The empowered teacher: Ritual, performance, and epistemology in contemporary Bangkok.

This dissertation is an extended look at the idea of power behind classical music and dance in Bangkok, the capital and sacred center of Thailand. The connections between kings, teachers, knowledge, and performance are described as a network of power exchange and renewal that continues to impel the classical court arts. The Thai ritual honoring teachers of music and dance, called the wai khru ritual, transfers the spiritual power of the first, primordial teacher to present day performers. The relationship between Thai ritual and performance is intimate and fundamental, and the reflexivity of ritual performance about performance is the focus of this study: ritual is discussed as an event revealed through the process of performance. The Thai belief that knowledge is power is reflected in the limited number of male master musicians who have access to esoteric knowledge about the sacred repertoire. Thai musicians and dancers who perform the repertoire for this ritual must be initiated by a master teacher before they can actualize the sacred with their bodies and produce the sound and movement that manifest the divine in the human realm. Many of the master teachers who perform the initiation ceremony are employed by the national conservatory, a government institution that replaced the old court system of musicians and dancers in 1934. The power of these master teachers is discussed as ritual and social hegemony: not just ritual experts, these men are also leaders of contemporary state institutions for music and dance. The particularities of the ceremony--i.e., the way it is enacted, and the people who perform it--are described and analyzed in detail. How Thai musicians and dancers construct the ritual through words, writing, and of course performance is especially emphasized: conversation, writings about the ritual, and enactments of the ritual itself are all treated as active constructions of performers' beliefs. Finally, the performing arts of the Thai courts are discussed in terms of secrecy, sound, and the sacred, and it is shown how esoteric knowledge has helped Thai classical music endure in the face of changing patronage.Ph.D.Communication and the ArtsCultural anthropologyDanceEducationEducational philosophyMusicSocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/128784/2/9135722.pd