Mary Talusan Lacanlale, Ph.D.

My two-year postdoctoral fellowship here at Tufts and has come to an end.
Please visit my website http://marytalusan.com for further updates on my academic work.

Recent paper presentation:
Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations
SHAFR.org
2009 June 25
Panel: “American Empire and Cultural Relations in the 20th Century”

Work in progress:
1. "Music of the Philippines" CD project of indigenous music of the Philippines, executive producer, to be released in October 2009
2. "Moro Songs: Muslim Filipino Protest Music during Martial Law," article for UP Diliman scholarly journal, Humanities Diliman. (click here)
3. Textbook for world music class on Musics of Asia (see my website for details)

I've had an incredibly busy semester--and it's only been a month and a half! Since classes began, I participated in a conference as a panel member/presenter at UC Riverside, I gave a lecture at Tufts' Center for Humanities, and I was published in the University of the Philippines, Center for Ethnomusicology's Musika Jornal.

Tropical Renditions: Musics of Filipino America

2009 February 5-6
Conference sponsored by UC Riverside, Southeast Asian Text, Ritual, and Performance (SEATRIP) and Department of Music
One of four speakers, gave presentation on early Philippine-American encounters of the Philippine Constabulary Band in the U.S. (1904 World’s Fair, 1909 Taft Inauguration, and tours of America’s major symphony halls).

Center for the Humanities at Tufts

2009 February 17
“Women’s Courtship Voices: Music and Gender in the Muslim Philippines”
The Magindanaon Dayunday

Article Publication
“Gendering the Philippine Brass Band: Women of the Banda Ligaya and National University Band, 1920s-1930s.” Musika Jornal 5: 33-56, 2009.

[To order, contact University of the Philippines, Center for Ethnomusicology]
The conductress is my maternal grandmother, Irene N. Gamalinda, daughter of the famous Philippine Constabulary Band conductor, Capt. Pedro B. Navarro.

My piece for trumpet and tape will be performed during an event presented by Dance Forum, Asian Composer’s League Phil. and Japan Foundation in Manila, March 20-22, 2009.This is the first performance of my music since...about a decade!

The concert of Cambodian wedding music and Filipino kulintang was SPECTACULAR!

I could not have asked for a better crowd or a better performance by both groups. The high school students who danced the Cambodian coconut dance were awesome, as were their choreographers and teachers like Tim Thou (see their website http://www.angkordance.org/ for a full list). Jeff Dyer was an invaluable bridge to the Master Musicians of Lowell's wedding music scene. Although the dance troupe has performed with recorded music in many different venues, the musicians and dancers have never collaborated before. To me this was very exciting, and an ideal situation to present both arts.

Palabuniyan's visit was just fun. It was great to be able to be in a position to invite them to perform--mostly as a graduate student, I didn't have much to offer except my interest! But, it was great to both bring Guro Danny Kalanduyan and his group, and to show the Tufts community as well as the Boston Filipino community what my work was all about.

Photos of both groups are available on my Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=70626&l=7d629&id=719588593
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=73430&l=7410f&id=719588593

Now that it's over, I'm exhausted and just trying to catch up with work. I had my last classes--doubling up one day because I had to have surgery on Monday, Dec. 8th. We ate burritos from Anna's, which, according to my student, is owned by a Japanese American couple, so very appropriate for my Asian American music class! Thursday, my colleague from UCLA gave her job talk for our search, Birgitta Johnson. Her sample class was spot on, and it was the first time I really heard her speak. I think when she began grad school, I went to the Philippines to do field research, so we never quite connected. But, when she arrived it was like we were long lost friends--at least that's how I felt. She's a terrific candidate all around. On Friday, December 5th, I gave a guest lecture at Ellie Hisama's graduate Asian American music class at Harvard's Music Dept. They were fantastic people to meet and with whom to share my work! I'm so glad that I met them, we had very interesting conversations. I asked them all to keep in touch. Saturday, I took Gavin and his cousin Mia to David Locke's Kiniwe concert at Tufts. The students were fantastic, the concert was fun, and the guest artist Nani Agbeli was amazing! Afterward, we all went to the Auners' for a reception, and luckily Gavin didn't break anything, although he did jump on the couch.

So, now I'm recovering from surgery and Gavin has a fever. I really should rest! I just have term papers to grade, and then vacation (read as "catching up on writing that book!").

Majorie wrote a great article on my research and the upcoming Palabuniyan Kulintang Ensemble concert:

http://tuftsjournal.tufts.edu/2008/11_1/features/02/
Visit PKE's website: kulintang.com

New professional website at marytalusan.com
Academic Course Websites:
Asian American Music MUS-0195-02
Music of Asia MUS-027

I deposited my dissertation at UP Diliman when I was in the Philippines a few months ago (August 2008). Here's a record of it on their catalog:
Cultural Localization and Transnational Flows: Music in the Magindanaon Communities of the Philippines, UCLA, 2005
Yeah! I put a good 8 years of work into that research! You can also look it up on the UCLA library catalog, UCLA ethnomusicology archive for the accompanying CD and DVDs, and WorldCat.

Giles Li and Eugene Shih did a great lecture in my Asian American Music class. They've inspired me to add an open mic component to my class--in addition to the usual powerpoint presentation, I'd like them to perform something that's related to issues discussed in class. Oh! We (well, they) made Tufts Daily:
http://www.tuftsdaily.com/1.778481

I hope this will bring awareness, support and encouragement to artists in general and Asian American artists in particular. We had a good turn out at the dinner after the lecture. Thank you to Linell Yugawa and the students at the Asian American Center!

Fall semester has started, and taken off. The music department had a great orientation day (Aug. 29) for new students, and the building was teeming with activity. My class was announced during the meeting because at that time only one student had signed up. I'm pleased to announce that there are 8 students in the class. It's quite interesting having only 8 students in class; last semester I had 30, and before that I was teaching 80-120 students per class at UCLA.

The very next day, Saturday, was orientation for new Asian American students, and again I announced my class. According to my sister Grace and Linell, it's never been taught at Tufts. I hope word will spread about it, especially since there are so many interesting things happening in Asian American studies.

I had a very productive and somewhat hectic summer. I returned to my research tapes and sorted through many, and transcribed a few interviews (this is tedious work that takes days and days). I have an outline of chapters for my book, and sorted through material, placing them in folders for each chapter.

For library research, I read though the literature on gender and music, and gender in Southeast Asia, including books on courtship. I tried to position my work within this literature, and discovered ways by which my research can make an important contribution. First and foremost, the body of work on gender in the Muslim Philippines is practically non-existent except for a few articles. Nothing analyzes Philippine Muslim women's participation in courtship. Other than love songs (bayok) and the more contemporary dayunday, there is seems to be no way to understand women's desires in marriage.

I also took a couple of weeks to work on my research on the Philippine Constabulary Band. I found dozens of newspaper reports online, now that many of them are available online, and had a few spectacular finds. For the first time ever, I was able to see (and now own) medals that my great-grandfather acquired as a military veteran and also the medals from the 1932 Philippine Carnival that his all-female brass band won. I found more information on the PC Band's stay in Atlantic City, New Jersey and also a postcard of the Million Dollar Pier on which a banner saying "Filipino Band" hung. The internet has just made so much more research possible. So, out of this, I completed an article entitled "Gendering the Philippine Brass Band: The Banda Ligaya of Malabon, and the National University Band, 1920s-1930s." The University of the Philippines' ethnomusicology journal, simply entitled "Musika Jornal" will publish it soon. All this is in addition to my current research on the Magindanao.

From late July to mid-August, I went to the Philippines to attend ICOPHIL 2008 (the International Conference On Philippine Studies). Even though I didn't give a paper this time (I did in Amsterdam 2004), I had a great time seeing old friends and hearing new and thought-provoking studies on the Philippines, especially the diaspora. I also spend a few days in Maharlika Village with my Magindanao hosts. I hired a dayunday singer to help me translate some parts of the dayunday I'm working on. His name is Kalis and was very helpful. I also saw and spent time with many of my relatives. I met up with my uncle Al Peter, who was able to give me photocopies and one original score by Pedro B. Navarro (his grandfather, my great-grandfather). It was amazing. Oh, I also went to the National Library, back to the Banas Collection, and found two letters written by Navarro to Banas! Why didn't I see them before when I was there for months in 1999 and 2000? Since they wouldn't allow me to scan them, I took photos. Luckily, I borrowed a really good camera and brought it with me that day.

So, now this is officially the last few days of summer. I have meetings already on Friday and Saturday (!).

I started as a Mellon postdoctoral associate at Tufts in September of 2007. I spent the semester conducting research and preparing to write a book manuscript based on my dissertation on music of the Magindanao, a Muslim Filipino minority group in the Philippines. I traveled to San Francisco, California and spent several days translating one performance of the dayunday (see below) with Danongan Kalanduyan, the only Magindanaon teacher of kulintang music in the United States. The dayunday uses archaic poetic language that many ordinary Magindanao do not understand. I will explain more.

At the end of December, I spent several days in Mindanao with Mr. Kalanduyan or Guro ("Teacher") Danny and his relatives, translating, and also videotaping the following: an eight-hour long dayunday, kulintang performances, a ritual remembering the dead called kanduli, and interviewing performers and audience members of the dayunday. I collected over twenty hours of video tape and have spent the spring semester cataloging, translating, and analyzing.

In addition to teaching a class at the music department called Music of Asia in which I had 30 students, I performed and taught workshops, as well as attended events on campus.

Performances--
1. April 4, Performed on kulintang for Tufts Filipino Cultural Society
2. April 17, Peformed on kulintang for Asian Heritage Month Festival at Stonehill College

Workshops--
Feb. and March: Gave two workshops on kulintang music at the Iskwelahang Pilipino (Filipino School) in Bedford, MA, New England's first and largest Filipino American community cultural school. http://www.ipbahay.org

Guest Lecture--
April: Guest lecture on Chinese music in my colleague's Music Cultures of the World class

Other Research Projects--Started an archive and history project on Filipino Americans in Boston from 1898-1986 www.bostonfilipinos.com
Writing an article on the first all-women's brass band in the Philippines 1928-1932 (which my grandmother conducted)

Events attended--(not in chronological order)
1. meetings of the music department staff and faculty throughout the semester
2. October--lunch with Asian American faculty at Tufts
3. Student run cultural shows such as the South Asian and Filipino student associations
4. Concerts at the Music Dept. such as Hindustani Vocal Music, Arabesque Music Ensemble, and Boston Gamelan (Javanese). I really wish I could have attended more, but I do have a two year old at home and my husband had to go back to L.A. to work.
5. dinner with Asian American Alliance for students and faculty
6. conferences at the new Center for Humanities
7. an art exhibit by Asian American students
8. lunch and talk given by Mellon postdoc
9. 25th Anniversary of the Asian American Center on March 30
10. Asian American Center senior brunch on May 12
11. April 26, assisted Iskwelahang Pilipino at NEFFA (New England Folk Festival)
http://neffa.org/What_is_Festival.html

What a busy year!!

I've been meaning to upload an entry for weeks now, possibly months. This week seems particularly appropriate since my photo was up on the Tufts Homepage. I'm sitting with Jonathan Wilson, director of the Center for Humanities at Tufts, or CHAT. The photo was taken by Alonso Nichols. Since they change the photo weekly, I took a screen shot and upload it here:

View image

In the article (http://www.tufts.edu/home/feature/):

Cultivating Enrichment

One of the Mellon Fellows at the Center for the Humanities is Mary Lacanlale, who is writing a book based on her dissertation research on the music of the Magindanao, a Muslim minority group in the Philippines. The music, called kulintang, features gongs and drums and is stylistically similar to Javanese gamelan.

Lacanlale received her doctorate in ethnomusicology from UCLA in 2005 and taught there for the past two years before her sister Grace Talusan (A'94)—who also teaches at Tufts—encouraged her to apply for the Mellon fellowship.

"It's absolutely invaluable," Lacanlale says of the Center. "It brings us outside of our departments and allows us to connect broadly across different fields in the study of humanities. We all share common issues, but we're coming from different disciplines."

She praised Wilson for accommodating the Mellon fellows and helping them carry out their work.

"He's really supportive and wants to make sure that we accomplish what we need to in terms of our work," says Lacanlale, who is teaching a class called "Music of Asia."

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I taught my last class yesterday, and am working on the final exam as well as grading 30 papers! I also have to give grades for their listening blogs and presentations. Yesterday, I also attended a dinner for the Women's Center, to celebrate the end of their grant.
http://ase.tufts.edu/WomensCenter/cvpp.aspx

It was inspiring to hear peoples' stories about how the program changed their lives and allowed them to help others who were victims of violence. One student said that when saw a particular poster stating "we are here for you," she felt not so alone as a new student on campus.

Chat's website: http://ase.tufts.edu/chat/
Alonso, photographer at Tufts, and a freelance photographer, has had many photos published this year, including a written chapter with photographs in this book:
Argentina: From the Ruins of a Dirty War