The Fighting Art of Pencak Silat and Its Music: From Southeast Asian Village to Global Movement

Fighting arts have their own beauty, internal philosophy, and are connected to cultural worlds in meaningful and important ways. Combining approaches from ethnomusicology, ethnochoreology, performance theory and anthropology, the distinguishing feature of this book is that it highlights the centrality of the pluripotent art form of pencak silat among Southeast Asian arts and its importance to a network of traditional and modern performing arts in Southeast Asia and beyond.
By doing so, important layers of local concepts on performing arts, ethics, society, spirituality, and personal life conduct are de-mystified. With a distinct change in the way we view Southeast Asia, this book provides a wealth of information about a complex of performing arts related to the so-called ’world of silat’.
An ancillary media companion website (www.bits4culture.org/pencaksilatandmusic/) is part of this work. Login authorisation information is included in the book.
Contributors include: Bussakorn Binson, Jean-Marc de Grave, Gisa Jähnichen, Margaret Kartomi, Zahara Kamal, Indija Mahjoeddin, Ako Mashino, Paul H. Mason, Uwe U. Paetzold, Kirstin Pauka, Henry Spiller and Sean Williams.

Uwe U. Paetzold, Ph.D. (1998 University of Cologne) is lecturer at the Robert Schumann University of Music, Düsseldorf. He has published books, articles and video documentions on the music and performance cultures related to the Fighting Art pencak silat.
Paul H. Mason, Ph.D. (2012) is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Woolcock Institute, University of Sydney. From choreomusicology to cultural evolution, Paul has conducted a rich mixture of laboratory, field and archival research and published in leading academic journals.