The Relationship between Spirit Propitiation Ceremony and Drum Ensemble

This study explored how to maintain Drum Ensemble (“saing wain:” in Myanmar) as Myanmar cultural heritage. The paper described especially relationship between spirit propitiation ceremony (“nat pwe” in Myanmar) and drum ensemble. Yangon Region is presumed to be the most developed place in the country that it could be very much liable to any infiltration of foreign culture and music. But fortunately, it was found that Big Drum Ensemble is still being used in some downtown areas and some adjacent area in Yangon region. Therefore, study sites were chosen some wards and villages of some Townships in Yangon Region to collect information and data regarding with the usage of drum ensemble. The three studied groups of the community were divided as follows: (1) The drum ensemble members of musicians whose livelihoods depend solely upon Bamar drum ensemble (2) appropriation ceremony (“na´ kana:” in Myanmar) professionals consisted of a woman or a sissy said to be chosen as consort by a spirit (spirit medium) (“na´ gado” in Myanmar), a leader of spirit medium (“kana: si:” in Myanmar), and other followers and (3) the audience. Then the audience comprised the doers and related persons, people who sponsored expenditure of ritual event (“kana: pwe:” in Myanmar) and people who come to watch entertainment. Again it could be classified two categories of audiences who came and watched drum ensemble entertainment. The first said to be the ones who are coming to watch according to their hobby who watch and listen with artistic ears and the remaining groups represent the ones who come and see just for fun. Field ethnography, focus group discussion (FGD), key informant interviews (KII), in-depth interview (IDI), informal conversation (IC) and direct observation (DO) were used for data collection. For qualitative data, information gathered by focus group discussion, key informant interviews, in-depth interview, informal conversation were transcribed and organized on the basis of emerging themes and subthemes. And then some people from village and wards in the study areas were general participated and using in drum ensemble (“saing wain:” in Myanmar) at auspicious and inauspicious ceremonies, direct observation was conducted with them. Observation was carried out at the ceremonies accompanied with drum ensemble, some data of Bamar traditional musical instruments especially, library of Department of Anthropology, Yangon University and Internet libraries. Moreover, data relating to Bamar traditional musical instruments were collected from newspapers, journals and magazines. Taking photographs and recording of music played with Bamar drum ensembles were conducted