2. Key Ideas
• Southeast Asian arts referst to the literary, performing, and visual
arts of Southeast Asia.
• Although the cultural development of the area was once dominated
by Indian influence, a number of cohesive traits predate the Indian
influence.
• Include: Wet-rice (or padi) agriculture, metallurgy, navigation,
ancestor cults, and worship associated with mountains, and
certain art forms not derived from India like batik textiles, gamelan
orchestras, and the wayang puppet theatre—remain popular.
3. Key Ideas
• The term Southeast Asia refers to the huge peninsula of Indochina
and the extensive archipelago of what is sometimes called the East
Indies.
• The region can be subdivided into mainland Southeast Asia and
insular Southeast Asia.
• A common geographic and climatic pattern prevails over all of
Southeast Asia and has resulted in a particular pattern of
settlement and cultural development. Mountain people generally
have a different culture than that of the valley dwellers.
4. Key Ideas
• The region's chief cultural influences have been either China
or India, or both.
• Diverse culture influence is most pronounced in the Philippines and
Singapore, which host heterogenous societies
• Tea, as a beverage, can be found across the region while the fish
sauces distinctive to the region tend to vary by region.
7. Apsara
• Khmer and Indonesian classical arts were concerned with
depicting the life of the gods, but to the Southeast Asian mind
the life of the gods was the life of the peoples themselves—
joyous, humble, yet divine.
• Dance movements, Hindu gods, and arts were also fused into
Thai, Khmer, Lao and Burmese cultures.
8. Apsara
• Dance in much of Southeast Asia includes the elegant and precise
movement of the hands as well as the feet, to express the dance's
emotion and meaning of the story.
• Most Southeast Asians introduced dance into their royal courts; in
particular, Cambodian royal ballet represented them in the early 7th
century before the Khmer Empire, which was highly influenced by Indian
Hinduism.
• Video on apsara dance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfWxU1rHy84
9. Apsara
• Apsara Dance, a court classical
dance of strong hand and feet
movement, is a great example of
Hindu symbolic dance.
• Started in Cambodia in 1st century
and later on spread to
neighboring Laos and Thailand.
• Apsara refers to female spirit of
the clouds and waters in Hindu
and Buddhist mythology.
• They are youthful and beautiful
supernatural female beings who
are superb in the art of dancing.
Apsara, traditional Khmer
dance
10. Apsara
• The graceful movements of the
Apsara dancers, adorned with
gold headdresses and silken
tunics and skirts, are carved on
the walls of many of the temples
at Angkor.
• There was an estimate that there
were 3,000 apsara dancers in the
12th century court of King
Jayavarman VII.
• In 1352-57, Angkor was sacked
by Ayutthaya Thais and the
apsara dancers were seized and
taken to Thailand.
Apsara dancers carved on the
walls of Angkor Wat
11. Shadow Play
• The shadow play and masked and
unmasked dance are court arts
reflecting centuries of subtle
refinement under the patronage of
kings and princes.
• In Southeast Asia, the shadow
theatre is a major classic art, a
favored form of entertainment even
in the past. Leather puppets of
mythological figures, the bodies
intricately incised to allow light to
pass through, are attached to sticks
for manipulation. A lacy shadow is
created by a flaming lamp as the
puppet is pressed against the back of
a vertical screen of white cloth.
Wayang kulit shadow performance
play in Yogyakarta, Indonesia
12. Shadow Play
• Indonesia, despite conversion to
Islam which opposes certain
forms of art, has retained many
forms of Hindu-influenced
practices, culture, art and
literature which included the
elements of shadow play.
• Today, it is a
• Wayang kulit, is a the shadow
puppet play of Indonesia.
• Wayang –may refer to theater,
shadow or puppet itself
• Kulit - skin
Wayang shadow puppet, Bali,
Early 20th century
13. Shadow Play
• Performances of shadow puppet
theater are accompanied by
gamelan orchestra in Java and
gamelan gender wayang in Bali.
• The wayang kulit was declared a
UNESCO Masterpiece of Oral and
Intangible Heritage to Society on
November 7, 2003.
• Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=pfydro4X2t0
Wayang golek in contrast to
Wayang klitik
14. Gong-Chime Music
• Traditional music in Southeast Asia is as varied as its many ethnic and
cultural divisions. Main styles of traditional music have developed: Court
music, folk music, music styles of smaller ethnic groups, and music
influenced by genres outside the geographic region.
15. Gong-Chime Music
• Of the court and folk music
genres, gong-chime ensembles
and orchestras make up the
majority (the exception being
lowland areas of Vietnam).
• Considered the classical music of
Southeast Asia, it is dominated by
a wide range of percussion
instruments (mostly gong-chime).
• It is supported by other various
instruments to elaborate the
composition.
• Normally, for long performances
and with improvisations.
A set of Javanese gamelan
from the Asian Civilisations Museum,
Empress Place, Singapore.
16. Gong-Chime Music
• This kind of music was historically
employed as an orchestration for
rituals, drama, shadow puppets and
dance performances rather than as a
concerto music in itself. With time it
developed into many sub-genres with
various levels of formality, ranging
from fast village dance music
(Jaipongan) to exceptionally slow
paced "royal court" styles.
• Also refers to large percussion
orchestras composed of non-metal
instruments, like that of bamboo as
well as other formal/royal music of the
region.
Pinpeat orchestra (Cambodia and
Mainland Southeast Asia)
18. Gong-Chime Music
• Three Major Gong Ensembles in
Southeast Asia
• Gamelan orchestras from Indonesia,
• Piphat /Pinpeat ensembles of Thailand
Laos, Burma and Cambodia
• The Kulintang ensembles of southern
Philippines.
• Kalanduyan (kulintang music and
dance) Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gs
X0z82FTeI
19. Script
Scripts : Ancient form of writing in
Southeast Asia
Pallava script : direct or indirect
Source of Southeast Asian scripts
such as Javanese, Baybayin, Mon, Khmer,
Thai, and Buremese.
Pallava script was a Brahmic script
developed under the Pallava
Dynasty of Southern India around
the 6th century CE.
20. Script
• Pallava script was used for the
Tamil and Prakrit languages.
• Developed around 6th to 9th
century CE.
• Belongs to the abugida writing
system, a segmental system in
which consonant-vowel
sequences are written as a unit.
21. Script
• Writing systems in SEA:
• Austro-Asiatic (Khmer, Chunom,
etc.)
• Austronesian (Cham alphabet,
Kawi script –Balinese, Baybayin,
Tagbanwa alphabets, etc.)
• Hmong-Mien languages
• Tai Languages (Thai, Lao, etc.)
• Tibeto-Burman (Burmese, Tibetan,
Nepal, etc.)
22. Script
Khmer alphabet
Abugida writing system
611 - present
Parent to Thai script
Baybayin
Abugida writing system
Tagalog, Visayan, Kapampangan
13th-19th century
Parent to Tagbanwa, Buhid
(Mangyan), Kapampangan
23. Script
• The Thai alphabet is derived from
the Old Khmer script (Thai: อักษร
ขอม, akson khom), another
southern Brahmic style of writing
derived from the south
Indian Pallava dynasty of Pallava
• Abugida writing system
• 1283-present
• Created by King Ramkhamhaeng
the Great
24. Script
• The use of Chinese characters, in the
past and present, is only evident in
Vietnam and more recently,
Singapore and Malaysia. The
adoption of Chinese characters in
Vietnam dates back to around
111BC, when it was occupied by the
Chinese.
• A Vietnamese script
called Chunom used modified
Chinese characters to express the
Vietnamese language. Both classical
Chinese and Chu Nom were used up
until the early 20th century.
Chunom script
25. Script
Translation
Within the span of hundred years of human existence,
what a bitter struggle is waged between genius and destiny!
How many harrowing events have occurred while mulberries cover the
conquered sea!
Rich in beauty, unlucky in life!
Strange indeed, but little wonder,
since casting hatred upon rosy cheeks is a habit of the Blue Sky.
The first six lines of the poem The Tale of Kiều
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truyen_Kieu
26. Script
• In Malaysia, Brunei, and Singapore, the Malay language is now generally
written in the Latin script. The same phenomenon is present in
Indonesian, although different spelling standards are utilised (e.g. 'Teksi' in
Malay and 'Taksi' in Indonesian for the word 'Taxi').
Brunei road sign
27. Tattoo
• Yantra tattooing (sak yant, Thai,
Khmer) : a form of tattooing
practised in Cambodia, Lao and
Thailand.
• Originated in Cambodia using
ancient Khmer script.
• During the Khmer empire, all the
warriors were covered with
tattoos from head to foot.
• Tattoos spread in Southeast Asia
with the spread of Buddhism
from India.
• Today, it is popular in Thailand
but almost vanished in Laos and
Cambodia.
28. Tatoo
• Tattooing : a part of Filipino life since
pre-Hispanic colonization of
the Philippines
• A form of rank and accomplishments
among native groups. Some believed
that tattoos had magical qualities.
• First documented by the European
Spanish explorers when they landed
among the Islands in the late 16th
century.
• Before European exploration it was a
widespread tradition among the islands.
• Today, the more famous
tattooed indigenous peoples of the
Philippines are the North Luzon IPs, the
Bontoc, Igorot, Kalinga, and Ifugao
peoples.
1908 photo of a Filipino Bontoc warrior
bearing a Head hunters 'Chaklag' Tattoo
40. Visual Arts
• The visual arts in Southeast Asia have
followed two major traditions.
• INDIGENOUS MAGICAL AND ANIMIST
TRADITION
• The first is a complex inheritance of
magical and animist art shared by the
different tribal peoples of the mainland,
where it evolved from Paleolithic origins,
and of the islands. Such art gave the
peoples who made it a sense of their
identity in relation to the forces of their
natural environment, to the structure of
their society, and to time. It consists of
types of potent emblem, masks, and
ancestral figures broadly similar to those
that hunters and early farmers the world
over have used in connection with
seasonal ceremonies, life and death
rituals, and ecstatic shamanism (belief in
an unseen world of gods, demons, and
ancestral spirits responsive only to the
shamans, or priests).
41. Visual Arts
• The spiritual powers that the arts
name and invoke are local and
vary from group to group of the
population. The rich formal
artistic languages have been
subject to successive episodes of
influence from inland Asia, but
each group has developed its own
artistic language on the basis of a
common fund of Southeast Asian
thought forms.
42. Visual Arts
• INDIAN TRADITION
• The second major tradition was
received from India during the
early centuries of the Common
Era, when seagoing merchants
from that subcontinent so fertile
in ideas were expanding their
trading activity. Into many parts
of Southeast Asia—especially
Burma, Thailand, and the coasts
of Cambodia and Indonesia,
where Indian traders settled and
married into the families of local
chieftains—they brought with
them a script and literature in the
sophisticated Sanskrit language.
43. • They also brought a highly
developed conceptual system
dealing with kingship, statecraft,
and hydraulic engineering,
integrated and authenticated by
profound metaphysical ideologies
of Indian pattern, both Hindu and
Buddhist. These ideologies
claimed to be universal,
embracing all human diversity
within a cosmic frame of
reference. And this explains why
the culture was adopted.
