Musicking Home in the Southeast Asian Island World

Abstract

The so-called ‘gong-chime’ belt of Southeast Asia is home to great cultural diversity. Various communities, sometimes occupying borderland areas that stretch over national boundaries, are connected to one another through their practice of different but yet related styles of gong playing. Such groups ‘music’ their home. Importantly, locale is not necessarily a primary reference for all of these groups. The Sama Dilaut, for instance, a maritime people who inhabit a heartland of the gong-chime belt of the Southeast Asian islands, understand their place in the world not by maps and historiographies but by itineraries, relationship networks and chains of events. This paper investigates Sama Dilaut conceptions of space, specifically their concept of home, and that concept's relationship to tagunggu.