ABSTRACT
Transcultural music commodities – music sold as a form of village entertainment or popular items consumed by listeners and audiences – are part of a larger movement in ethnomusicology and popular music studies to conduct ethnographic research on ethnic minorities living in multiple spaces. Studies on transmigrant and displaced ethnic minorities, such as the Sama-Bajau, problematise the inclusion of a historically nomadic ethnic minority into the postcolonial framework of maritime Southeast Asia – a region known for porous nation state borders. The circulation of the sangbai – as a musical commodity – is the recent barter trade practised alongside the traditional trading of sea products. Diverse performances of the sangbai as cultural capital sheds light on the treatment of the Sama-Bajau by their host cultures. Most Sama-Bajau electronic keyboard accompanists improvise with the gabbang gabbang countermelody of a sangbai by combining keyboarding techniques during a performance.
