Contributors
Supeena Insee Adler
is a performer and ethnomusicologist living in San Diego, USA. Her areas of interest are mediums, healing rituals and music in north-eastern Thailand and southern Laos, literature in Thai traditional music performance and Okinawan folk music (min’yō). She is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor and musical instrument curator at the Department of Ethnomusicology, UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, University of California, Los Angeles, where she directs the Music of Thailand Ensemble.
Made Mantle Hood
is Professor of Ethnomusicology and Director of the Asia-Pacific Music Research Centre, Tainan National University of the Arts, Taiwan. His previous posts were at Universiti Putra Malaysia (2012–2018), Melbourne University, Australia (2011–2012) and Monash University, Australia (2005–2011). His current research interests include ontologies of sounded movement, endangered forms of vocalisation, tuning systems, as well as music and social justice. He is currently the lead researcher in the Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology-funded project, Decolonising Indonesian and Philippine Indigenous Performing Arts (2022–2024). He is the author of Triguna: A Hindu-Balinese Philosophy for Gamelan Gong Gede Music (2010) and co-editor of Music: Ethics and the community (2015).
A.M. Hermien Kusmayati (1952–2020)
was one of the leading performers of Javanese classical dance and a scholar of the performing arts. Having trained at Akademi Seni Tari Indonesia in Yogyakarta, she became lecturer at the same institution, teaching for the dance programme at the Department of Performing Arts. She received her PhD from Universitas Gadjah Mada. She was appointed abdi dalem of Pura Pakualaman in Yogyakarta, where she was responsible for teaching, artistic direction and choreography of traditional dances in the palace, and especially for the dances performed by female dancers. Her major works in the revitalisation of traditional dances include Bedaya Kembang Mas, Bedaya Renyep and Srimpi Nadheg Putri of Pura Pakualaman; and she choreographed Lelangen Beksa Banjaransari with her husband, Mardjijo. As a scholar, she taught for many years at Institut Seni Indonesia Yogyakarta (Indonesian Institute of the Arts Yogyakarta), and was appointed Rector (2010–2014). She is the author of Arak-arakan: Seni Pertunjukan dalam Upacara Tradisional di Madura (Processions: Performing Arts in Traditional Ceremonies in Madura), and the editor of Kembang Setaman: Persembahan untuk Sang Mahaguru (Flowers from the Same Garden: Offerings to Our Master Teacher, 2003) and co-editor of Rinenggaring: Pak Bandem yang Ngebyar (On Indonesian Arts: Festschrift in Honour of I Made Bandem, 2006), as well as numerous critical and academic papers. A.M. Hermien Kusmayati passed away in 2020.
Ako Mashino
teaches ethnomusicology, the anthropology of music, world musics, traditional cultures of Asia and Balinese gamelan as a lecturer at several universities, including Tokyo University of the Arts, Meiji University and Kunitachi College of Music, Japan. She is the editor of an anthology Minzokuongakugaku juuni no shiten (Twelve Perspectives on Ethnomusicology, 2016) and has published numerous papers and articles in Japanese and English. Her current research field examines the interactive relationship of voice, body and sound in Balinese performing arts, and Muslim Balinese performing arts. She is also an active performer of Balinese gamelan gong kebyar, gender wayang and geguntangan.
Mohamed Effendy Abdul Hamid
is a Lecturer at the Department of Southeast Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. Trained as a historian, he has wide interests that include Southeast Asian history from the precolonial period to the present, popular culture and martial arts studies. He is the author of Silat Seni Gayong PASAK Singapura: A Historical Legacy (2017).
Sal Murgiyanto
is a practising performer as well as a scholar and critic of the performing arts. In 1978 he initiated the Young Choreographers’ Festival and in 1992 the Indonesian Dance Festival which he directed for the first 10 years. He teaches at the Graduate School at Universitas Gadjah Mada and the Institut Seni Indonesia Yogyakarta (Indonesian Institute of the Arts Yogyakarta), and was a lecturer at the Graduate Dance Programme, Taipei National University of the Arts, Taiwan (1993–2011). He established Senrepita Art Community in Yogyakarta (2014) and was the co-curator for Europalia Indonesia in Brussels, Belgium (2017–2018). In recognition of his contribution as a dancer, academic and art critic, he has received numerous honours, including from the Smithsonian Institution for his contribution to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival (1991), the Satyalancana Kebudayaan (Medal for Service in National Culture, 2013) and an IDF Lifetime Achievement Award (2014).
Mayco A. Santaella
is Professor in the Department of Film and Performing Arts and Dean for the School of Arts at Sunway University, Malaysia. He studied at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa as an East-West Center Fellow researching music and dance traditions of the extended Sulu Zone (East Malaysia, southern Philippines and eastern Indonesia) and their links to the Nusantara region. He conducted research for his doctoral studies in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, as a Fulbright research grant recipient. He is the co-editor of Made in Nusantara: Studies in Popular Music (2021) and Popular Music in East and Southeast Asia: Sonic (under)Currents and Currencies (2022).
M.C.M. Santamaria
is Professor of Asian and Philippine Studies at the Asian Center, University of the Philippines Diliman, where he currently serves as Assistant Dean for Cultural Affairs. He has published numerous articles and book chapters on ethnic conflict in Asia; religion, law and politics in Southeast Asia; ethnographic studies on the Sama-Bajau peoples of maritime Southeast Asia; and performance studies in the Philippines. He is a practising theatre choreographer and heads his own dance company, Bunga Arts Link.
Henry Spiller
is an ethnomusicologist whose research focuses on Sundanese music and dance from West Java, Indonesia, with special consideration of gender/sexuality, ecomusicological approaches and orientalism. His books include Erotic Triangles: Sundanese Dance and Masculinity in West Java (2010), Javaphilia: American Love Affairs with Javanese Music and Dance (2015) and Archaic Instruments in Twenty-first-century West Java: Bamboo Murmurs (2023), and he is the co-author of the textbook Focus: Gamelan Music of Indonesia (3rd ed., 2022). He is Professor of Music at the University of California, Davis, where he teaches world music classes and graduate seminars and directs the Department of Music’s gamelan ensemble.
Sumarsam
has played Javanese gamelan since childhood. He is the Winslow-Kaplan Professor of Music at Wesleyan University, USA. He has published numerous articles and two books: Gamelan: Cultural Interaction and Musical Development in Central Java (1995) and Javanese Gamelan and the West (2013). His recent research focuses on the intersections between religion and performing arts, examining discourses of transculturalism, the performing arts and Islam among the Javanese. He is the recipient of a number of fellowship grants and awards, including the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship (2016–2017), Satyalancana Kebudayaan (Medal for Service in National Culture, 2017), Yale Institute of Sacred Music Fellowship (2018–2019) and the International Gamelan Festival Literacy Award (2018), and he was named an Honorary Member of the Society for Ethnomusicology (2018).
R. Anderson Sutton
has been at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (UHM), USA, since 2013, serving as Dean of the School of Pacific and Asian Studies until 2020 and as Assistant Vice Provost for Global Engagement (2020–2022). He is now Professor of Music and Chair of the UHM Ethnomusicology Program. Prior to his move to UHM he served as Professor of Music and Director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. He is the author of Traditions of Gamelan Music in Java: Musical Pluralism and Regional Identity (1991), Variation in Central Javanese Gamelan Music: Dynamics of a Steady State (1993) and Calling Back the Spirit: Music, Dance, and Cultural Politics in Lowland South Sulawesi (2002). In addition to his primary focus on Indonesia, he has authored 10 articles on recent musical developments in South Korea, and is a contributing editor for the two-volume series Perspectives on Korean Music (2010, 2011).
Ricardo D. Trimillos
is Professor Emeritus in Asian Studies and Ethnomusicology at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. He has published on the traditional music of the Lowland and Muslim Philippines, Hawai‘i and Japan; these address issues of cultural transmission, gender and identity. He has been consultant to a number of governments including Malaysia, the Philippines, Poland and Hong Kong on arts and public policy.
Roger Vetter
is Professor Emeritus of Music at Grinnell College, Iowa, USA. His primary research subject has been the musical life of Kraton Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia, where he has carried out fieldwork a number of times over the past 40 years. He has published articles on this subject in Asian Music and the Journal of Chinese Ritual, Theatre and Folklore, and has released a CD of field recordings and provided liner notes for another CD of music from this institution. His current project is an update and expansion of his The Gamelans of the Kraton Yogyakarta website, http://vetter.sites.grinnell.edu/gamelan/.
Deborah Wong
is an ethnomusicologist and Professor of Music at the University of California, Riverside, USA. She has written three books: Sounding the Center: History and Aesthetics in Thai Buddhist Ritual (2001), Speak It Louder: Asian Americans Making Music (2004) and Louder and Faster: Pain, Joy, and the Body Politic in Asian American Taiko (2019). She is a past President of the Society for Ethnomusicology. Active in public sector work at the national, state and local levels, she currently serves as the Chair of the Advisory Council for the Smithsonian Institution’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.