Practicing and Transmitting Traditional Music within the Southern Khmer Community of Vietnam in International Integration Context (original) (raw)
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Asia-Pacific Journal of Anthropology 15(1), 26-46, 2014
[Abstract in Khmer downloadable in PDF] Previous studies have explored the historical and social context for the endangerment and subsequent revitalization of Cambodian performing arts, but little work has focused on music, or the views of culture-bearers themselves on these issues. By thematically analysing qualitative data from semi-structured interviews conducted in early 2013, this research explores the perspectives and motivations of a group of master-musicians, teachers and performers who are making efforts to sustain and revive their music traditions. Participants emphasised five factors that they believed significantly interplayed with the vitality of traditional Khmer music genres. Four of these were generally perceived to have an overall adverse effect on vitality: ‘outside’ influence; loss of interest and knowledge among younger people; low market demand for performances and teaching; perpetuation of limiting constructs and belief systems. Only one factor identified was perceived to have a beneficial effect on vitality: the strength of infrastructure for learning and teaching. Somewhat surprisingly, then, opinions about the viability of traditional genres were on aggregate highly optimistic, though with some concern expressed about the impact of government action (and inaction) on this issue. Justifications given for sustaining and revitalising traditional Khmer genres included the role of these traditions in education and ritual, Cambodian national identity, and musicians’ livelihoods. The study confirms the perceived value, among one group of culture-bearers, of revitalizing Khmer music traditions.
Indigenous Music Mediation with Urban Khmer: Tampuan Adaptation and Survival
Journal of Urban Culture Research, 2014
This paper describes some lowland/highland Khmer points of interconnection for indigenous Tampuan communities from the highland Northeast, Cambodia. Tampuan community musicians respond constructively to a Siem Reap tourist cultural show that depicts their indigenous ethnolinguistic group. Tampuan musicians make trips to the urban center of Phnom Penh to represent themselves in a CD recording, a concert, and a TV program. I contend that some community members are expressing strong cultural values as they mediate with the national and urban culture in spite of a history of Khmerization efforts by lowland Khmer. A strong value of mediation reinforces highland desires to communicate with outsiders perceived as having great effect on highland everyday life. Meanwhile some urban Khmer who may mourn the loss of Khmer traditional culture and support its revival have demonstrated interest in the traditional cultures of Khmer highland communities as they possibly empathize with others perceived to be experiencing levels of alienation and marginalization similar to their own.
Learning and teaching traditional music in Cambodia: Challenges and incentives
International Journal for Music Education, 2017
Substantial efforts have been made since the Khmer Rouge regime to revitalise traditional Cambodian music genres. While they have met with some success, local circumstances still present many difficulties for the transmission of traditional music to the younger generations. This study explores the challenges in learning and teaching traditional Cambodian music, as well as incentives, from the viewpoint of a group of students, teachers and master-artists involved in the transmission activities of one NGO. Better understanding the challenges may help policy-makers, NGOs, and artists themselves to overcome them; better understanding the factors that encourage young people to learn (and older people to teach) may help safeguarding efforts at a critical juncture in the future of these art forms. Based primarily on interview and observational data from fieldwork in 2013 and 2014, the findings of this study underscore three challenges in particular to the transmission of traditional music genres in contemporary Cambodia: musical and technical difficulties, the changing social function of the genres, and economic pressures. In addition to intrinsic motivation, participants identified economic gain as a key incentive for young people to learn these genres. The author makes suggestions for overcoming the challenges and further motivating young people to learn traditional Cambodian music.
Finding new ground: Maintaining and transforming traditional music
Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Cambodia (Ed. K. Brickell, K. & S. Springer), 2017
In their volume Cambodian Culture since 1975, editors Ebhihara, Mortland and Ledgerwood (1994) explore themes around ‘Khmer trying to preserve their culture, trying to define what Khmer culture is, and trying to fit their culture within new contexts’. Focusing on the next 20 years – roughly 1995 to 2015 – this chapter builds on that earlier research, centring its attention on changes in the practice, transmission, and dissemination of traditional music in Cambodia. First, it assesses recent developments in efforts to preserve and revitalise traditional genres, including the nomination of certain traditions for recognition by UNESCO as world intangible cultural heritage. Second, it examines contemporary values and constructs surrounding innovation and recontextualisation, including the influence of a growing Khmer and Western pop music culture. Finally, it reflects on the rising profile of Cambodia’s traditional and contemporary performing arts in the international arena, and explores implications for the trajectory of Cambodia’s music traditions into the 21st century.
Music and Minorities in Ethnomusicology: Challenges and Discourses from Three Continents, 2012
This research highlights one example of ethnic minority community members in the highlands of Cambodia who are actively using their traditional music for intergenerational communication of new information, especially to older members of the community who have always depended on oral means of communication. It looks at agency of community members and demonstrates how the revitalization of music has become a site of contesting not only outside influences such as nationalization but also as a site which contests the preservation of culture as something static, homogenous, and essentialized. Community members are collectively composing and engaging with new songs using their own music system in new contexts that assist the overall community to survive through creatively teaching and promoting vernacular literacy, AIDS prevention, and approaches for adapting to other dramatic changes that are taking place in their everyday life. In looking at how music not only reflects culture but also creates culture this study applies sociolinguistic theory of language revitalization to music and culture shift and endangerment. While well intentioned ‘cultural preservation’ can have a variety of benefits it can also divert valuable time, energy, and resources away from activities that actually contribute to the sustainable maintenance of cultural vitality, or rather, to the continuing cultivation and creation of culture. Music creativity can provide a special medium of cultural reflexivity that is nested in community relationships for providing continuity in the midst of change thus decreasing marginalization of ethnic minority groups while allowing for language and cultural vitality, community solidarity, and survival in a rapidly changing world.
UNESCO Collection of Traditional Music: Viet Nam and Korea at Moments of Transition
2015
National representations of Korean and Vietnamese music in the UNESCO Collection of Traditional Music—tellingly, organized and cataloged according to state territories—say much about the context in which these releases were produced. Overall, these releases give fascinating insight to the traditions, sounds, and cultural values of two countries with exceptionally rich histories that were in the midst of tremendous sociopolitical transformations in the mid-twentieth century.
The Interrelations of Genre in Traditional Cambodian Music and Theatre
European Journal of Musicology
This article examines the interrelation and adaptation of musical and extramusical song features among the Cambodian genres of phleng kar (wedding music), phleng arak (music for arak spirits), lkhaon yiikee and lkhaon bassac (sung-danced theatre genres). It aims to discuss the concept of genre classification from the emic perspective of the Cambodian practitioners showing how they talk and think about their music; and to explore the kinds of culture-specific markers employed by Khmer musicians to distinguish their genres. Through selected case studies I show the interrelation of songs sharing the same title with different tunes; songs with same title and similar tunes; and songs with a different title but similar tunes. To these case studies I then applied music transcriptions and analysed musical and extramusical parameters to consider the exchange of musical features and performance analysis to consider the ritual context. This study shows how classification and categorization of ...
Nicolas 2019a Music in ASEAN Communities ISEAS ASEANFocus
ASEANFocus, ISEAS SIngapore, ASEAN STUDIES CENTRE, 2019
As the musical scene of Southeast Asia evolves and transforms with time, greater attention and resources should be directed to keeping alive the region’s music traditions in its myriad forms. Music loss is the loss of part of our history and legacy.. Without adequate preservation efforts, the region’s musical heritage that is fading away will leave permanent lacuna in our historical memory. The sources for new musical thoughts and ideas are embedded in these ancient traditions from which one may draw inspiration. The musics of Southeast Asia has flourished as it is rooted in what music means for the people of the region --- its philosophy, spirituality, and symbols that evoke the sounds of peace and tolerance amidst a world of diversity and linkages. The editors of ASEANFocus, the flagship bimonthly publication of the ISEAS ASEAN Studies Centre (Singapore) have requested me to address the following in this short article: -Overview of prominent forms of traditional performing arts in Southeast Asia -Decline – causes (modernity and urbanisation, Western influences, discontinuity in generational hand-over) -The mixed impacts of globalisation and tourism on traditional performing arts -Keeping young people interested and engaged through innovative integration of contemporary elements into traditional performing arts? What are the attractions and limitations of this hybrid? -Efforts to preserve and revive traditional performing arts, including under ASEAN frameworks (some success stories and what are the biggest challenges). https://www.iseas.edu.sg/articles-commentaries/aseanfocus