One of the most urgent and widespread issues to be addressed in any society today is finding a way to achieve a peaceful symbiosis between people who naturally have different faiths, cultures, customs, and ways of thinking. This study, based on ethnographic case studies of Bali, Indonesia, will review the possibility of using the performing arts, including dance and music, to contribute in establishing, promoting, and representing mutual understanding and collaboration between people and communities with cultural differences.
     Although Bali is well-known as an island with a rich legacy of traditional arts, the culture and society there have been portrayed almost exclusively as Hindu, while the cultures of other religions (Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism) are practically invisible, receiving scant attention. As the latter are in a gradual decline today, it is critical to record, investigate, and share the actual conditions of the performing arts in religious minority communities, detailing the history of cultural interaction between majority and minority. This project will highlight the significance of the performing arts, not only as a representation of a minority's cultural identity, but also as a potential vehicle by which they might establish and maintain a peaceful relationship with the majority.
     Research results will be published as academic papers and also shared with the general public in widely-accessible forms, such as Internet websites or general circulation publications, in three languages (Japanese, English, and Indonesian). I expect these findings to offer a new perspective redefining Bali as a multicultural and multi-religious community, and calling attention to the potential of the performing arts in realizing a symbiotic society.

This project aims to shed light on some lesser-known cultural practices—in particular, the music and dance of religious minorities in Bali—and thereby consider the power of the performing arts to promote a symbiotic, multicultural society. Among the islands of Indonesia, the country with the world’s largest Muslim population, Bali, where Hindus make up the religious majority, is an exception. While the uniqueness of the Hindu Balinese culture has been emphasized, the culture of non-Hindus, such as Muslims, Christians, and Chinese, has been largely disregarded.

I have visited 11 Muslim communities, 5 Christian churches, and 3 Chinese temples in Bali for field research during 2015–2017, while simultaneously conducting bibliographic and website research. My research has not only rediscovered and described Bali as a multi-cultural society, but also illuminates how the performing arts can contribute to establishing a sense of community including people of different faiths, while positively portraying the differences of the minority groups as cultural richness of the community as a whole. The gist of my findings can be summarized, as follows:

(1)Performing arts are important media through which Balinese Muslims as a minority group on the island recognize and establish their cultural identity and pride, reminding the people of their history, and emphasizing their cultural uniqueness. Additionally, I found that most Muslim communities have constructed and maintained peaceful relationships with neighboring Hindu communities through the performing arts, marking their presence and contributing to the local community.

(2)Christians in Bali have taken a different approach to Balinese arts and society. They have incorporated traditional Balinese art forms, separating out their Hindu elements, and reinterpreting them as cultural components, in order to construct a cultural identity as Balinese which does not contradict their faith.

(3)Public performances of music and dance offer minority groups opportunities to effectively establish social networks and encourage cultural interactions beyond their differences, displaying the cultural identity and pride of the communities to the majority audience. Overall, my research suggests that the performing arts have the potentiality of achieving a symbiotic community in various ways, needing further endeavors to be effectively developed.

Based on the research results, I have presented a few papers in Japanese and English at academic conferences. I have also released websites in Japanese, English, and Indonesian (http://senimuslimbali.weebly.com) introducing the Muslim Balinese performing arts, hoping that they would arouse wide interest among both Balinese and non-Balinese. I expect that the websites may help the local people increase their opportunities for performance and encourage their interactions, perhaps in creative collaborations. I am also planning to produce a printed version of the Indonesian texts to be distributed in Bali, and hope to publish a book in Japanese in the near future.