Performing arts as cultural heritage in the Federated States of Micronesia

Abstract

This article explores the performing arts as cultural heritage in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) in the western Pacific. It examines policies for and ideas about the support, management and safeguarding of the performing arts, first through the colonial lens of historical preservation, then through intangible cultural heritage and finally from recent theorising in music ecology. In presenting an overview of cultural heritage policy in the FSM with regard to the performing arts, this paper discusses the relationship between heritage practices and colonialism, and it reviews the place of music and dance in the cultural management of Micronesia. Drawing on recent work in ethnomusicology, the article argues for considerations of the holistic space of the performing arts and the facilitation of participatory practices to address concerns of cultural demise and to reframe approaches to music and dance as cultural heritage in the Pacific.

Keywords:

• performing arts
• music
• Micronesia
• Pacific Islands
• preservation
• intangible heritage

Acknowledgements

I thank friends and colleagues in the FSM for taking part in discussions over the past several years about the ideas presented in this article. Past research has been supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation (Grant 7409), the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, Victoria University of Wellington, the New Zealand School of Music, the College of Micronesia, both Chuuk and National Campuses, and the FSM Offices of National Archives, Culture, and Historic Preservation. I thank the anonymous reviewers and editor Laurajane Smith for helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of this paper.

Notes

1. Research for this article comes in part from work and residence in the FSM intermittently from the year 2000, and especially in Chuuk and Pohnpei states.

2. No one was injured in the tragedy but as with other past incidents of property and place today in Chuuk, there was much discussion about responsibility for the fire and the political motivations and contestations that might underpin the event. An investigation revealed that the fire was likely an accident that occurred during the night.

3. The close relationship between the FSM and the US extends from the second Compact of Free Association between both nations and which derives from the American territorial administration of Micronesia after the Second World War. With approximately one in three FSM citizens residing abroad, its communities are increasingly transnational and performances practices are not confined to the home islands. The 2010 FSM census recorded the nation’s population at 102,843 persons, and a recent 2011 census of FSM migrants abroad estimated 50,000 Micronesians from the FSM living overseas (FSM Office of Statistics, Budget & Economic Management 2012, 9). In this essay, I limit my discussions to performances based in the FSM and national policies across the four states.

4. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) defines intangible cultural heritage as: ‘the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills – as well as the instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces associated therewith – that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognise as part of their cultural heritage.’ See: Text of the Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage: http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/index.php?lg=en&pg=00022#art2.

5. See Hezel (2005) for an early discussion of cultural loss in the FSM.

6. See ‘Constitution of the Federated States of Micronesia’: http://www.fsmlaw.org/fsm/constitution/.

7. See ‘Code of the Federated States of Micronesia’: http://fsmlaw.org/fsm/code/index.htm.

8. There are currently 25 sites from the FSM on the US National Register of Historic Places: three from Kosrae, ten from Pohnpei, seven from Chuuk and five from Yap). These include indigenous historical sites, as well as those from the early colonial occupation and the Second World War. See http://www.nps.gov/history/nr/about.htm.

9. See King (2006) and Poyer (1992) for critiques of historical preservation frameworks in Micronesia.

10. At the time of publication, the UNESCO Tentative List of World Heritage Sites listed cultural properties from Yap, Pohnpei and Kosrae on its website.

11. At the same time that policies and research largely overlooked performance, much in-depth research was undertaken with cultural sites and material culture.

12. My argument here builds on critical studies of heritage practice internationally. See Smith (2006) for a critical exploration of ‘authorised heritage discourse’ and the power of its ‘cultural work.’ For discussions of colonialism and representation in heritage practices, for example, see Byrne (1991) and Labadi (2007).

13. For a series of excellent case studies on music from East Asia, see Howard (2012).

14. See Stefano, Davis, and Corsane (2012) for recent international case studies of intangible cultural heritage. I do not include a discussion of heritage and intellectual property in the FSM in this article. For recent Pacific studies, see Nason and Peter (2009) and Pigliasco (2010, 2011).

15. See Lixinski (2011) for a critical discussion of how the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage operates within the boundaries of state sovereignty, and the issues for wider participation at the local community level.

16. Besides culture day on Pohnpei, the only other state holiday that focuses on culture is Yap Day, celebrated each year on 1 March, and which that emphasises culture and performance. Various schools around the FSM also have separate Culture Day celebrations.

17. See: http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/index.php?lg=en&pg=11&inscription=2&type=2.

18. See, for example, the Sustainable Futures Project organised at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia (http://musecology.griffith.edu.au). See also Brandellero et al. (2014) for an overview of heritage within popular music in a recent special issue of the International Journal of Heritage Studies, as well as the corresponding articles in that issue.

19. For a broader discussion of the growing research area of ecomusicology, see the forthcoming collection by Allen and Dawe (2015). See Keogh (2013) for a critical response to ecological frameworks in music.

20. See Diettrich, Moulin, and Webb (2011) for a brief overview of itang as well as a recorded example.