Page - 27 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Volume 3/2017

Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 3 2o17 Birgit Abels | Musical Atmospheres and Sea-Nomadic Movement Among the Sama Dilaut 27 in Borneo and Sitangkai in the Philippine Sulu archipelago. While their geographical location is not irrelevant to them, it is incidental, a stop along the way (cf. Chou 2005). Their affiliation with a specific place is contingent upon mobility, i.e., upon the possibility of leaving that very locale at any time (often to escape systematic discrimination and violence that they face from land-based communities). Starting roughly in the 1950s, some Sama Dilaut began to trade in their mobile lepa homes for stilt houses and village dwellings and, more rarely, for engine-driven houseboats. However, the lepa has remained a potent cultural symbol, so much so that in the mid-1990s, politicians came up with the idea of a cultural event revolving around the boat as the emblem of a way of life. Hence, the Regatta Lepa was born, a “celebration of the Sama Di- laut,” as several of my interlocutors called it. So, as Chou notes, Southeast Asia, as a term of geographic reference, holds little meaning for the area’s maritime communities. Instead, “the social space they recognize is constructed in terms of permanent mobility and whatever can be reached by sea – a region [consisting] of a network of social relations sharpened by the extent of a people’s mobility” (2005, 236). This space is imagined as a timespace in that Sama Dilaut oral histories narrate their historical connections within the region and, in doing so, give historically and socially framed meaning to physical space and its landmarks. At the same time, Sama Dilaut perspectives on space re- ference both historical itineraries and how travel at sea engenders the organization of time (cf. Bottignolo 1998, 19, 63). Similarly, for the Sama Dilaut, traveling the sea is a cultural practice situating them in their very own historical and social world. It is this life-world that is evoked by the lepa line-up during the Regatta Lepa, which is remi- niscent of the historical practice of having small gong ensembles on board that would be played during rituals, such as wedding parades (Santamaria 2012, 82). The musical performances that come with it are quite literally a sounding out of the physical environment because sound, es- pecially the sound of gongs, carries significantly further and resonates differently on water than on land. On calm water, the sound will be reflected on the water’s surface in such a way that the sounds of the gongs appear to be amplified to listeners both on boats and on the shore. As a result, the music seems louder and richer in timbre, sometimes overwhelmingly so. A sound event in an enclosed space and its acoustic reflections give the listener clear psychoacoustic in- formation on the properties of the room (Howard & Angus 1996, 233ff.). On the open ocean, by contrast, that same quality of sound produces an intense sonic effect of spatial vastness and openness. Making music, and at the same time traveling through the sonic space emerging from it during rituals such as the wedding parade, the Sama Dilaut travel through their physical environment, and at the same time, through its sonic avatar (‘avatar’ in the sense of a musical materialization). This, I argue, is a technique that renders space sensually tangible by increasing movement’s impact on the individual’s felt body by way of sound. As their bodies resonate with sound, the people who choose to envelop themselves with this sonic environment process this tangibility in a profoundly felt-bodily way (Abels 2015, 7). The resultant effect is one of feeling pushed and pulled into the surrounding space by sonic movement. One interlocutor described this effect of gong music on water as “in-between, like the beach.” The beach lies in between the land and the sea, the site of a constant coming and going of high and low tides that blur the line between the land and sea. It is constantly pushed and pulled in one direction or the other – washing up, then washing away. This, then, is how the Sama Dilaut, enveloping themselves