Paul Gabriel Cosme, a PhD in Composition student at UH Mānoa Department of Music, is a recipient of the 2025 John Young Scholarship, which will support his research on the musical customs of three ethnolinguistic groups of the Philippines: Maguindanao, Maranao, and Sama, culminating in a kulintang concerto.
The western genre concerto is traditionally composed for an instrumental soloist, such as violin or piano, with an orchestral accompaniment. Kulintang is a traditional Southeast Asian ensemble of gong and drum percussion. Conjuring the possibility of a kulintang concerto, one might expect a kulintang instrumental soloist, or perhaps a group of kulintang soloists, supported by a Western orchestra. But that won’t be the case for Cosme’s concerto. “I don’t simply intend to write a piece for the kulintang and a Western orchestra,” he says. While that might be the cliché orchestration, Cosme asserts a much more nuanced goal that will reflect his ethnographic study, demonstrating musical and cultural features from the tradition-bearers he connects with in the Philippines.
“Because I intend to do fieldwork among kulintang practitioners and potentially learn from them as a player myself, my work will inevitably be imbued with the habits and sounds that characterize these various musics. It is necessary that I do not simply take the kulintang and write for it, but to also channel all the inscribed practices that the instrument embodies. And that means going to the root, to the elders, teachers, and the people that fostered the tradition.”
This ethnography and composition project has profound personal significance for Cosme. “I want to put into conversation these two different sound worlds that have been a deep part of my life as a musician and a researcher,” he says. “The John Young Endowed Scholarship enables me to do this important work of communicating and sharing the traditions from my home country, and offering creative and critical contributions to our understanding of not only these musical practices, but to the relationship between tradition and innovation.”
John Young was a dominant figure in Hawaii’s art circles for 60 years. The John Young Scholarship Endowment Fund was established to support undergraduate and graduate students pursuing studies related to the arts.