Archives

This short talk will present some of the highlights of field and library research on the histories of musical exchanges in Asia from the first to the sixteenth centuries, conducted last year in Java and Bali (July to September), West Malaysia (October), Cambodia (December), and Thailand (November to January). Drawing evidence largely from archaeology and historical texts, this long-term study focuses on exchanges of musical ideas and artefacts, particularly gongs, bells, cymbals, drums and other musical instruments across maritime cultures in Asia. Early twenty-first century contemporary music practices attest to the continuity of ancient musical traditions.

Arsenio Nicolas is currently a Nippon Foundation Senior API Fellow at the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka. He has conducted music research in the Philippines (since 1973), Java (1979-83), Bali (1985-86), Singapore (1986), West Malaysia (1989-91), Thailand (1987) and USA (1999-2007). He is a Senior Lecturer at the University of the Philippines College of Music, Archaeological Studies Program, Department of Anthropology and Center for International Studies.

One of the most well-known European adaptations of Daniel Defoe's *Robinson　Crusoe* (1719) was the work entitled *Robinson der Jüngere* (The New Robinson, 1779-1780). Written by the enlightenment pedagogue and linguist Joachim Campe (1746-1818), it was the first work in the history of German literature conceived expressly for children. This two volume novel is said to have been even more popular than Defoe's original in many countries in Europe during the early nineteenth century and was translated into many languages including Malay (1875) and Tagalog (1879). This study aims to look at the historical background and significance of these two almost simultaneous translations within their respective contexts. Since *Robinson der Jüngere *also belongs to a literary genre associated with the birth of political economy (Campe's novel was in fact published only three years after the first German translation of Adam Smith's *The Wealth of Nations *(1776)) this preliminary investigation will also delve into the problem of translating some economic notions from late eighteenth century German into the Malay and Tagalog languages of the nineteenth century.

This paper attempts to explain Malaysia’s love-hate relationship with the English language as the country struggles with this colonial legacy to build its national identity through its own national language. The effort is further complicated by the current rise and rise of English as a global language. This linguistic dilemma is reflected in Malaysia’s changing language policies in education since Independence from British rule in 1957 in order to take care of conflicting national and international imperatives. The dilemma is also played out in literature, in the subterranean feuding between Malaysian literature in English on the one hand and, on the other, national literature in the national language, over the role of identity markers for a multi-racial nation. Although no closure to the issue is in sight at the moment, this paper argues for a middle path but one that starts firstly with a recognition of the role of the national language as a unifying factor and identity marker on the domestic stage, and secondly of the role of English as a necessary economic instrument on the global stage. Everything else should fall into place after that as the cookie crumbles.