Finding My Place: Examining Concepts of Community Music as a Visiting Artist in Rural East Timor
Gillian Howell
Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University
This article explores what it means to be a musician in a foreign community, focusing on the author's experiences as a visiting artist in East Timor. East Timor ranks among Asia's poorest and least developed nations, having been a Portuguese colony before enduring a brutal 24-year occupation by Indonesia and achieving independent statehood only in 2002. The author positions the community musician as an "outsider" to the communities they serve, and examines this role through the lens of a four-month artist residency as an unknown foreigner in a developing rural community. The traumas of recent conflict and ongoing poverty added further layers of complexity to the work. Using narrative inquiry and an autoethnographic approach, the author describes a community music project that emerged organically from informal, unstructured beginnings, emphasizing the importance of trust and mutual exchange. The author's experiences and interactions ultimately pointed toward a transition from outsider to accepted community member, analyzed through L. Higgins' conceptual framework for community music activity as acts of hospitality, gifts, and tests.
Introduction: The facilitator as outsider
As a professional community music facilitator, being an "outsider" is a familiar situation. The author leads creative music projects on behalf of arts or education organizations, working in environments where she is not a natural member. Within the creative music workshop setting, however, common understandings exist—familiarity with the cultural environment, its rules and structures, motivation toward the project (particularly with self-selecting groups), and a common language for communication—which inform initial interactions.
Over time, the creative process undertaken together, emphasizing openness to unpredictable musical outcomes, ensemble playing, and collaborative invention of new music, can yield a strong sense of community as a natural by-product (as observed in Higgins, 2007b). In this new community, everyone becomes an insider, since it is a community of shared experience, established by the project itself and the inviting environment that values each person's contributions.
This article considers the author's experiences as an outsider leading a community music project in an environment where she was a foreigner in every way—a remote town in the fledgling independent state of East Timor, where she spent four months undertaking an artist residency in 2010-2011. This experience challenged her own notions of who the community in a community music project is, who she—as an outsider and visitor—could become within a new community, how this might emerge, and ultimately what being a musician in a community truly means.
The article begins by describing the setting, with a brief overview of some of East Timor's recent history and challenges, narrowing the focus progressively to consider the town of Lospalos, the site of the residency, and some of the social norms observed among neighbors. This leads into a description of a music participation project, charting its transition from informal and unstructured through to performance outcome. Interspersed throughout this description are discussions of possible meanings and interpretations of this project, utilizing the conceptual tools for describing and understanding community music activities developed by Higgins (2007a, 2007b, 2012). By the end of the residency many things had changed, and the article concludes with a reconsideration of the "outsider" status.
Methodology—Describing these experiences
In this account, the author examines the meaning of her experiences in Lospalos as a narrative inquiry considered through an autoethnographic lens. She was there as a music practitioner rather than as a researcher, and draws upon her detailed field journal, video footage, and autoethnographic recollection. These narratives are embedded within her experiences, rather than being descriptions of particular events (Squire, Andrews, & Tamboukou 2008). There is no "certainty" here—others present during the events described might offer different narratives and interpretations (Barrett & Stauffer 2009: 2; Bowman 2009: 214). As a practitioner initiating and leading music-making activities over a short period, it was not possible to formally interview participants or record their responses. For this reason the voices of East Timorese people are largely absent; however, their responses to the residency can be found in an earlier International Journal of Community Music issue (Howell & Dunphy 2012).
Within the narrative, the author refers to herself in the first person. A second protagonist in the events described is her partner Tony, a professional musician who worked with her during her time in Lospalos.
East Timor's cultural context
East Timor is a half-island sitting between Australia's northern edge and the eastern reaches of the Indonesian archipelago. It is the poorest and least developed nation in Asia. The country ranks 120 out of 169 countries on the U.N. Human Development Index—a comparative measure of life expectancy, literacy, education, and standards of living—and an estimated 41 percent of the million-strong population live below the poverty line (UNHR 2011).
East Timor's current context is complex. A Portuguese colony for 500 years, it remained under-developed and isolated, with traditional ways of life continuing for the vast majority of the population throughout this period. The country suffered full-scale military invasion by the Indonesian army in 1975 and lived under brutal Indonesian occupation for 24 years, a period
that led directly to the deaths of nearly a quarter of the Timorese population (approximately 180,000 people) and the rise of a popular resistance movement (Kingsbury & Leach 2007).
The East Timorese voted for independence in a UN-sponsored referendum in 1999. The Indonesian army's subsequent withdrawal was bloody and merciless, leaving 70% of the country's physical infrastructure—roads, buildings, telecommunications—burned and destroyed, thousands killed, and thousands more displaced and traumatized (Chomsky 2003; East Timor Government 2008). A UN transitional administration governed the country until 2002, and a UN political mission remains in place in 2011. In 2006 and 2007 further crises broke out, with more violent loss of life, displacement, and trauma.
Thus, contemporary East Timor melds its indigenous identities with "the cultural baggage of its consecutive colonial occupiers, meshing these in varying degrees of success with the requirements of the larger contemporary world" (Kingsbury & Leach 2007: 15). The population is hardy and proud, but living with traumatic memories of recent events and a weariness of instability and foreign involvement in their land.
East Timor is divided into thirteen administrative districts, their boundaries based upon tribal and linguistic lines. As part of her residency, the author spent two months in a remote town called Lospalos in the eastern corner of the half-island. Lospalos is a small town surrounded by pristine jungle, highlands, and small-scale agriculture. The majority of people live on subsistence farming. Electricity is available only in the evenings. There are no landlines—only mobile phones. There is a single strip of shops, a small daily produce market, and a larger weekly market that attracts buyers and sellers from small villages throughout the district. The lack of convenient and affordable travel options to Lospalos and the town's distance from the Timorese capital of Dili mean that very few foreign visitors make it to Lospalos.
An outsider in Lospalos
The author struggled to develop music projects in Lospalos when she first arrived. She had a host organization whose activities were based in Lospalos (albeit with Australian-based directors); however, it quickly became evident that they had no real presence or profile in the town at that time. Her proposals for exchanges with traditional musicians, collaborative projects with adult musicians and children, and training opportunities for young musicians
and teachers were received with initially enthusiastic, but later prevaricating responses. Support from the local State Secretariat for Culture—the official channel through which music activity should normally happen—was offered in words but not matched by deeds.
She keenly felt herself to be an outsider and uncomfortably aware that she had been invited to work in Lospalos by other foreigners, rather than by locals. The local people had no particular context for her residency, and it did not seem to have come about in response to expressed need from them.
The Motalori context
The house she rented in Lospalos was in the Motalori locality—a "suburb" on the main road into the town center. An old, sturdy white-brick Portuguese-era house, it was on relatively high ground, surrounded by grass and coconut palms. Her landlord and his young family lived in a wooden dwelling behind the house. Most of the other houses in Motalori were simple structures with dirt floors and walls made of palm leaf shingles and flat roofs with no ceilings. On rainy days the bare land surrounding their homes quickly turned to mud.
The author wondered about social division in this neighborhood, in terms of who played with whom and who talked with whom. The local boys—numerous and boisterous—were regular visitors to the house, but whenever they arrived, the landlady's children would leave the group and head back to their house. She asked their mother about this. "Those boys are too dirty. Their clothes are always dirty," she stated matter-of-factly. Her children didn't like playing with them for this reason. She told the author, "In Timor, if you go to someone else's house, you should put on your clean clothes. When these children come to your house in dirty clothes, you should send them away. It's not respectful."
The author was not concerned about the boys' clothes, but she noted the division. She had the impression that these boys had limited life opportunities. Only a few attended school, several couldn't read or write at all, they weren't used to being organized as a group, and they didn't know Tetun (the national language, not local to Lospalos and usually learned in kindergarten or school). These were very poor people, and in addition to not having clean clothes to wear each day, many did not have enough food to eat. They were small for their age and very thin.
These apparent divisions notwithstanding, there seemed to the author to be a strong sense of community in Motalori. As with many traditional societies, "community" in East Timor is a far more bounded notion than it is in the individualistic West. Systems of kinship are clearly defined, and friendships often observe geographical boundaries for the children. Language binds people and also distinguishes them—East Timor has 16 different languages and sub-varieties present across the small landmass (Taylor-Leech 2007).
Jamming with the Motalori children
Local children initially stopped in front of the house out of curiosity, their interest aroused by the instruments they could hear being played. They were shy at first, but once one group had decided to venture forth, word of the musicians spread, and the numbers of visitors increased each time the instruments came out.
These visits became jams on the veranda—daily, informal music-making sessions for anyone who wanted to turn up. They took place without any special planning or promotion and were open to all. The author spoke quite good Tetun by this time (the local language in Lospalos is Fataluku, but many people spoke or understood Tetun), and this helped her establish a rapport with the children and lead the sessions.
At those early jams the children were a large, noisy group, street-smart and quick-witted. Mostly boys, they were excited to play music, but they snatched and grabbed at instruments in a very chaotic way. The author wasn't always sure she liked these boys at the beginning. Sometimes they were so rowdy and aggressive she wanted to pack everything up and send them away. Later, watching video footage of the earliest jam sessions, she saw how focused they were, despite their tremendous excitement. They loved the music making and began to watch the musicians throughout the day, waiting for them to go into the room off the veranda where the instruments were stored. Within a minute of instruments appearing, the children would descend upon them.
Musical information was communicated non-verbally or through symbols and repetition. The group explored songs with percussion accompaniment, experimented with structures and graphic scores, and jammed on traditional chants and songs in the local Fataluku language.
Sometimes older boys would volunteer tebe tebe (traditional dance rhythms) that they knew, or sing popular songs, accompanying themselves on guitar.
In time, the group of boys who came most regularly became the leaders of the jam ensemble. They were the ones most familiar with the instruments and with the cues Tony and the author used. They helped prepare the workshop space before each jam and guided others less familiar with the workshop routine. They took turns playing instruments, watching players before them intently and memorizing riffs and progressions so they would be ready when it was their turn. Each time a new melody or riff was invented, it passed through the group, peer teaching peer.
Girls rarely came to the informal jams. Girls participated in the more formal workshops conducted at other Lospalos venues; however, the late-afternoon veranda jams were male-dominated events.
Discussion—Hospitality and welcome
In engaging with the children and creating regular opportunities for them to play with each other and with the visitors, the author was in a sense creating a community around her. The children's community already existed, but in the invitation to make music together, she created the possibility of a new community, bounded by shared experience and inclusion.
Higgins (2012) suggests that the notion of hospitality "encompasses the central characteristics of community music" (133), and that it is a practical evocation of community in the work of community musicians. He identifies the music leader's welcome as a key component of community music practice, so that the invitation to participate in the workshop is an act of hospitality, in essence and in practice.
The veranda jams were an unconditional, open invitation from Tony and the author—an invitation with some "imposed conditions" (Higgins 2008: 333) in that they decided when the music would happen each day, but in which their leadership and welcome demonstrated a willingness to "give something without getting anything back" (333). Participants could come and go as they chose and could influence the music-making in different ways, nominating musical content and sharing their knowledge and skills. They could learn to play a pre-existing piece
of material, or join in on the spot. They chose what they wanted to play, negotiating instrument changes with each other rather than with the facilitators. In the midst of all these choices and decisions, Tony and the author demonstrated comfort in working in an unpredictable, open-ended environment, where the primary strategy was to respond to the group's interests and create a sense of musical delight and togetherness. This was their welcome and their invitation.
However, the jams were dominated by a core group of young boys, and it appeared that in this traditional society with its differing social rules for girls and boys (and between foreigners and locals), their participation meant that some others chose to exclude themselves (the girls, for example, or the landlord's children). Clearly, the rules governing the pre-existing community's social interactions and expectations were still maintained, despite the open welcome and unusual diversion that Tony and the author offered.
It is interesting, also, to consider the idea of hospitality in this context. The author was an outsider, new to both their town and country. There was much that she did not know about how things were done there. In many ways she felt that she was the one in need of hospitality and welcome. However, building trust in a traumatized country, weary of foreign authority imposing itself, takes time. In the first weeks of her residency, people were still trying to make sense of her. The onus was on her to demonstrate her warmth, welcome, and hospitality in order to plant the seeds for that trust.
Making instruments
The group had a range of instruments to share, including drums fashioned from large plastic buckets and soft-drink bottles filled with high-pressure air that gave a bell-like pitch when struck. Three sets of resonant metal chime bars provided melodic and harmonic material. Tony and the author experimented with making instruments from freshly-cut bamboo. They created 3-tone xylophones and pairs of bamboo claves, and these additions ensured enough instruments for everyone. Children also started to bring their own instruments to the veranda—including plastic piping that was blown like a trumpet, a guitar, and a descant recorder.
Their instrument-making efforts attracted the interest of adults, and they discovered that their next-door neighbor Mario had traditional instrument-making skills. Mario taught Tony how
to make a kakalo, a bamboo log drum traditionally played by children to scare foraging animals away from precious food crops (King 1963). They later organized an instrument-making day on the veranda, making a further 12 kakalos with the help of local teenagers.
Mario showed them his attempts to make a bamboo flute. He examined their woodwind instruments with interest, impressed by the key-work and its mechanisms. They gave him a descant recorder brought from Australia, and Tony began to teach him to play it.
Together, working through mime and demonstration erased the language barrier between them.
As we assembled at the radio station, nerves ran high. Even Mario’s hands trembled. The tiny studio forced us to squeeze together on the floor or lean against the walls. Afterwards, pride rippled through the group. Nobody had attempted this before: the radio station had never broadcast children, nor had it ever presented malae (foreigners) and Timorese people performing side by side.
Discussion – gifts, exchange, and working together
What drew the Motalori boys to our veranda day after day? It offered a fun, social break, a rare novelty in Lospalos. Many children and their parents considered it a vital learning chance (Howell & Dunphy 2012), believing any new skills could hold future value.
My own goals centred on cultural exchange. I hoped to learn East Timorese musical traditions through hands-on collaboration. But establishing the idea of exchange took time. That concept assumes everyone brings something worthwhile to the table – a notion that ran counter to local experience. Nearly all foreign visitors since 1999 had come “to help” the Timorese, fostering learned passivity where the helper is seen as the authority, provider, and likely source of income.
The cycle of exchange unfolded gradually, ignited by individuals choosing to work with each other rather than be worked on (Higgins 2012: 158). A “circle of exchange between facilitator and participant” (153) activated when the children first walked up the driveway and joined us on the veranda in response to our music and invitation. This echoed what Higgins calls the “call” – the moment of choosing to participate. My open, friendly response and active commitment to facilitating a shared musical path was the “welcome” (158). I offered the workshops as a pure gift, expecting nothing back. Yet as our relationships deepened, “counter-gifts” (153) grew more visible, challenging the typical capacity‑building model of foreigners helping locals.
The first gift was the daily chance to make music; the children evidently saw our veranda as a place for learning. They displayed a hunger for experiences, a remarkable ability to absorb new things, and strong self‑motivation. Teaching and learning moved in all directions – from facilitators to participants, between participants, and back to us – matching Higgins’ (2008) description of the workshop as a democratic event where “the power… lies with everybody” (333). Peer teaching was constant, and the children regularly shared traditional rhythms, chants, and songs with us – a counter‑gift we treasured.
When we were invited to lead a workshop at the town’s kindergarten, we had no car to carry our instruments. The local boys discussed the problem, then found and loaned us a wheelbarrow. They proudly wheeled everything into town and waited to cart it all back afterward.
Language itself was part of the exchange. My Tetun showed commitment to the community and let me speak directly with the group. But not all children spoke Tetun (it’s learned in school, and attendance was patchy), so they taught me keywords in Fataluku and translated my instructions for peers who needed it.
Translating the pop song was also a gift, since so few popular songs were available to young Lospalans in their mother tongue. Its reach stretched far: adults from other parts of town asked for copies of the words, wanting to extend the translation even further.
Mario, our next‑door neighbour, built a warm relationship with us through mutual gifts. He shared his knowledge of instrument‑making, fashioning the first kakalo that inspired our workshop. After that, Tony gave Mario a recorder, and lessons followed. Later, when visiting Australian students came, Mario and his family showed them how to make simple instruments from wound bamboo leaves. He must have valued the connection as much as we did; he was the only adult who joined the radio performance, recorder in hand, despite his nerves.
Every exchange relied on cooperative working and a desire to give without expecting return. But it was the unconditional nature of the giving that fueled the cycle. Notably, the principle of reciprocity and cooperative living – known as fulidai-dai in one local language – runs deep in East Timorese society (Salvagno, n.d.). As an outsider, the most effective way I could prove commitment was by sharing what I had. In that way, the exchange circle that activates music workshops – invitation, response, welcome – mirrored the exchange cycle that builds community itself.
I was very happy that they asked me to show them how to make traditional instruments. I enjoyed this – I want to help them because Mana Gillian and Maun Tony helped our children. (Interview with Mario, Howell & Dunphy 2012)
Testing the welcome
As the residency’s final weeks approached, I became more familiar in the community. Word had spread, and Tony and I were invited to lead workshops at a kindergarten and a convent’s weekend program. We attended classes at a local English school and developed friendships – expressed through impromptu street conversations.
Yet tests arose. One came the night of the final radio rehearsal: two girls from next door had asked me to pick them up, but when I arrived, neither came out. Days later they admitted they’d been avoiding me. “We thought you’d be angry with us,” one said, “because we didn’t come to sing.” Surprised, I assured them they never had to sing if they didn’t want to.
Another time, a child called out, “Hey foreigner, give me one dollar!” – a crude demand typical in Dili’s anonymous streets, but unheard‑of in proud Lospalos. Recognizing a regular veranda jammer, I saw his expression and the face he made. At our next meeting I smiled warmly but knowingly, sending the message that I’d noted the transgression yet the welcome stood.
The hardest test was far graver. One night late in the residency, I woke to a child moving silently through our bedroom. I screamed; they scrambled out the window. Tony glimpsed a fleet‑footed kid dashing down the driveway clutching a saxophone case.
Mercifully, that was the only thing taken. Even luckier, the saxophone bag appeared early the next morning, left on the road outside a neighbour’s house. But a black velvet pouch containing mouthpieces remained missing. Without them, the saxophone was useless.
An Australian colleague had previously told me that burglaries in Timor almost always convey a message to the victim (L.M., pers. comm., 8 Dec 2010). I resolved to view this not as a betrayal of trust but as a kind of test. I kept calm, avoiding anger or accusation. Tony and I visited the neighbour in whose yard the saxophone had been found, assuring her we didn't blame her. She thanked us, relieved we hadn't suspected her. I also talked with local boys, explaining our sadness, not anger, that the sax could still not be played. Perhaps, I suggested, they could keep an eye out for the missing pouch; maybe the “visitor” had thrown it into the long grass.
They nodded, eyes wide.
Late that afternoon, one of the older boys bounded up the driveway. “It’s found!” he called. “You have to come get it!” I ran with him down the main road; a crowd of children and adults gathered behind, drawn by excitement. He led me to a patch of tangled bushland and pointed out the pouch. “No‑one has touched it. You must pick it up. You must check everything is there.”
Everything was there. I beamed and thanked everyone repeatedly. As we walked back, tension had lifted, replaced by a festive parade atmosphere. People I had never seen before wanted to celebrate. Someone brought out a Frisbee, and the front garden became a park where everyone – children and adults – were playing.
My landlady beckoned me. “Is it there? Do you have it?” Other women from the area, some I’d seen but never spoken with, rushed over. “We heard your screams in the night!” “It was very loud – I thought there was a burglar.” “Next time, you must scream ‘Burglar! Burglar!’ so that everyone knows.” “We were burgled three times last year. Here, eat these!” A bowl of roasted nuts was pressed into my hands as they urged me to join them.
Discussion and conclusion – Of tests, trust, and community music
This episode marked a turning point. After that night, the landlord’s children stayed through the veranda jams instead of leaving when the boys came. Local girls also started attending regularly. The chat with the women and the shared bowl of nuts felt like the welcome I’d sensed missing when I first arrived.
It seemed my startled screams had shown my normal human vulnerability – something my foreignness had previously hidden. Moreover, our calm, unaccusatory reaction to the burglary and our conversations with children and neighbours gave the community space to solve the problem for us. That careful action, perhaps, demonstrated our trust in them, despite our different circumstances.
Trust is the key variable here, and time is its essential companion. Many Timorese, scarred by a brutal past, have learned not to trust outsiders who assume authority. Building trust takes time and carries perceived risk for locals. No matter how warm my welcome and invitation, I was still an untested outsider.
Yet trust did develop, and I believe the open‑ended facilitation style of music‑making created the fertile ground. Higgins (2012) points out that trust and respect grow from an environment that invites and creates space for others’ voices. In my workshops, I strove to present myself honestly and encouraged participants to do the same, embarking on a “journey together… into the unknown” (161) where we made music together but they actively shaped how. Along the way, the participants’ tests gradually wove a more welcoming community around me.
By the residency’s end, I felt far less an outsider. If, as Higgins (2012) suggests, community can be evoked through practical hospitality, then I had become a member – someone who receives those gestures. The presence of girls at the veranda assured parents that the space was safe, and their participation opened a new kind of community rooted in shared experience.
It was the community, indirectly, that told me what it wanted from a musician in its midst. They didn’t want a formal, structured creative music project. They were happy to get to know me day by day, see how I conducted myself. They valued the time I gave their children, my engagement with their local traditions, and my efforts in the wider sphere – contributions no visiting foreigner had offered before.
The community also allowed itself to be shaped in small ways by my presence. During my time in Motalori, neighbours started playing more music among themselves – building instruments, blowing recorders, singing more songs than we’d ever heard before the veranda jams began. Instrument‑making on our veranda revived memories of forgotten traditions and latent skills among adults, who wowed their children as they demonstrated. Most pleasing was the sight in those final days: all the children playing together – noisy boys and the landlord’s quiet ones, side‑by‑side on the veranda – while we packed up the last instruments and headed indoors. A perfect demonstration of music creating its own insiders.
Figure 4: Nose rub with village elder
Then, with the determination that has made him a familiar face to international representatives at every negotiating session for nearly six years, Goiog began working the room, mission members recall. He was in the midst of strategizing with regional officials when leaflets criticizing President Bashar al-Assad began circulating outside the headquarters. The conversation came to a disheartening halt. "The opposition named no date for a counter-protest," Goiog says. By sector's end, both organized sides had nearly collided.
The next day, Goiog returned to Jabref with three more national staff members. Angry crowds clashed with security forces two miles away. Delegates to another meeting four blocks south feared they would not make it. Loyalties on both sides spoke more broadly than reasoned persuasion.
As head of the unit then newly executing provisional decrees, Goiog applied the rule of tempered intermediaries: formal caution must never turn absent.
U.N. patrol tasks required their mobile units avoid proximity to opposed crowds. Far behind every zone's green-checkered demarcation, further protests turned enflamed. Local volunteers later pointed police pistols back against empty streets.
A local reconciliation in Syria outside terms some democrats described violent displacement demands — greater violence persists several years beyond cease-fire observations both failed there because negotiation tactics remained militarized only with constant.
At four checkpoints inside seven miles straddling opposite Ghouta basin lines twenty rounds more scattered routine reports many names since missing had now turned inside small village names abandoned.