Danongan Kalanduyan (center) with members of Ating Tao Drum Circle performing at Genentech

Project Title: New Works from the Southern Phillippines
Recipient Organization: Ethnic Studies Department, San Francisco State University
Lead Artist: Danongan Kalanduyan
Genre and Date Awarded: Traditional Arts, June 2001
To Be Presented: June 2002-September 2003

A two-year collaboration among lead artist Danongan Sibay Kalanduyan, professor Dan Begonia of the Ethnic Studies Department at San Francisco State University, and the Ating Tao Drum Circle, a Filipino American student performing group, led to performances of new works based on traditional kulintang music and dance from the Southern Philippines. The project combined the experience and skill of a virtuoso musician and the energy and skill of a virtuoso musician and the energy and talent of young Filipino American artists, bringing traditional music into new contexts.

The Filipino population now is one of the largest Asian American communities in California, and in San Francisco and other cities, regional folk dances, the rondalla string ensemble music, and music of the kulintang (eight tuned, knobbed gongs suspended in a wooden frame) have become mainstays of the cultural life and public symbols of Filipino American identity. Because of 400 years of western colonialism, any Filipinos in the Philippines and in the United States have been disconnected from a root culture that has much to offer them as a validating and confirming influence. Master Kalanduyan and Ating Tao worked together to address role of tradition in addressing the complexity of Filipino American identity. The collaborators created within a tradition, yet allowed for the infusion of the new modes of expression practiced by Ating Tao that complement, embellish, and orbit around the indigenously authentic forms of performing art.

Over two years of rigorous, weekly practice, rehearsals, and artistic development, the collaborators created a new collection of performing arts pieces. Work-in-progress events were followed by performances in community festivals and events. Asian American Studies Professor Dan Begonia managed logistics and operations for project development and the culminating performances.

The kulintang served as the centerpiece of their work. While gongs are found throughout the Philippine tribal cultures, the kulintang, thought to have been brought from China to the Philippines in the Third Century AD, is looked to as the “deepest” of the islands’ performing arts traditions. Related to the Indonesian gamelan, the kulintang—or gongs in a row—is today rooted exclusively in the cultures of the southern island region of Mindanao. Basically a melody instrument, the kulintang is played by a single performer as a solo instrument or as part of an ensemble.

Born in a fishing village in the Cotabato area of Mindanao, Danongan Kalanduyan was raised in a strong traditional music environment. He is a master of all aspects of the Maguindanao tribal style of kulintang music and has been a central artistic figure in virtually all major Filipino-American communities for nearly two decades. In 1995 he received the nation’s must prestigious award for traditional artists, the National Heritage Fellowship, granted by the National Endowment for the Arts. Among his many accomplishments, in the early 1990s he was the musical director of the critically-acclaimed “Song for Manong,” an epic historical piece that traced the outline of Filipino immigrant history in the United States, and in 2001 he collaborated with Professor Haffez Modirzadeh from the San Francisco State University Music Department and Professor Royal Hartigan from the Music Department of Boston University to produce a joint Filipino Kulintang-Persian Music production, “Fadjr.”

Most of his prior work tends to be with small ensembles such as his own Palabuniyan Kulintang Ensemble. Ating Tao is a much larger (30-35 members), and is not as strongly bound by Philippine musical tradition as is Master Kalanduyan. Rather, it is eclectic in its selection of musical forms, dance techniques, and modes of expression—drawing from and combines many sources. For both parties, this project was an exciting opportunity to find ways in which their differing styles could be brought together to form new pieces

Danongan Kalanduyan with members of Ating Tao Drum Circle performing at Genentech

Danongan Kalanduyan is a master of all aspects of the Maguindanao tribal style of kulintang music and is a central artistic figure in the Filipino-American community. Born in the fishing village of Datu Piang in the Cotabato area of Mindanao, he was raised in a strongly traditional musical environment. He says, “If you were born in my village, you’d hear no Western music, just traditional music. The music was everywhere and for everyone, not just as entertainment but also as an accompaniment to rituals and ceremonies.” Like many kulintang musicians, he began by steadying the large agung gongs when they swayed back and forth as the older musicians struck them. At the age of seven, he began to study the other instruments—the kulintang, the dabakan goblet-shaped drum, the small babandir “timekeeper” gong, and the gandingan four-gong set—from his grandmother, father, uncles, and cousins. As a young man, he won island-wide competitions on the gandingan and became widely recognized as a master musician. In 1971 he toured the Far East with the Darangan Cultural Troupe.

In 1976, a Rockefeller Foundation grant brought Kalanduyan to the University of Washington in Seattle as an artist-in-residence in the ethnomusicology program headed by Dr. Robert Garfias. He has resided in the United States ever since. Word of his presence spread among Filipino communities, and he was soon very much in demand as a performer and teacher. He has taught and performed with nearly all of the American kulintang ensembles.

Danongan Kalanduyan has been a featured artist in performances at major venues such as the Hollywood Bowl (with the Los Angeles Philharmonic), the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Kennedy Center, as well as in countless concerts and festivals throughout the United States. He has served as a master artist in the California state apprenticeship program. In 1995 he received a National Heritage Fellowship Award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Members of Ating Tao Drum Circle performing at Genentech

Professional Appointments

• President of the Mindanao Lilang-Lilang (2002-present)
• Executive and Artistic Director, Palabuniyan Kulintang Ensemble, San Francisco, California (1988-present)
• Artistic Co-Director, Mindanao Kulintang Ensemble, Seattle, Washington (1994-1999)
• Music Director, Kalilang Kulintang Ensemble, San Francisco, California (1985-1988)
• Artist-in-Residence, University of Washington, School of Music, Seattle, Washington (1976-1984)
• Member, Darangan Cultural Troupe, Mindanao State University, Marawi City, Philippines (1968-1976)

Honors and Awards

• Recipient, Artist-in-Community, Fund for Folk Culture, California Arts Council (2001)
• Recipient, Grants for the Arts of the San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund (2000)
• Fund for Folk Culture, California Arts Council Organizational Support Program (2000)
• Asia Pacific Performance Exchange Fellow, University of California, Los Angeles (summer, 2000)
• Master-Apprenticeship Grant, Fund for Folk Culture (1999)
• Judge, San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival (1997)
• National Heritage Fellowship in Folk and Traditional Arts, National Endowment for the Arts (1995)

Recordings

• Kulintang Music: Traditional Gong Music from Mindanao Island, Mindanao Kulintang Ensemble (1995)
• Kulintang: Ancient Gong/Drum Music of the Southern Philippines, World Kulintang Institute (1994)
• Featured performer on A Song for Manong, Fred Houn with The Asian American Arts Ensemble and Kulintang Arts
• Ang Mga Kulintang ng Maguindanao, Maranao at Tausug, (1976)

Performance, Lecture, and Workshop Highlights

• San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival audition; Bindlestiff Studios, San Francisco; San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival; Asian Pacific Cultural Center, Oakland; Jack Adams Hall, San Francisco State University; Balboa High School; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2001)
• Knuth Hall and Jack Adams Hall, San Francisco State University; Alvarado School, Union City; San Mateo Performing Arts, San Mateo; San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival; California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco; International Hotel, San Francisco; Bindlestiff Studios, San Francisco (2000)
• New Jersey Performing Arts Center; the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Centennial Hall, Sitka, Alaska (1999)
• Fowler Museum of Cultural History, the University of California, Los Angeles; The Textile Museum, Washington, D.C.; University of Alaska, Anchorage; Shariff Kabunsuan Festival, Cotobato City, Mindanao, Philippines (1998)
• Oakland Asian Cultural Center; Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park; San Jose State University; California Institute for the Arts, Valencia; National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, Japan (1997)
• Northwest Folklife Festival, Seattle, Washington; Philippine Festival Week, Jefferson Memorial Museum, Saint Louis, Missouri; San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival (1996)

Members of Ating Tao Drum Circle performing at Genentech

Ating Tao

In the early 1970s, a group of Filipino American Students at San Francisco State University organized a performing arts group called Ating Tao, meaning “Our People.” Ating Tao involved students from the Philippine American Collegiate Endeavor (PACE), the San Francisco State University Filipino student organization, and performed up and down the West Coast. The Ating Tao dancers, musicians, and actors presented programs focused on themes related to Filipino American history, culture, heroes and heroines, comedy, role models, and community issues.

Beginning in the 1990s, the sons and daughters of the original 1970s Ating Tao members resurrected the old name and concept, but at the same time gave it their own signature by emphasizing drumming, spoken word, dancing, singing, and higantes—or giant puppets—as their means of performing for and serving the Filipino community and the community-at-large at festivals, parades, memorials, and celebrations. Their energetic performances are in high demand at a wide variety of Filipino and non-Filipino events.