The Islamic revolution of 1979 in Iran caused considerable changes in the Iranian arts and culture. The former supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, described music as ridiculous and inappropriate. He banned music in almost all of its forms of practice. Nevertheless, during the war between Iran and Iraq from 1980 till 1981, Iranian authorities believed that music and film could be advantageous propaganda media to reinforce the power of the Islamic state. Therefore, music was incorporated into television programs, but under strict surveillance conditions that still exist. Among those programs, puppet shows with musical performances started to become widely popular. While human actors and actresses are not allowed to perform music and dance on television, puppets with their funny voices enjoy more freedom in such performances. They can dance, sing, make music and even sometimes refer to sensitive topics that cross red lines. One of the reasons for this freedom is the puppet voice. The quality of the puppet’s voice paves the path for musical performances on the Iranian television. My research focuses on the post-revolutionary Iranian puppets and how they overcome government-based restrictions against music and dance based on their voices. I analyze and reflect on this sonic element based on a comparative approach and shed light on one aspect of overcoming censorship in a theocratic country, where music is an unwanted and critical form of arts.

The Wayang Kulit Kelantan, a form of shadow play practiced along the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia, is a traditional performance form that has withstood the challenges brought on by Kelantan’s cultural and religious politics. In 1990, following a proscription on cultural performances by Kelantan’s state government, the Wayang Kulit Kelantan was banned due to its purported pre-Islamic elements not aligned to Islamic practice. The proscription would only be lifted in 2000, but by then, the shadow play had experienced a significant decline in practitioners and cultural relevance. Examining the practice of Wayang Kulit Kelantan pre- and post-proscription, this paper begins by drawing from the metaphor of a tree, comprising of roots, trunk, branches, and leaves often utilized by Wayang Kulit Kelantan practitioners to describe their large collection of Ramayana stories governing their performances. These metaphors are then extended to include innovations in performative elements such as musical repertoire, the introduction of new characters to the Wayang screen, and the incorporation of new technologies prototypical to Wayang performances that have emerged because of Kelantan’s cultural and religious contestations. By delving into these external elements, this paper seeks to uncover grassroots-level methods Wayang Kulit Kelantan practitioners have utilized since the proscription to preserve and innovate their artistic practice and space, branching and growing out in attempt to secure the viability of Wayang Kulit Kelantan.

In Cambodia at present the spread of mass media and the Internet is fuelling popularity-focused processes of transformation and changes within traditional ritual music and theatre genres. Lakhon bassac theatre as well as ritual music genres are performed on television and remediated online via social media, live streaming and YouTube uploads by artists and TV channels with the aims of “refashioning” and extending old media. By mediatisation, following some scholars of media studies, I mean a meta-framework which observes the dynamics underlying the social construction of reality as increasingly influenced by media, understood both as technologies and sense-making processes. Consequently, TV and the Internet do not simply reproduce or reflect music traditions: they play an important role in their shaping and reception. By examining performances on TV and social media of a well-known lakhon bassac theatre troupe since 2015, this talk shows the role of television as a vector of modernity in shaping traditional art forms and the role of social media in disseminating and advertising traditional genres, artists and ensembles mirroring new socio-cultural trends such as the role of artists as entrepreneurs, the professionalism of artists and musicians within the media system and in Khmer society. These processes also show how artists use their creativity and talent, through the use of some remediation strategies argued by Bolter and Grusin, such as the hypermediacy, to embrace demands for national representation and promotion of individual creativity while being subject to current sociopolitical trends and audience-patrons’ interests.