Page - 29 - 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 29 Tagunggu’ Suggestions of Movement So, how exactly does all this happen? Both during the wedding parade and the Regatta Lepa, ta- gunggu’ plays a key role in the emergence of this space, my interlocutors emphasized. Schmitz’s ruminations regarding the relationship between music’s suggestions of movement and spatial alignment are of a general nature, and as such refer to any and all music. But they may be of particular relevance to Sama Dilaut music-making, I argue, because the Sama Dilaut’s sea- nomadic spatiality accentuates this interdependence more immediately than most sedentary spatialities. This is because they conceive of music, as well as space, primarily as both move- ment and enabling movement. With this, movement becomes the primary means to explore both physical and sonic spaces, and since music is intrinsically in motion itself, music-making becomes a strategy to explore physical space for the Sama Dilaut. In tagunggu’ performances, this double movement – physical movement through sonic space and sonic movement through physical space – is not only emphasized, but also transduced into a felt-bodily experience that enables the emergence of a shared feeling that is as sonic as it is mobile. In this case, the shared feeling is an atmosphere of Sama Dilautness. In this process, the sense of hearing becomes the transducing mediator; it involves sensory organs that perceive sound by transducing physical vibrations into nerve impulses, and the brain transforms these impulses into the subjective ex- perience of hearing (Johnson-Laird et al. 2012, 19). What’s critical for my analysis here is the latter part of the hearing process: the transformation of impulses into the individual experience of hearing, for it is here that structured sound leverages both felt-bodily and cultural frames: In making music, the felt body is being “tinged with mentality, in its own mode” (Manning & Massumi 2014, 45). Investigating this process, in the following section, I shall take a closer look at this transductive process by identifying specific musical suggestions of movement at work during the Regatta Lepa, carving out how structured sound as felt-bodily experience resonates with key aspects of Sama Dilaut spatiality and cultural frames, then finally explaining how these processes feed into the emergence of a meaningful atmosphere. Sound example 1 is the audio track of video example 1, filmed during the Regatta Lepa 2009. I recorded it on a moving boat. Thus, the track resembles the listening position that so- meone on a boat during a wedding parade would have. Naturally, however, a recording cannot render the actual spatial experience of listening on the water’s surface. Sound File 1: Excerpt from the Regatta Lepa XVI, Semporna, Sabah/Borneo (Malaysia), 18 April 2009. Recorded by Birgit Abels. https://soundcloud.com/user-655623594/sound-1-regatta-lepa-xvi-2009 Icon: CC BY Plainicon, Online unter www.flaticon.com