Wet Sounds
Donna Oblongata, The Van Gogh Shogh, 2024, performance, The Deep End Studios, Philadelphia.
Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Josh Yoder.
In mid-July, significant parts of southwestern Ontario entered their third heat wave of the summer. Even sitting still, the humidity in the air acts as a series of speed bumps, sweat unable to dry, heat building in the body. The discomfort of the suggestion of wetness forced a spaciousness and pacing—a delay—into otherwise overcrowded, color-coded Google Calendars. The heat wave’s wet feltness, its impossible-to-ignore porosity of body and place, echoes in the language of audio engineering. There, a “wet” sound refers to a signal with added reverb or delay, reverberant.
In January 2025, Program Coordinator Anna Bowen began a series of performances, Wet Sounds: feminist + queer music practices and the polycrisis, at Musagetes in Guelph, Ontario. The series aims “to reflect kind of the slipperiness of queer feminist approaches and our interconnectedness, gesturing at eroticism, water fluids, leakiness, trying to think about porousness as a counterpoint to our separability, a way that we are part of a metabolism and not just individuals.” It is also about creating space for artists whose voices are typically only heard through their instruments. To date, The Powers, Pantayo, Turntable Trio, and SUBR have each opened their performances with a moderated talk, considering questions of creative practice in a time of converging crises and how their improvisatory practices might suggest valuable models for addressing quickly changing political climates.
Reflecting on the throughline of improvisation across the artists, Anna shared: “I don't know if it's always true in improvisation studies that people feel that it provides a strengthening of muscles, a power to be nimble, and how not to work within fixed structures. As things could potentially be changing really quickly, that kind of nimbleness and willingness to relate to each other differently becomes much more important.”
In particular, I wanted to speak to Pantayo, Wet Sounds’s inaugural artists, about their practice and to discuss the reverberations between geography and wet sound with these “queer diasporic Filipinxs in Turtle Island.” Pantayo is Tagalog for "for us," a call for gathering especially resonant when they played five days after the second inauguration of Donald Trump. The group learns, borrows, and performs kulintang: a community-based musical practice traditionally cultivated by Maguindanao peoples that encourages interpretation and improvisation. Pantayo includes Eirene Cloma, Michelle Cruz, Joanna Delos Reyes, Kat Estacio, and Katrina Estacio; for this conversation Cruz, Delos Reyes, and Estacio share their reflections about their practice.
How would you describe your music to someone who has never heard it—or anything like it—before? In particular, can you share more about kulintang, which emerges as a really prominent part of your practice?
Joanna Delos Reyes: We’ve often described our music as “R&B Gong Punk.” It’s a playful shorthand for the mix of influences we each bring into the band. A lot of that comes from growing up in the Philippines, where—because of American imperialism—there’s been a huge absorption of American music and pop culture. For me personally, growing up in Scarborough, I was surrounded by R&B, pop, and punk, so those sounds naturally made their way into what we do. The “punk” part is also about the sound and more about the attitude in how we don’t strictly follow musical rules, and in a way, we’re “queering” what it means to be an all-Filipino, all-women music group. It’s about making space for ourselves on our own terms.
As for kulintang, it’s both the name of what is traditionally the lead ensemble instrument and the name of the ensemble itself. I usually tell people it’s a bit like gamelan, just to give them a reference point, but kulintang is its own thing specific to the people indigenous to the Southern Philippines and surrounding regions before nation states were established. It’s often played at weddings, celebrations, or just to relax after a long day, and there’s no single “correct” way to play kulintang. It’s also really accessible in that anyone, regardless of background, can pick it up and start learning. So when people hear our music, they’re not just hearing a fusion of sounds, they're also hearing a reimagining of kulintang.
Kat Estacio: I usually say that our collective interest in music and yearning for cultural belonging brings Pantayo together. We play kulintang and the palabunibunyan (instruments of the kulintang ensemble) like any percussive instrument that is struck to create resonance on the under or opposite side. So if we treat them like a drum kit made of metal, then each instrument has its role as part of the bigger picture: the dabakan is the kick drum, the agong is the floor tom, the kulintang is maybe the snare and the cymbals, the babandir is the high hat, the gandingan are the rack toms. The key is that they are complementary and are played collectively.
We also play kulintang as a texture. We’ve scraped the sides, clanged the face, bowed the edge, filled it with water and rocks; we’ve recorded and sampled and chopped it up, used contact microphones and hooked them up to a bunch of pedals. So if we think about drums, both acoustic and electronic, as having the ability to play any style of music in conjunction with other musical instruments, then this opens so many possibilities for kulintang. Our journey as a group is to dig into these possibilities together.
Michelle Cruz: To me, our music reflects of how we see and move through the world. It’s made up of our thoughts, feelings, and experiences that come together in a way that happens to sound like pop. Not because the sound intends to be on trend, but because it resonates.
I play the agong in the ensemble, and the way the gongs speak to each other—from kulintang to the sarunay to the gandingan, the keys, guitar, and drums—creates a trance-like pull that I could get lost in. It doesn't feel nostalgic at all. It feels alive and immediate. That energy may not be “pop” in the usual sense, but it carries the same emotional charge.
Pantayo at Wet Sounds, January 25, 2025, IICSI’s Improv Lab (International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation, University of Guelph).
Photo: Sonia Preisler.
Pantayo’s music often feels like a metabolization of migration stories. It makes me wonder how I might be metabolizing the sounds of the cities where I grew up: cities in India and in the UAE and, now, in Canada. As people were filtering into the ImprovLab, you had curated videos of people playing kulintang around the world. This really moved me, and I thought this helped the audience visualize what was to come, without preconceiving the sound of the instruments. Can you share a bit about your relationship to citational practice and the importance of intergenerational learning with elders as practitioners in the diaspora? I’m thinking here, too, about your work with KuliVersity [a free digital kulintang workshop series] and the broader project of passing along the traditions and culture of kulintang.
JD: An important thing to note is that kulintang is an oral tradition and a communal tradition, with the lead instrument mostly played by women.
As a group based in Toronto, we did not have as easy access to elders in the community the same way we might if we were living in the Philippines or the Bay Area. We learned from YouTube and a form of kulintang sheet music shared with us that we later found out was a unique system of transcription devised by Aga Mayo Butocan.
Pantayo originally started as a workshop group. Performing as a band only came about when we were invited to play a gig at Cordillera Day, a celebration of Indigenous peoples from the northern mountain regions in the Philippines. That opportunity marked a turning point, shifting our focus more intentionally toward performing as a band. Still, the educational, knowledge-sharing, and co-learning environment has always remained at the core of what we do.
While we don’t claim to be experts, we approach our work as a means to provide context around the instruments we play and to spark conversations about the complexities of Filipino representation, migration, and cultural production in the diaspora.
KE: I’m so glad you noticed the videos. Pantayo is just one voice in a broader conversation about living cultural traditions, in present time. Playing a culturally specific musical instrument like the kulintang connects us to an artistic lineage that consistently evolves, from teacher to student, grandmother to granddaughter, from village to village, homeland to diaspora. All of that, and vice versa, flip it and reverse it.
Acknowledging and celebrating our contemporaries and forebearers invites mutual learning and goes against the colonial-capitalist agenda of hierarchy and competition. This aIso means that, to me, folks who have participated in our KuliVersity offerings can exist on the same plane as us as practitioners. When we see connections between our work and the practice of other kulintang artists, I think of it as collective co-creation.
MC: As someone without formal music training, the way kulintang music is passed down through oral tradition feels deeply personal to me. Learning this way taught me how to express myself in ways I never imagined could be possible, through sound and rhythm rather than formal notation and theory. Not everyone has access to music training due to economic or systemic barriers, but oral traditions like kulintang offer another path: You just have to listen, feel, and play.
Pantayo and Marisa Gallemit, Pique Winter Edition, 2022.
Photo: Ming Wu.
Instruments in the Western canon have nearly universally adopted the 12-tone equal temperament system. In contrast, kulintang instruments are tuned to each other, and the tunings depend on the maker. How has rooting the music in kulintang affected your practice of attuning and listening differently?
JDR: The tuning depends on the maker. Since each kulintang set is handcrafted, no two can be tuned exactly the same. We couldn’t just apply Western tuning systems or chord progressions in the usual way. Instead, we had to listen more closely to the instruments and each other and to let the instrumentation guide the direction of the music. It became an exercise in really attuning ourselves to the sound, the feeling, and the relationships between the ensemble instruments. When things didn’t quite fit, it pushed us to problem solve creatively. We also learned to lean into the dissonances instead of avoiding them and to trust more in the feel and the percussive energy of the music.
KE: Kulintang is kind of like our sixth member and has their own voice. Sometimes that voice is adapted from traditional pieces we’ve learned from our teachers, and other times they are compositions that were born from familiarity and building a relationship with the instrument.
When I think about attuning, I think about the seasons that come and go, the tides and its relationship to the moon cycles, and the gut feelings we experience. I find it curious that, whenever we find ourselves in institutional settings, kulintang tunings are almost always conversation starters, with questions like “What key is that instrument in?” or “How do you songwrite/arrange/compose?”. On the other hand, when we share space with, say, culturally diverse folks from the Global South, the conversations are more about how the music makes them feel or sound/music references that connect their own cultural background to our music.
Both scenarios can come from a genuine place of curiosity. However, I think that the former reinforces the idea that the Western canon is to be accepted as truth and that any deviation from it is “exotic” or “unusual” or, worse, “wrong”. The latter is more relational, intuitive, and leaves plenty of room for bridging ideas even when they seem different on a surface level. It’s pretty general, but these anecdotes tell me that the practice of listening is learned, which means it can also be unlearned and relearned to broaden its scope.
MC: Centering our music in kulintang has influenced how I listen and relate to sound. Since the instruments are tuned to each other rather than a fixed system, the focus shifts from precision to relationship. You learn by listening closely, feeling the rhythm, and responding in the moment. It becomes more about the presence and not about perfection. Kulintang has affirmed to me that music is vulnerable, exhilarating, and grounding all at once. It’s a force field. There's no hiding when you’re in it fully. That kind of listening becomes a way of being or hoping to be (because it's a cycle). A practice of attuning to others, honoring differences, and moving together.
In your artist talk for Wet Sounds, you shared that kulintang music “was once used for communicating long distance messages from one village to another,” and that it originated among the Maguindanao peoples and the T’boli tribe. Wet Sounds itself asks artists to see their practice as impacted by or responding to the interconnected crises unfolding around us. How is your practice implicated already in this work of “signaling” and how do you understand the contemporary responsibility of “signaling” in a time of converging crises?
MC: Kulintang music has always been about signaling, not just sonically but also socially and spiritually—it’s a force field! As a person who also lives at multiple intersections, my lived experience has taught me how layered communication can be and how silence, presence, and resonance all carry meaning. In a time of converging crises, signaling feels less like a choice. We must clearly say we are here, we are listening, we are learning. How can we communicate this and feel safe doing so?
KE: When we self-identify, we are signaling. The words in our bio—queer, diasporic, Filipinx, kulintang, gong punk—serve as beacons for those who might resonate with us as people and with our music. However, in stating who we are, we also signal that the different intersections of our identities contrast with and are at risk under an oppressive system that privileges dominant white and cis- and hetero-patriarchal norms. The same signals that allow us to find community and belonging can also be used by assholes who want to harm us. The polycrisis and the systems that exacerbate it will have us believe that we are doomed, that there’s no way out. In choosing to create with each other as our fullest selves and share our music and in being intentional in our actions, I believe that we are choosing to resist what tries to suppress our joy and our vitality.
Pantayo during a KuliVersity Shoot at FTV (Filipino TV) in Markham.
KuliVersity is an accessible and educational platform that explores kulintang music, culture, and history.
Photo: Mailyne Briggs.
Barbadian poet Kamau Brathwaite describes “tideletics” as being “like our grandmother’s–our nana’s–action, like the movement of the ocean she’s walking on, coming from one continent/continuum, touching another, and then receding (‘reading’) from the island(s) into the perhaps creative chaos of the(ir) future.” Brathwaite’s tideletics troubles the convenient distinctions that separate land (organized into nation-states and private property) from water, and it instead prompts us to think through the two categories together.
In recording, a “wet sound” refers to an overabundance of reverb or echo, often used to thicken or sustain sounds. What significance does “wetness” or “sound” hold in the context of feminist and queer resistance and to you as artists informed by the archipelagic geographies of the Philippines?
KE: That’s cool. I didn’t know about tidelectics before, thank you for sharing! I think it’s akin to this idea of water as a link between all the islands in an archipelago or that water connects continents as opposed to separating them. And to further extrapolate on that, it’s like a different way of seeing the interconnectedness of human, more-than-human beings, and the environment and of understanding our relationship to how we extract resources and enforce labor from our bodies and the land, water, and air.
Wetness as shown by the relational role of water is to embody the expansiveness of who we are and model interconnectedness in our collective dynamics and the music that we create together in Pantayo. It could be seen as a sociopolitical framework of resistance and a way to critique injustice in social norms. A funny side story: In the Bay Area, people have used “wet” as a slang to refer to anything that is cool, dope, or amazing. Interestingly enough, maybe, the largest community of kulintang artists in the Filipinx diaspora is in the Bay Area because that’s where master Danongan “Danny” Kalanduyan taught.
MC: Wetness feels like something that cannot be boxed in or in a fixed place. It mirrors how we work as artists rooted in a diasporic mindset. Moving, shifting, listening, and adapting. Identity, like sound, feels like it carries an echo, a resonance, and complexity. We don’t always aim for a clean or isolated signal; we like texture, drama, layers. Though at times, we do like to keep it clean and simple, too, when it makes sense! When we create together, we realize that we are not just making music: We’re sounding out what we’ve carried, what we’ve been taught, and what we’re still discovering. We create sounds that move toward futures we know are out there, ones we can sense but not fully see yet. In that way, wetness is political. It resists containment, celebrates fluidity, and invites transformation. Like reverb, it expands beyond initial impact. A gesture towards interconnectedness and a refusal to disappear.
by Shalaka Jadhav
Trained as an urban planner, Shalaka Jadhav took the advice of a grade school aptitude test and currently practices as an independent researcher, writer, and curator. Currently based on Block 2 of the Haldimand Tract and Treaty 1 territory, their work explores spatial positionality, grief geographies, and public memory as evidenced in exhibitions curated in Halifax, Winnipeg, Kitchener, Guelph, and Toronto. As a 2025 Musagetes Fellow, they are developing place-based curatorial projects that explore publication as form. Shalaka is one of the inaugural Visiting Curators at the University of Manitoba School of Art Gallery, and a Writer-in-Residence for CAFKA.25: Field Guide to the Understory, a regional biennial in southwestern Ontario.
