Danongan Kalanduyan was a master of all aspects of the Mindanao tribal style of kulintang music and an essential artistic figure in practically all major Filipino-American communities for several decades.
Danongan was born in the fishing village of Datu Piang in the Cotabato area of Mindanao. He was raised in a strongly traditional musical environment, where western music was rarely heard. The music was played for entertainment as well as an accompaniment to rituals and ceremonies. Like many kulintang musicians, he began playing the large agung gongs.
At the age of seven, he learned how to play other instruments: the kulintang, the dabakan drum, the babandir gong, and the gandingan four-gong set from his grandmother, father, uncles, and cousins. As a young man, he won island-wide competitions on the gandingan and became widely recognized as a master musician.
In 1971, he toured the Far East with the Darangan Cultural Troupe. In 1976, a Rockefeller grant took Kalanduyan to the University of Washington in Seattle as an artist-in-residence in the ethnomusicology program headed by Dr. Robert Garfias. He resided in the United States ever since.
He taught and performed with many of the American kulintang ensembles.
Danongan Kalanduyan received grants from the John D. Rockefeller Foundation, National Endowment for Folk Arts, California Arts Council, and Henry Luce Foundation. He resided in the Northern California Bay Area.
In 1995 Danongan became a National endowments for the Arts (NEA) National Heritage Fellow.
Danongan Kalanduyan died on September 28, 2016 at at Stanford University Medical Center.
Author: Angel Romero
Angel Romero y Ruiz has dedicated his life to musical exploration. His efforts included the creation of two online portals, worldmusiccentral.org and musicasdelmundo.com. In addition, Angel is the co-founder of the Transglobal World Music Chart, a panel of world music DJs and writers that celebrates global sounds. Furthermore, he delved into the record business, producing world music studio albums and compilations. His works have appeared on Alula Records, Ellipsis Arts, Indígena Records and Music of the World.
