Place of publication: United States, Ann Arbor; ISBN=978-0-355-59772-1
Ph.D.
Music
University of Washington
2017
In this dissertation, I show how Malay-identified performing arts are used to fold in Malay Muslim identity into the urban milieu, not as an alternative to Kuala Lumpur's contemporary cultural trajectory, but as an integrated part of it. I found this identity negotiation occurring through secular performance traditions of a particular instrument known as the gambus (lute), an Arabic instrument with strong ties to Malay history and trade. During my fieldwork, I discovered that the gambus in Malaysia is a potent symbol through which Malay Muslim identity is negotiated based on various local and transnational conceptions of Islamic modernity. My dissertation explores the material and virtual pathways that converge a number of historical, geographic, and socio-political sites-including the National Museum and the National Conservatory for the Arts, Culture, and Heritage-in my experiences studying the gambus and the wider transmission of muzik Melayu (Malay music) in urban Malaysia. I argue that the gambus complicates articulations of Malay identity through multiple agentic forces, including people (musicians, teachers, etc.), the gambus itself (its materials and iconicity), various governmental and non-governmental institutions, and wider oral, aural, and material transmission processes. Thus, I define transmission in its widest sense to include any mode of transmitting cultural information through performance. To focus the discussion, I isolate the gambus as a potent symbol and anchor from which cultural identity transmission emanates.
Southeast Asian studies; Music; Islamic Studies
Communication and the arts;Social sciences;Gambus;Islam;Malay;Malaysia;Oud;Southeast Asia