's northern regions are known as Mappila Muslims, and they make up 42 percent of migrants from Kerala. Migration involves separation and it provides a unique vantage point from which to examine emotions. Letter songs (kathu Pattu) in Kerala depict this emotion of separation due to migration. Letter songs are folkloric music-type Mappila songs in Arabi Malayalam, with lyrics set to a melodic framework. These songs have a distinct cultural character inextricably related to Keralites and Arabs. The ability of these songs to depict the cultural embodiment, exchange, and synthesis of both Kerala and Gulf countries is one of its distinguishing features. The separation of a male migrant from his wife causes anguish, suffering, and disutility. Letter songs express profound insights into the misery, pain, and desire that couples experience because of migrant’s physical separation from his family. Trans-locality has resulted not only in the homogenization of Mappila culture with Arabs, but also in emotional imbalances. Current proposition is an attempt to comprehend the broad relationship between music and mobility in the cultural and emotional realm of the Mappilas.
Composing the Malaysian: Reflecting on Shared Spaces in Malaysian Contemporary Compositions and Composers
(Department of fine arts, University of Kelaniya Sri Lanka, 2023) Nithyanandan, Jotsna
Malaysia is a country that is diverse and hybrid in its ethnic make-up and culture but steeped in an ethno-national ideological rubric through which everything is sieved or evaluated, resulting in binary constructs of the centre-periphery and state defined notions of what (or who) belongs and what (or who) doesn’t belong. This presentation explores the process of music creation and production by selected Malaysian contemporary music composers, Bernard Goh, Jillian Ooi and Samuel J Das as well as myself, as a platform for identity presentation and representation. It posits that Malaysian-ness transcends constructed ethnic boundaries, is not defined by this categorization alone, and discusses how the permeability of boundaries, intersections and overlaps of cultures translates into music. On a deeper and more personal level, it delves into the composer’s Malaysian identity related anxieties and how he/she articulates these issues via music and performance. Thus, through the processes of music creation and production, the composers negotiate their multi-layered and multicultural experiences that stem from their day-to-day social interactions and activities. Therefore, this presentation aims to present these composers as social actors who through the medium of music and performance, articulate their “everyday-defined” social reality and thus hope to provide an alternative method to the authority driven reality, in order to negotiate the status quo and opposing viewpoints in Malaysia’s contemporary social environment in relation to the country’s national identity that is currently framed to favour the centre (majority) and under-representing the periphery (minority). It also takes into consideration Malaysia’s geographical and historical position as an important seaport that was fuelled by the Spice trade, and that over time resulted in the formation of a pluralistic society, thus giving rise to the propagation of many cultural exchanges, hybridised communities as well as art forms.
Vannama: A Sri Lankan Cultural Product with Roots in Majority Sinhala and Minority Tamil Cultural Practices
(Department of fine arts, University of Kelaniya Sri Lanka, 2023) Peiris, Eshantha
Anthropologist Stanley Tambiah once famously characterized the Sinhalese population in Sri Lanka as a “majority with a minority complex,” given that Sinhalese policymakers often behave as if they are constantly under threat. Such defensiveness is also evident in discourse about the genre of dance music known as vannama; Sinhalese nationalist scholars have gone to great lengths to argue that Sinhala-language vannamas are not derivative of music of the Tamil minority. Today, Sinhala vannamas have come to represent Sri Lankan cultural heritage on the world stage. This paper compares Sinhala vannama compositions with similarly structured Tamillanguage compositions, uncovering and analyzing likely points of historical contact. While Sinhala vannamas were appropriated from lower caste Sinhalese ritualists in the 1940s to be rebranded as gentrified national culture, I suggest that the practice of singing vannama verses in Sinhala began in the eighteenth century when Sinhalese poets drew on Tamil forms of versification linked to the royal palace—displaying an assimilation of influences rather than direct borrowing. I also use vannamas as a lens to explore how the relationship between majority Sinhalese and minority Tamil cultures in Sri Lanka has changed over the past two centuries.
To Participate or to Present: Dance as Embodied Knowledge / Specialized Skill
(Munsi Urmimala Sarkar (2023), To Participate or to Present: Dance as Embodied Knowledge / Specialized Skill, 12th Symposium of the ICTMD study group on music and minorities with a joint day with the study group on indigenous music and dance, Department of fine arts, University of Kelaniya Sri Lanka, 2023) Munsi, Urmimala Sarkar
This paper aims to analyze the educational potential of community dances exhibited as ‘tribal’ dances in festivals such as Hornbill (Nagaland) and Sangai (Manipur). Such annual congregations are occasions for the exhibited staging of traditional ensemble experiences of moving together among communities – involving sensory processes of proxemic interactions. Within everyday community spaces, such ensemble practices enable auto-transfer of knowledge from one body to another through intense proxemic and sensory experiences. This specific category of dance forms is identified as "folk", and described in many academic writings as repetitive, simple, and learned not as a skill from a master teacher, but as an easily imitable structure that can be passed on from one body to another through shared muscle memories or through familiarity born out of membership of a particular community. This explanation in itself hierarchizes knowledge, by way of putting one form of knowing over another. Assuming community dance knowledge to be lower in skill, aesthetic, intellectual, or bodily capability compared to the specialized dance knowledge required for classical dances from the same geographical region, legitimizes a list of standardized aesthetic expectations that all dances must fulfil in order to be actually considered as dance. This paper compares two basic communicative principles - the ‘participatory’ (community dances) and ‘presentational’ (specialized classical dances) as different motivations for dancing – to critically analyse such hierarchizations of embodied knowledge systems.
The Impact of K-Pop in Peace Building among Sri Lankan Youth
(Department of fine arts, University of Kelaniya Sri Lanka, 2023) Ranasinghe, R. M. C. S.
Popularity of K-Pop culture and its participatory fan culture have expanded in the past decade in Sri Lanka. The number of K-pop events have greatly increased with fans organizing various events. Through in-depth interviews with fans, event organizers and sponsors, this research offers a quantitative and ethnographic study of K-pop fandom in Sri Lanka that takes into consideration local interactions between fans and perspectives on the genre, patterns of social integration and history. By exploring local scenarios of local and international pop reception and fan culture, the study demonstrates the rapidly growing fan base of K-pop among Sri Lankan youth and discusses the multidirectional understandings towards the K-pop music and its effectiveness of employing music in lifting awareness of cultural diversity, education, and cross culture relationships among Sri Lankan youth and how it helps to enhance the peace among multicultural society of Sri Lanka.
Moadi Yeduthu: A Lost/Last Dance Component of Sadir Repertoire from Tamil Nadu
(Department of fine arts, University of Kelaniya Sri Lanka, 2023) Rajaram, A. P.
Moadi Yeduthu is a lost dance drama piece from the Sadir repertoire, which was practiced by the devadasi communities when they were allowed to perform in temples and festival spaces in Viralimalai, Pudukottai district, Tamil Nadu. This dance drama was practiced by devadasis until the 1947 governmental anti-devadasi law, which forced most practitioners to stop performing Sadir and take up farming. Moadi Yeduthu is one of the performance pieces which is surviving by Muthukannamal, a Sadir dancer, and as this specific piece did not get itself into the transfiguration of the cleaning process from the Sadir to Bharathanatyam tradition. The piece Moadi Yeduthu was left with devadasis alone to be practices because of the nature of the choreography. Muthukannamal, one of the last devadasis of Viralimalai, embodied this particular dance piece as her kinesthetic knowledge through her regular practice in the temples where she was once serving as a devadasi. This paper explores details of this lost/last art form by analyzing the documented dance drama performed by Muthukannammal. Her regular practice of this artistry, especially Moadi Yeduthu, is one of the building blocks of the evidence of the lost art striving to find its place in the current scenario of dance movement practices. While Muthukannammal’s performed body continues to form layers of archival knowledge of the Sadir dance form, the dance researcher explores the artistry of this specific dance drama traversing from different times and spaces realising that it has no place in the present society. The paper explores the nature of the dance drama by comparing it to the other Sadir dance pieces, as well.
The Venues of the Minorities’ Music: The Case of Romani and ABCMMS in Slovenia
(Department of fine arts, University of Kelaniya Sri Lanka, 2023) Bejtullahu, Alma
While researching ethnic minorities’ musics in Slovenia, I have often come across the issue of the venue (as a space for performing music) that has proven itself relevant in assessing the social and political realities of the country’s minorities. Venues are an important, yet often ignored factor in establishing the overall communications between minority musicians (as presenters of a minority’s culture) and society at large. The importance of the shared public place increases when a minority culture is underrepresented. Using the position of the governmental bodies and their cultural policies as a position of power as a starting point, I will examine the use of the venues for various musical situations involving the minority musicians in Slovenia’s capital, Ljubljana. I will analyze the correlation between i) the economic status of minority musicians, ii) the financial capacities of minorities’ cultural associations (that support most of the minority musical practices), iii) the governmental system of funding minorities’ music events, and iv) the venues used for these performances. Depending on these venues, I will make a comparison of the successes of communicating knowledge about minority music to the (majority) audience, pointing thus to the importance of the topology of minorities' musical events in the city. I will argue that, due to the lack of long-term vision in the state’s cultural policies and the insufficient funding of minorities’ music projects, the latter are often pushed to the less significant venues and become less visible in the eyes of the public and society at large.
Home Coming: A Record of Soundscape and Livelihood of Spring Festival in a Kam Village
(Department of fine arts, University of Kelaniya Sri Lanka, 2023) Cheng, Zhiyi Qiaoqiao
I would like to give a presentation with talk and image on the diaspora of music and rituals originating from East-Africa across Indian Ocean. At the Spring festival (Chinese New Year)’s Eve, Fengyun finished the work in a zipper factory in Dongguan and goes back to her birthplace. She is from Xiaohuang village of Congjiangxian, Guizhou Province. The village is famous for Kam “big song”. Every woman in this village has her singing troupe from birth to marriage and later. Through singing, they acquire knowledge, search for spouses, and interact with other villages. Their songs overlap with their life, maintaining the relation between individuals of Dong nationality and the community. Since China entered the reform and openness period in the 1980s, due to the requirements of economic development many rural people went to cities to find jobs, forming a special social group - rural migrant workers. In the most recent decade most young adults left Xiaohuang village to work in cities. While separating from their original environment, they encountered huge cultural difference. Nowadays, the Xiaohuang village, where only elderly and children live their ordinary lives, experiences grand gatherings at each Spring Festival. How do they identify? How do they work and live at the crossroad of their traditions and foreign culture? In this film, Feng Yun is taken as the contact of Xiaohuang village and does the audio-visual ethnography during the Spring Festivals of Xiaohuang Village from 2015 to 2017. The film won the first ICTMD Best Film/Video prize in 2020.
Whose Music is This? Arab Music as a Cultural Field of Negotiations in Israeli Cultural Arena
(Department of Library and Information Science, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2023) Marks, Essica
A significant part of ethnomusicological studies has dealt with the issue of musical cultures of minorities and their struggle to preserve their music within the societies where the majority has a different musical culture. In this paper, I present another cultural situation in which the majority group begins to perform the musical culture of the minority as part of its cultural arena. The case discussed in this presentation is that of Arab music in Israel. In recent years there has been a phenomenon in which musical ensembles led by Jewish Israelis perform Arabic music as a large part of their repertoire. These ensembles perform Arabic music for a Jewish Israeli audience in various places in Israel. The paper will present two ensembles that are central in staging Arab music as an integral part of their regular repertoire. The managers of both orchestras and their regular conductors are Israeli-Jews, relatively young people who come from families originating in the countries of the Middle East and North Africa. These ensembles were initiated as part of an attempt to preserve and restore the traditional Jewish music of Jews from Islamic countries. In recent years their repertoire has changed and a significant part of it is Arab music especially from the 20th century. The presentation describes and analyzes this phenomenon in relation to aspects of cultural heritage and the crossing of cultural borders between minorities and majorities.
Minority vs. Majority: The Case of the Origin of a Romani Song
(Department of fine arts, University of Kelaniya Sri Lanka, 2023) Marushiakova, Elena; Popov, Veselin
The studies of Gypsy/Romani music have a long history of discussions, debates, and undoubted achievements. The stress is often on the distinctiveness of Romani music and its influences on the music of the majority. This approach is dominant in public presentations of Romani heritage in music festivals, performances and even school manuals. The issue of reverse influences - of the music of the surrounding population on Romani music is still relatively less researched and almost not indicated in public. The proposed presentation will present the origin and development of one specific Romani song, Ma Maren Ma (Don't beat me). Its musical original is the song Tayna (Secret), created in the USSR in 1939 and became widely popular in the performance of the famous singer Leonid Utesov. Šaban Bajramović started performing it with lyrics in Romani language in the 1970s. In the 1990s, it became widely popular outside the former Yugoslavia - after recording it jointly with the brass band Fanfare Ciocarlia from Romania. Later, it entered the repertoire of other Romani musicians from different countries. Especially in the Balkans, it became so widespread that, for instance in Bulgaria, it entered the repertoire of almost all semi-professional Romani music ensembles and became performed at Romani holidays and weddings. Today, it is perceived a part of Romani folklore. One of the schools of the 19th-century folklore studies perceived folklore as an oral transformation of motifs from written literature. Our presentation will discuss to what extent such an approach can be used in discussing Roma's social and political realities and what implications it could have for studying Romani music.
Enhancing Music Education in Muslim Schools in Sri Lanka: A Proposal for Action
(Department of fine arts, University of Kelaniya Sri Lanka, 2023) Sanjeewa, K.M Manoj
The marginalization of music education in Muslim schools in Sri Lanka has led to a negative impact on the students' creativity and critical thinking skills. This study highlights the need to increase awareness among parents and teachers about the importance of art education and provide qualified teachers and resources for art education in Muslim schools. The objective of this proposal is to enhance art education in Muslim schools in Sri Lanka by providing resources and qualified teachers to promote creativity and critical thinking skills among students. This study will use an exploratory research design to collect qualitative data through in-depth interviews with students, parents, and teachers in several Muslim schools in Sri Lanka. The study will purposively sample participants from schools in different regions to ensure diversity in the sample. Data analysis will involve content analysis to identify emerging themes and patterns. This research aims to provide insights into the current state of art education in Sri Lankan Muslim schools and identify barriers to its implementation. The expected outcome is to recommend ways to enhance art education in these schools, with the goal of promoting creativity and critical thinking skills among students and providing opportunities to explore their cultural heritage through artistic expression. The findings and recommendations of this research will have implications for policymakers, education officials, and educators in Sri Lanka. The proposed action plan will provide a roadmap to enhance art education in Muslim schools, ultimately benefiting students' creativity and critical thinking skills.
The Indigenous Perspective: Bhai Baldeep Singh Speaks of his Pioneering Work of Research and Revival of the Gurbani Sangit Parampara
(Department of fine arts, University of Kelaniya Sri Lanka, 2023) Singh, Bhai Baldeep
A direct descendant of Bhai Sadharan, who a disciple of the founder of the Sikh faith, Bhai Baldeep Singh is the scion of a long lineage of GurSikh masters of the Gurbani Sangit Parampara. Bhai Baldeep Singh’s repertoire includes musical masterpieces as they were first sung by the Sikh Gurus and Bhagats, and he is the prime exponent (khalifa or pagri nashin) of the Sultanpur Lodhi-Amritsari Baj, the oldest school of classical percussion in Punjab. In the early 80s, a young Bhai Baldeep Singh realized that the civilizational essence of the GurSikh tradition was in real danger of extinction. He traveled across the Indian subcontinent, including pre-Partition Punjab, and beyond to connect with the last living bearers of GurSikh excellence and assimilated their oral narratives and musical knowledge into a panoramic vantage and performative élan unmatched in recent decades. An institution unto himself, Bhai Baldeep Singh’s herculean efforts to salvage GurSikh tangible and intangible heritage are responsible for the survival into the twenty-first century of the original musical masterpieces in which scripture was revealed to the GurSikh Gurus, the musical instruments and playing systems of their endowment, and the pedagogical processes through which rising generations of custodians are being minted. In the 2000s, his establishment of The Anād Foundation modeled the possibility of making dynamic contributions in the non-governmental, non-profit sector. The 2010s have seen Bhai Baldeep Singh emerge as a unique factor in the socio-political and electoral arenas. He stood as the Aam Aadmi Party candidate for the Khadoor Sahib constituency in the 2014 Indian parliamentary elections, called for a Second Gurudwara Reform Movement drawing on his analysis of GurSikh affairs over the last 200 years, and ideated the 2015 Sarbat Khalsa, a sovereign assembly of GurSikhs from across the world for deliberation on the community’s future. Bhai Baldeep Singh’s capacious vision and profound rootedness in the GurSikh tradition make him the GurSikh statesman to watch in the years to come.
Music Acting as a Bridge between Ethnic Groups: An Activist Research on the Creation Project of “Crossing Ridges— Appreciating the Bunun Music Story”
(Department of fine arts, University of Kelaniya Sri Lanka, 2023) Tseng, Yuh-Fen
The Bunun is a Taiwan indigenous group residing extensively in various parts of the Central Mountain Range since ancient times. The Bunun people have been practicing a unique way of polyphonic singing; their genre called pasibutbut became the first Taiwanese indigenous music known to the global academic circles thanks to the IFMC conference in 1952. Carrying this historical significance, pasibutbut was inscribed as the first “National and Important” Intangible Cultural Heritage item, while the Bunun Culture Association, composed mainly of Bunun people from the Ming-Te tribe in Hsin-I Village of Nantou County, was nominated as its transmitting group in 2010. For the Bunun Culture Association, the national inscription brought them honor and responsibility on one hand, but also added invisible weight on the other hand. Furthermore, a controversial issue about the violation of taboos was raised by a cross-domain performance at the awarding ceremony of 2017 Golden Melody Awards in Taiwan. As an ethnomusicologist engaged in the safeguarding and preserving Bunun traditional music, I conducted activist research, observing and evaluating the composing and performing activities. The notions applied in this activist research include “music as performance,” “music improvisation,” and “participatory performance and representational performance”. The results will be examined in my presentation.
The Tradition and Contemporary Changes of the Kazakh Musical Instrument Dombra in the Altay Region
(Department of fine arts, University of Kelaniya Sri Lanka, 2023) Shan, Zhang
Dombra is a representative instrument of the Kazakhs, which is popular in China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Kazakhstan, and parts of Mongolia. Based on six years of fieldwork, the author presents the traditional form and contemporary developments of dombra in the Altay Region by studying collections of the recordings, by interviewing folk artists, and by learning to perform. Dombra in the Altay Region consists of mainly fivedegree chord setting and shows a biphonic structure of Fundamental voice + Melodic part in musical form, which is consistent with the musical thinking of the nomadic people in the region of Inner Asia. Contemporary compositions for dombra maintain structural thinking of traditional music, while the motivation for them and their themes are more closely associated with daily life, which testifies to the continuation of the tradition in the contemporary era. Under the influence of symphonies, the dombra repertoires performed by local orchestras have gradually lost their connection with the local oral tradition, and the narration of the works has been weakened. Based on the importance of timbre in Kazakh music, pop bands and young musicians combine traditional music with electronic music technology, giving electronic sound effects a way of interpretation in traditional knowledge systems.
“The Guru is Pop!” Young Sikh Generation in Italy and Their Efforts to Create New Sounds for a Transnational Kirtan
(Department of fine arts, University of Kelaniya Sri Lanka, 2023) Tiramani, Thea
Kirtan performances in the Gurdwaras (the Sikh temples) consist in the musical realization of the shabad (hymns) contained in the Sacred Book. This is the most relevant moment of the religious rite, because the words of the Sacred Book come to life in music. Nowadays, musics employed to perform the hymns, both in motherland and in migration, encompass various genres. My talk starts from the study of the Sikh musical reality in some Italian diaspora communities, especially those in northern Italy, with a focus on the new generation of musicians and music users. Specifically, it investigates the recent phenomenon of the production of religious music videoclips by young people based in Italy. The production of religious videoclips is already widely established in India and other places in the diaspora, but it is a new phenomenon in the recent migrations to Italy. My study reveals the first results of the search for a new form of prayer by young people far from the motherland, who pass through the technological medium and need to communicate through new forms of expression to reconcile an important cultural background with the new context - local but also global - in which they are set. The musical performance of the Gurus' prayers is renewed musically, sounding like a pop song and leading to a personal affirmation of the musicians, while at the same time remaining in the 'safe and socially accepted zone' of religious music.
Lost and/or Forgotten Cultural Roots: Some Issues on the Migration of Malays to Sri Lanka
(Department of fine arts, University of Kelaniya Sri Lanka, 2023) Meddegoda, Chinthaka P.
Historical information regarding the migration of Southeast Asian cultures to Sri Lanka are obvious from the times of Portuguese colonization to date (Adelaar 1991; Hussainmiya 2010). The colonizers brought Malays to Sri Lanka for various purposes such as military services and as slaves who were employed in various constructions and plantations. At present, 0.2 percent of the Sri Lankan population consists of Sri Lankan Malays who were identified as the descendants of Malay migrants from colonial periods. Since then, their language and music practices have been separated from their mainland and subsequently localized. The Malay language used by Sri Lankan Malays is known as Bahasa Melayu Sri Lanka. The Malay pantun, Hikayat, syairs are still in existence among Sri Lankan Malays. Likewise, some music practices have been changed and most of them are forgotten and lost. This paper aims at identifying what are the Malay music practices that migrated to Sri Lanka along with Malay migrants and how they have been changed in the Sri Lankan cultural context. This research also includes how Malays adopted immediate music cultures encountered in their living surroundings. The research for this paper included study of relevant scholarly literature, interviews with Sri Lankan Malays, and recording and analyzing current musical practices on a micro level using transcriptions and spectrograms. One of its aims is to contribute to documentation of endangered cultural practices in need of urgent attention.
Music for Elders: A Case Study in an Elderly Home
(Department of fine arts, University of Kelaniya Sri Lanka, 2023) Anusewwandi, W. A. Sewwandi
Elders are persons 60 or more years old, who currently count for 12.3% of the population in Sri Lanka. The elderly population in the country is growing significantly, from 4.3% in 1973 to 11.5% in 2022. Until their retirement, the elders maintain dignified and energetic life and care for their families, fulfill responsibilities, and lead independent lives. The elderly age is the stage at which they expect care, love, and dignity from their loved ones. Until recent decades, the elders have commonly lived with their nuclear families, but with recent social changes, busy lifestyles, and families living abroad seeking better lives, the elders increasingly have no choice but to live in elderly homes. The age that needs more care, love, security, and happiness, remains lonely in such homes. This study focuses on how elders feel in elderly homes and how music contributes to their lives. A case study focusing on a selected elderly home setting in the Gampaha district will try to answer the question whether music helps their mental health and wellbeing in the new environment. The theoretical frame of this pilot study lies in the sub-field of ethnomusicology called applied ethnomusicology. Taking Kenneth Brummel-Smith (Alzheimer’s disease), Alicia Ann Clair (Dementia), and Theresa A. Allison’s research studies into consideration, this case study uses qualitative research methodology.
The Crisis of Representation in Ethnomusicological Minority Studies
(Department of fine arts, University of Kelaniya Sri Lanka, 2023) Kölbl, Marko; Ajotikar, Rasika
Over the past decade, debates on decolonizing ethnomusicology and related initiatives around equality, diversity and inclusion in academia at large have attempted to address the issue of representation of minority or marginalized communities. In music and dance research, discussion emerged as a result, led to affirmative actions, restructuring of funding, and inclusion initiatives with the Black Lives Matter movement, and further responses were publicized in the form of statements of condemnation/support, special formats and thematic foci at symposia. The efficacy of these responses, however, is debatable given that representation does not guarantee justice or fair practices. Representation becomes not only a remedy to include everyone in an already dysfunctional system, but also a measure to replace a body with another body within the same exploitative structures. Given this situation, how are we, as music and dance scholars to ensure fairness and justice generally, and for the marginalized communities we work with in particular? How are we speaking and writing about others, how about ourselves? The paper addresses the contradictions implicated in working as academics with marginalized and exploited groups. Given the growing number of minority members in academic spaces, we question the binary between academia and “the field” and ask for alternatives to established practices of representation. In this paper, the two authors reflect on their academic experiences working with minority communities such as the Burgenland Croats in Austria, asylum seekers in Austria and Dalits in India, aiming to further the theoretical and methodological discussions in ethnomusicological minority studies.
Impact of Cultural Tourism on the Music of the Sri Lankan Aboriginal Community Known as the Veddas
(Department of fine arts, University of Kelaniya Sri Lanka, 2023) Alawathukotuwa, Manoj
Among all Sri Lankan minorities, the Veddas are widely considered the last indigenous tribal community in the country. Majority of them are living in the forest villages in Eastern and Sabaragamuwa provinces with minimum facilities. Their sense of cultural identity is challenged by the fast growing industrial and other mass cultural influences, and they are struggling to safeguard and maintain their cultural values and lifestyle. Music of Sri Lankan Vedda people can be classified as a folk music tradition that closely fits their day-to-day life and accompanies them from birth to death. Their practices, including worshiping the demon gods with music and dance, are dramatically and in numerous ways affected by contemporary local and international cultural and musical traditions. Influence of mass media and cultural tourism can be seen as the main cause for this dramatic transition. The main objective of this study is to analyze the impact of cultural tourism and the mass media on the music of the Veddas, Sri Lankan aboriginal community. The research relies on both primary and secondary sources.
Javanese Wayang Kulit in Malaysia: Early Diasporas and Current (trans)Locality(ies)
(Department of fine arts, University of Kelaniya Sri Lanka, 2023) Santaella, Mayco A.
The transmigration program was initiated by the Dutch in the 1910’s and continued to develop with the Indonesian government after independence in 1945, making it one of the largest resettlements schemes of the 20th century. The program aimed to resettle communities from Java, Madura, Bali, and Lombok to other less populated islands of the archipelago. During this time, Javanese communities moved to Malaya establishing Javanese settlements in Johor, Selangor, and Perak, present-day states of Malaysia. This presentation discusses a Javanese transmigrant community in Malaysia and the negotiation of a Javanese identity within a different national context in Johor, Malaysia. Despite being an ethnic majority in Java, the Javanese become minorities in the new locale, (re)defining ethnic signifiers through the performing arts while adjusting to the new provincial and national context respectively. An analysis of Wayang Kulit allows an investigation of the production of (trans)locality, considering encounters with the ‘other’, and geographical translocality vis-à-vis community, ethnic, and cultural translocalities beyond geographical conceptualizations (see Appadurai 1996). The tensions between “cultural homogenization” and “cultural heterogenization” are negotiated by the culture bearers which in turn manoeuvre both the production of locality at the micro level and translocality at the macro level outside Java. Re-evaluating anglophone dyadic conceptualizations of homogenization/diversification, this presentations considers the “in-betweens” of the fluid conceptualization of “communitas” as alternative modernities (Gaonkar, 2001) particularly for minority communities in maritime Southeast Asia.