Reframing and Reclaiming Kulintang Music: Countering Written History with Contemporary Reality

In the first musicological article about Philippine music written in the United States, Frances Densmore in American Anthropologist claimed that the music of the “Moros” at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair was uncivilized due to what she perceived as its “bewildering” rhythms and lack of unifying forms. She described the sound of the kulintang, an Indigenous gong ensemble, as chaotic and fiercely aggressive, much like she described the people themselves. This chapter explores a performance by the Pakaraguian Kulintang Ensemble of Southern California in which they endeavored to reclaim and reframe Densmore’s damaging mischaracterizations of kulintang music by demonstrating its musical complexities and continued importance in the modern life of Indigenous Muslim Filipino communities. Each ensemble member reflects on several quotes by Densmore and contrasts her findings with their research-based material gathered from ethnographic fieldwork in Mindanao in collaboration with master artists. Despite its problematic approach, Densmore’s article is still read as one of the first works of comparative musicology, the foundation of ethnomusicology, and continues to circulate misrepresentations of Philippine Indigenous cultures. Kulintang is still actively performed today, as evidenced by hundreds of videos circulated on social media. Pakaraguian Kulintang Ensemble’s performance ends with the insight of Kim Kalanduyan—a Maguindanao-Filipino-American kulintang artist raised in California who descended from the Kalanduyan family of musicians from Datu Piang, Cotabato. She articulates an emic perspective on the endurance of Maguindanao kulintang music contrary to Densmore’s prediction that the “native music of the Filipinos will soon pass away…until all the Filipino music shall be merged at last in The Star-spangled Banner.”