Asian Transformations in Action - Api-fellowships.org

70 INTERMINGLING OF CONTINUITY AND DISCONTINUITYTRANSMISSION, PEDAGOGY AND EDUCATION: A CRITICALSTUDY OF ASIAN TRADITIONAL MUSIC CULTURES IN POST-COLONIAL AND POST-MODERN TIMES IN THAILAND ANDINDONESIARamón Pagayon SantosIntroduction and General FrameworkIn the post-colonial era, traditional musical expressionsas a primary source of cultural identity for peoplesand communities in Asia face new challenges asthey continue to evolve under changing social andinstitutional conditions. This new era in Asian musicallife is characterized by infrastructure building bynation-states for self-determination, globalization andhigh technology.The present study 1 formulates a broad perspectiveon the transmission and teaching of Asian musicaltraditions and repertoires as they reflect changingpedagogical concepts, strategies and techniques thathave been brought about by Western colonization.The adoption and transformative application of thesestrategies and techniques by local educators andmodern culture bearers, premised on sustaining thecontinuity of traditional musical practices as a sourceof cultural identity and a sense of selfhood, may beviewed as both a direct reaction and a creative responseto the challenges and dynamics of change, whethersocial, political, economic, or religious. The thrust tobuild modern societies was characterized by redefiningand reconfiguring social practices in communitylife towards achieving political stability, economicprosperity and the legitimacy of one’s membership inthe “civilized” international community. It is in theissue of the transmission of traditional cultures that onecan fully appreciate the tension and even confusion thatchanges in social values and institutions have created inreconciling the cultural significance of traditional lifeand expressive practices with the legacy of the colonialera.Institutionalization of pedagogy and moderneducation: Formal structures, standards and literacyThe establishment of formal educational institutions 2in Southeast Asia, deriving mainly from the overallliteracy agenda of the colonial regimes, later providedthe principal instrument for the development ofprofessionally productive citizenries in modernizingnation-states (Department of Education 1994). As aprescriptive instrument, each set of curricular offeringsembodies each institution’s vision, not only of the kindof graduates that it expects to produce, but also of thelatter’s role in a changing society, as well as the roleof the institution itself in contributing to the culturaland economic development of its region and the entirenation (see Fry 2002). Partly on this account, culturalpractices have been re-taxonomized into, for example,“classical” forms as practiced in Royal Courts andtemples and “secularized” forms for public consumptionvis-à-vis folk rituals involving elements that includespirit possession and trance. 3 Consequently, traditionalrepertoires also have to be fitted into the curricularstructures whose parameters are partly defined by timeallotments between practical, theoretical and extraartisticcourse requirements, replacing the almostunbounded and flexible schema of traditional pedagogythat “authorizes” the traditional master to teach onlywhat his disciples are capable of learning. Under theseconditions, modern education has produced two typesof artists: 1) academic artists and formally trainedexperts, many of whom have extended their academicexperience abroad and gained substantive materialbenefits; and 2) village-bred artists who developedtheir expertise through direct participation in villagetraditions and who identify themselves as “natural”artists.The tension between pedagogy and learning in thepast and at the present time is even more dramaticallyfelt in the dynamics of learning between oral andwritten methodologies (i.e., the use of notation). 4Today, the growing reliance of students on writing inall aspects of modern education has greatly affectedaural memory, bringing about a diminishing sense ofextemporality and aptitude for variation that are partof the “unwritten” canons and creative mechanism intraditional performance practice. Moreover, moderneducation has imposed a greater burden on masterartists who have to adjust to the literate process ofmusic education, including the learning of the solfasystem. They are subjected to institutional systemsof accreditation of teaching competence, academiccertificates and revalidation of their orally-acquiredknowledge according to the tenets of modern highereducation as pre-requisites to teaching in institutionsof higher learning. For this reason, the master artistsAsian Transformations in ActionThe Work of the 2006/2007 API Fellows