Master musician and culture bearer. Teacher of pre-colonial Philippine arts and culture, with an emphasis on Maguindanaon kulintang (bronze gong) ensemble music.
His name at birth:
Danongan Sibay Kalanduyan
Pronounced with all syllables emphasized equally --
"Dah-nohng-ahn. See-bye. Kah-lahn-doo-yahn."
First-born child of Sibay Undol Batawan (c.1921-1991) and Kalanduyan Tanggo (1916-2006). His parents were married in the mid-1930s, when his father was about 19 or 20 years old.
In Maguindanoan tradition, his given name Danongan was a formal name. While in Maguindanao, his informal name was Penong. As a teenager, his uncle in General Santos called him Danny, and Danny became the name he used after he moved to the United States.
His paternal grandfather's name was Tanggo, and paternal grandmother was Kaumpong.
His maternal grandparents were Kalinawag Batawan and Undol Sabal. His maternal grandmother Kalinawag Batawan was a daughter of Batawan (of the Buayan sultanate) and Melag; the father of Batawan was Datu Mindo Anguso. Kalinawag and her sisters, and her daughters, were known as remarkable kulintang musicians. Because Undol Sabal died young, his daughters were raised primarily by their mother Kalinawag, and so Danny Kalanduyan never knew his ancestry through his maternal grandfather Undol.
His maternal grandfather Undol Sabal was the son of Datu Sabal Dalgan, who was the son of the Raja Muda (Crown Prince) Dalgan, who was the younger brother of Datu Utto, the 18th Sultan of Buayan. The two brothers, Raja Muda Dalgan and Datu Utto (d.1902), were sons of Sultan Bangon sa Didagen bin Sultan Maitem a Sultan sa T'lu a inged (Buayan, Maguindanao, Kabuntalan). Thus, Danny Kalanduyan was a direct descendant and a third-great-grandson of Sultan Bangon sa Didagen, the 16th Sultan of Buayan.
He was born at Tangguapo, a sitio located in a barangay near the ancient town of Dulawan (currently known as Datu Piang) in Maguindanao province, along the Pulangi River (aka Mindanao River, aka Rio Grande de Mindanao, aka Tamontaka River) in central Mindanao Island, in the southern Philippines. He was raised at the nearby barangay of Inaladan.
His birthplace of Tangguapo, which is located within the political boundaries of the municipality (similar to "county") of Datu Piang, is now very nearly a ghost town, with (as of 2023) between only five to ten households remaining.
He had no birth certificate. In the 1970s, when he first applied for a Philippine passport so that he could perform abroad as a member of Mindanao State University's Darangan Cultural Troupe, a possible ambiguity in the Tangguapo mosque records was identified. His elders were consulted, and a decision was made to set his birthday as May 1, 1947. It is more likely that his actual birthdate was August 18, 1940, which is closer in time to his parents' marriage in the mid-1930s.
He was the first-born of 11 children, and the eldest of eight siblings who survived childhood. He survived his siblings Alunto (died young) (#2), Sinaliya Kalanduyan Mamaluba (1949-2012) (#3), Maisalam Kalanduyan Malugayak (c.1951-2011) (#4), Manguntela (died young) (#6), and Sinauya (died young) (#10).
At his death, his five remaining siblings, in birth order, were Kanapia (#5, born 1954), Guiawalia (#7), Kanaot (#8), Karatuan (#9), and Kunga (c.1970-2018) (#11).
His mother Sibay was an accomplished kulintang musician, and his father Kalanduyan was an accomplished kutiyapi (two-stringed boat lute) musician. He was raised in a musical family, in the countryside. His mother took care to train her children in the indigenous music of their culture. Of the five schools of Maguindanaon kulintang music, Danny and his extended family played the older, upriver or upstream style known as Dulawan-style.
His grandparents were farmers, but they were stripped of their land, as were many Maguindanaon natives, when the government of the Republic of the Philippines deliberately created official written titles to ancestral farmlands in Mindanao, and then gave those titles away to entice settlers from the north and central regions of the Philippines. Eventually, many of Danny's family members ended up living in a five-acre family compound located in the municipality (similar to "county") of Datu Odin Sinsuat, not far from Cotabato City.
His maternal uncle Kamensa Batawan was married to the sister of the acclaimed Maguindanaon kulintang master Amal Lemuntod. As a teenager, Danny had the great experience of playing excellent kulintang ensemble music with his Bapa (Uncle) Amal, and his maternal cousins Madendog "Pendog" Kamensa, Musib Kamensa, and also a beloved paternal Tanggo cousin (who died young, in Manila, in his very early 20s). Danny excelled in traditional gandingan (set of four hanging gongs) competitions.
As a result of various problems, likely the result of learning disabilities, he was expelled from elementary school and later taken in by one of his mother's cousins, an educator in Dadiangas (currently known as the City of General Santos), a man who was well known for supporting the educational needs of the extended family. Danny lived with his Mangulamas cousins for some years until he could return to his home near Datu Piang. Eventually, he returned to school while in his teens and graduated from Notre Dame of Dulawan High School, Batch (Class) of 1968.
Upon graduation from high school, his goal was to continue his education in a location far from home.
After attending Mindanao State University at Marawi City, Lanao del Sur, taking eight years to earn a Bachelor's degree in Community Development, he went on to became the Official Campus Musician in the office of the President of MSU-Marawi. He spent about ten years at Mindanao State University, and for six of those years he was an official musician for the Darangan Cultural Troupe of MSU-Marawi City. As such, he was able to go on tour with the Darangan Troupe to perform and travel in the Philippines away from Mindanao, and in a few locations in Southeast Asia. He was a highly valued member of the Darangan Cultural Troupe. While he was a Darangan member, he incorporated Maranao kulintang music into his repertoire, making him perhaps the only person in the world who could easily perform -- onstage -- the traditional kulintang music of two different cultures of the Philippines.
Inspired by the possibility of moving to America, Danny sought opportunities for education overseas, and in the early 1970s he was accepted to both attend and teach kulintang music at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, on full scholarship and more: his travel, housing, food, and books would be provided. He was thrilled, and prepared to travel to Dublin. However, an Irish Catholic MSU campus priest heard of his good fortune and asked him to reconsider. As dangerous as many people think Mindanao might be, in the early and mid-1970s, there was absolutely no question that Dublin, Ireland was one of the most dangerous places in the world, due to active warfare in the area. Danny thought long and hard, and decided his safety was most important, so he decided to look for something else.
He next obtained admission at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. However, the partial scholarship offered to him did not cover more than a portion of tuition, and did not cover travel, housing, food, or books. He was extremely disappointed in what appeared to be a half-hearted offer of support, and he was even a little embittered by it, but continued looking for opportunity abroad.
Finally, through a series of connections, he was asked to attend the graduate music program at the University of Washington at Seattle, with the long-term goal of obtaining a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology. After ten years at Mindanao State University, and with the help of a Rockefeller Foundation Grant obtained by the University of the Philippines Alumni Association (UPAA) based in Northern California, he traveled to Seattle in 1976, leaving his wife and two toddlers behind in the Philippines.
Danny was an Artist-in-Residence at UW for eight years, obtaining his Masters degree in Ethnomusicology in 1984.
While teaching at the University of Washington, he lived in a student apartment, which he shared with a number of visiting master musicians over the years. One of his roommates was the Shona master musician Abraham Dumisani "Dumi" Maraire, of then-Rhodesia (currently, Zimbabwe). Perhaps not by coincidence, both Danny and Dumi had been invited to the University of Washington by the same person, Professor Robert Garfias (currently University of California professor emeritus). Professor Garfias successfully established the graduate ethnomusicology department at the University of Washington.
News of a kulintang master in Seattle reached San Francisco, California, and Danny was asked to teach some workshops there by Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo. After being in rainy Seattle for so many years, Danny was pleased by a chance to have a change of scenery.
Because Danny was in the United States on a student visa, as he prepared to complete the degree program at UW, he made arrangements to marry an American citizen who had previously helped a foreign student obtain his green card (her previous husband, a European, had been attending UCLA). In January 1984, he married Doris Helen Fuge in Seattle, Washington. Through that marriage, he obtained permanent residence in the U.S., and later U.S. citizenship. He was subsequently remarried to his first wife.
Danny moved to San Francisco to work with a newly formed Filipino American performing arts group, Kalilang. He worked closely with Robert Henry, Alleluia Panis, and Marcella Pabros.
For many years, well over a decade, he earned rent money for his tiny studio apartment by working as a part-time usher at Golden Gate Theater in San Francisco, ushering for the national tours of Broadway shows.
In September 1986, the non-profit corporation Kulintang Arts was established, replacing Kalilang. Their jazz fusion music and dance ensemble, also called Kulintang Arts, performed with Danny, most notably in a collaboration with Fred Ho (aka Fred Houn) in a performance piece called "A Song for Manong." The performance was recorded and released on vinyl by San Francisco-based Asian Improv Records.
In 1988, Danny separated from Kulintang Arts, Inc. (later known as Kularts) and established his own performing arts group, the Palabuniyan Kulintang Ensemble, which presented traditional music and dance of the Southern Philippines. Briefly, he was a member of Seattle-based Mindanao Kulintang Ensemble, and he was also briefly involved with the World Kulintang Institute located in southern California.
He received funding from the California Arts Council under the Artist in Community program, and presented free public workshops at the Philippine consulate building in San Francisco with the assistance of the University of the Philippines Alumni Association (UPAA).
He found support in the local, state, and national arts community, and in arts administrators David Roche and Terry Liu.
In 1995, Danny was awarded the National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship for Traditional Arts, the highest honor bestowed upon a traditional artist. He, his wife and daughter, and his traditional kulintang music group traveled to Washington D.C. to perform at the White House complex (at the building then-known as the OEOB). Up to the time of his death, he was the only Filipino American musician/culture bearer ever to receive this high honor.
In 1996, Danny suffered the first of a series of heart attacks, and was hospitalized. Although he drastically changed his diet and habits, as advised by his health care providers, he was noncompliant when it came to prescription medications. He also avoided medical attention even when it was clearly necessary, and when he had to go to an emergency room, he (inexplicably) preferred to take public transportation (he would actually go to a bus stop and take a bus). He never had a driver's license, and did not know how to drive a car.
In 1998, he traveled to Washington D.C. to attend the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall, because the Philippine program featured a number of people from his own Maguindanaon culture, including his brother Kanapia Kalanduyan. The other Maguindanaon kulintang musicians in the Philippine delegation included Aga Mayo Butocan, Sinsuat Dalgan, Labaya Piang, and Dinanding Kalimudan; the latter two ladies were partners in playing a kulintang style called "sinirikit" where each person plays the kulintang with one hand and the dabakan (drum) with the other. Danny also met with the great kulintang gong maker Zacaria Akmad Amboa, son of Amboa, who was an excellent gong maker based in Kalanganan, Cotabato City. Zacaria Amboa was also part of the Philippine delegation brought to the U.S. to give demonstrations at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.
In 1999, Danny went on the first of four performance tours in Alaska undertaken by his group, the Palabuniyan Kulintang Ensemble. All four tours, which took place between 1999 and 2005, were arranged by Filipino-Alaskan politician and cultural worker Thelma Buchholdt.
In February 2000, Danny co-founded the California non-profit corporation Mindanao Lilang-Lilang, and served as CEO for more than 16 years, until his death.
In early 2000, he was invited to be an APPEX Artist at the UCLA Center for Intercultural Performance. During his summer residency at UCLA, where he received room and board and a generous honorarium, he worked with musicians and artists from around the world to create collaborative performance pieces. They learned each other's traditional music, and how to perform fusion pieces together on stage. Upon his return home to the San Francisco Bay Area, he said the APPEX residency was one of the best experiences of his life.
In early 2001, he began a working relationship with the San Francisco State University-based student percussion group "Ating Tao" and he taught kulintang music to members of that group.
In mid- to late 2001, he collaborated with Philippine television news journalist Howie Severino in the filming of a short documentary piece on a traditional Maguindanaon kulintang competition, held on September 15, 2001 at his family's compound just outside of Cotabato City. This documentary piece was shown on Philippine television.
In October 2002, while preparing for his third performance tour in Alaska, he became quite ill with a kidney infection. For personal reasons, he refused medical care, and was unable to join his group when they left for Alaska. Some days later, mortally ill, he reluctantly called friends to bring him to an emergency room. He was hospitalized for nearly three months, and underwent open heart surgery. He was told that he would have to repeat the surgery in 10 to 12 years.
Almost immediately after his release from the hospital, in January 2003, he began teaching as a Guest Lecturer at the Music department and at the Dance department at San Francisco State University. When the California state budget was cut to eliminate all Lecturer positions at the California State Universities, his kulintang course was transferred from the Music and Dance departments to the Ethnic Studies department, which managed to keep him on as an Instructor. He also began teaching at Skyline College, a junior college in nearby San Bruno, with the assistance of that college's Kababayan program.
He continued to suffer from cardiac arrhythmias and was quietly hospitalized from time to time. Finally, a cardiology specialist discovered an ectopic foci, a congenital abnormality. Essentially, Danny had been born with an extra SA node, which was removed by laser surgery performed at a very small specialty hospital in Redwood City.
In July 2005, he joined in a final Alaskan performance tour with the Palabuniyan Kulintang Ensemble. After having several experiences kicking off the winter Performance Art seasons in Alaska, he wanted to have the chance to join in Alaska's summertime salmon fishing. He loved the experience of dipnet-fishing at the mouth of the Kenai River.
In 2006, his father Kalanduyan Tanggo passed away at age 90, after many years of dementia. His mother Sibay Batawan had suddenly passed away from complications of high blood pressure many years earlier, in 1991. After leaving the Philippines to attend the University of Washington in 1976, Danny had never been reunited with his beloved mother. Because he was the eldest child in the family, and because of his father's severe memory loss, Danny had become the Kalanduyan family patriarch upon his mother's death, about 15 years before his father's passing.
In 2007 and 2008, he spent his summers in Honolulu, Hawaii teaching an intensive Maguindanaon language course at a language school.
He retired from teaching in 2009. In retirement, he focused on traditional kulintang music fused with jazz, and worked with ethnomusicologists Royal Hartigan and Hafez Modirzadeh on the Kul-X project. He also worked with Bo Razon, Frank Holder, Chris Trinidad, and others, in the all-male kulintang fusion group Subla; the group released a CD of their music.
After he was nominated by the Alliance for California Traditional Arts staff to be an awardee for the United States Artists' fellowship, he was named a US Artists Broad fellow in late 2009. He used his fellowship funds to spend time at his childhood home in Mindanao, with his relatives.
In 2013, he returned to Mindanao to participate with his family members under the group name "Maguindanao Kulintang Ensemble" at the First International Gongs and Bamboo Music Festival held in Dipolog City, Zamboanga del Norte. That event was a project of The [Philippines] National Commission for Culture and the Arts-National Music Committee (NCCA-NMC) through the Musicological Society of the Philippines (MSP) in partnership with the Dipolog City Government in cooperation with Municipality of Maasin-Iloilo and the UP Center for Ethnomusicology (UPCE).
But, prior to arriving at Dipolog City, he and his family members and his family's music associates participated in the filming of a short documentary and recording of a high quality studio album, at Cotabato City. The film, which was released in 2014, is "The Cotabato Sessions." A soundtrack CD of the same name was also intended to be released.
In June 2014 and again in June 2015, he performed at the Pagdiriwang Festival, held at the Seattle Center in Seattle, Washington.
His health took a major turn in February 2015, when he was hospitalized repeatedly for pneumonia, and subsequently suffered from heart failure which greatly affected his mobility and stamina but not his ability to play kulintang music from a sitting position. Notably, he lost the ability to walk and talk at the same time, but he successfully kept that loss hidden from all but a small handful of people.
In August 2015, he was able to realize a long-held plan when he was able to send his wife away to live with their son's family in San Diego. Although Danny had dreamed for years, while he was a student and instructor at the University of Washington, of bringing his wife and children to live with him in America, it had not turned out nearly as well as he had hoped. His wife had come to the U.S. expecting to live the privileged lifestyle that Danny's hard-earned U.S. dollars had given her when she was raising their children in the Philippines. At last, nearing the end of his life, he was relieved to have finally managed a mutually agreed-upon separation from her, which gave him hope at a time when he desperately needed hope due to the decline in his health.
In September 2015, he performed for the last time with his traditional kulintang music group Palabuniyan Kulintang Ensemble, at an event presented at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Gardens by the Alliance for California Traditional Arts.
In November 2015, he rehearsed and performed with his kulintang/jazz fusion group Subla, in a collaboration with the Los Angeles Master Chorale and composer Nilo Alcala. The performance venue was the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and received a very lengthy standing ovation.
In December 2015, he performed traditional kulintang music with members of his Subla and Palabuniyan groups at a Smithsonian-sponsored event at the California Museum of Oakland, as part of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival's Sounds of California program. He had been quite ill, so there was no rehearsal for that performance.
In January 2016, he was given an opportunity to return to Mindanao for five weeks, to visit his large extended family. Despite his joy and excitement to return home to Mindanao, he did not tolerate the long journey well, and spent many weeks in recuperation. In February 2016, while in Mindanao, he was employed for one day as a judge at the Kulintang Ensemble Competitions held as part of the Sagayan Festival (later known as the Inaul Festival) held in Buluan, Maguindanao. His brothers Kanapia, Datuan, and Kunga also served as paid judges at the festival's music competitions.
Despite his failing health, he decided against remaining in Mindanao, and he returned to the United States in order to fulfill a contractual obligation, working with Stockton, California-based Little Manila Dance Collective, to teach the Fil-Am community in Stockton about kulintang music, through a Living Cultures grant provided by the Alliance for California Traditional Arts (ACTA). For this grant, he collaborated with former students to form an in-person "Kulintang Academy" from which an initial class was graduated.
At the end of May 2016, he experienced sharp pain in his hands, and it became extremely difficult for him to play kulintang music. Still, he completed his final performance obligations, in June and in July 2016. His last performance as part of a kulintang ensemble was with the Little Manila Dance Collective in Stockton, California, in July 2016.
His health declined even further while he awaited approval to undergo an experimental heart valve replacement procedure, which was administered only to cardiac patients as a last resort. Despite his waning energy, he remained optimistic and hopeful that the cardiac procedure would make him "good as new" although he became quite frail. When meeting people at his home, he wore multiple layers of clothing under a down-insulated vest under a leather vest, to hide his weight loss. He was no longer able to provide for his own needs, or care for himself. Faced with that reality, he asked his wife to return to live in the family apartment in South San Francisco, and he moved into the living room where he no longer needed to climb stairs.
After a four month wait, which he survived through pure strength of will, he was admitted to the Stanford University Medical Center. He passed away at the cardiac procedures ICU after suffering a fatal hemorrhagic stroke on the evening of September 27, 2016. He had been successfully resuscitated earlier in the day from a cardiac arrest, his body's immediate response to intubation prior to the procedure. Subsequent to cardiac resuscitation, he was placed on life support to undergo the mitral valve replacement procedure, which was successful, and he was still on life support when he suffered an intracranial bleed some hours later, the result of his decreased liver function. He was removed from life support the following afternoon, surrounded by family and friends.
He was given a proper Muslim burial, with bathing, enshrouding, and funeral prayers at a local mosque, and burial within 24 hours of his death.
He was survived by his wife Josefina "Pina" Luayon Kalanduyan (1947-2023) of South San Francisco, California; son Dennis and his wife Rossana and their six children, of San Diego, California; daughter Yasmin K. Rosales and her husband Allan and two children, of South San Francisco; former son-in-law Renato Gloria of Redwood City, California; brother Kanapia Kalanduyan of Taguig, MetroManila, Philippines; brother Karatuan "Datuan" Kalanduyan and sister Guiawalia Kalanduyan Gumama of Rajah Buayan/Sultan sa Barongis in Maguindanao province, Philippines; brother Kunga Kalanduyan (c. 1970 - 2018) and sister Kenaot "Taut" Guiaman of Datu Odin Sinsuat in Maguindanao province, Philippines; and hundreds of cousins, nieces, and nephews living in the Philippines, and in Saudi Arabia.
RIP Danny. Thank you for bringing your culture's music to America.
His name at birth:
Danongan Sibay Kalanduyan
Pronounced with all syllables emphasized equally --
"Dah-nohng-ahn. See-bye. Kah-lahn-doo-yahn."
First-born child of Sibay Undol Batawan (c.1921-1991) and Kalanduyan Tanggo (1916-2006). His parents were married in the mid-1930s, when his father was about 19 or 20 years old.
In Maguindanoan tradition, his given name Danongan was a formal name. While in Maguindanao, his informal name was Penong. As a teenager, his uncle in General Santos called him Danny, and Danny became the name he used after he moved to the United States.
His paternal grandfather's name was Tanggo, and paternal grandmother was Kaumpong.
His maternal grandparents were Kalinawag Batawan and Undol Sabal. His maternal grandmother Kalinawag Batawan was a daughter of Batawan (of the Buayan sultanate) and Melag; the father of Batawan was Datu Mindo Anguso. Kalinawag and her sisters, and her daughters, were known as remarkable kulintang musicians. Because Undol Sabal died young, his daughters were raised primarily by their mother Kalinawag, and so Danny Kalanduyan never knew his ancestry through his maternal grandfather Undol.
His maternal grandfather Undol Sabal was the son of Datu Sabal Dalgan, who was the son of the Raja Muda (Crown Prince) Dalgan, who was the younger brother of Datu Utto, the 18th Sultan of Buayan. The two brothers, Raja Muda Dalgan and Datu Utto (d.1902), were sons of Sultan Bangon sa Didagen bin Sultan Maitem a Sultan sa T'lu a inged (Buayan, Maguindanao, Kabuntalan). Thus, Danny Kalanduyan was a direct descendant and a third-great-grandson of Sultan Bangon sa Didagen, the 16th Sultan of Buayan.
He was born at Tangguapo, a sitio located in a barangay near the ancient town of Dulawan (currently known as Datu Piang) in Maguindanao province, along the Pulangi River (aka Mindanao River, aka Rio Grande de Mindanao, aka Tamontaka River) in central Mindanao Island, in the southern Philippines. He was raised at the nearby barangay of Inaladan.
His birthplace of Tangguapo, which is located within the political boundaries of the municipality (similar to "county") of Datu Piang, is now very nearly a ghost town, with (as of 2023) between only five to ten households remaining.
He had no birth certificate. In the 1970s, when he first applied for a Philippine passport so that he could perform abroad as a member of Mindanao State University's Darangan Cultural Troupe, a possible ambiguity in the Tangguapo mosque records was identified. His elders were consulted, and a decision was made to set his birthday as May 1, 1947. It is more likely that his actual birthdate was August 18, 1940, which is closer in time to his parents' marriage in the mid-1930s.
He was the first-born of 11 children, and the eldest of eight siblings who survived childhood. He survived his siblings Alunto (died young) (#2), Sinaliya Kalanduyan Mamaluba (1949-2012) (#3), Maisalam Kalanduyan Malugayak (c.1951-2011) (#4), Manguntela (died young) (#6), and Sinauya (died young) (#10).
At his death, his five remaining siblings, in birth order, were Kanapia (#5, born 1954), Guiawalia (#7), Kanaot (#8), Karatuan (#9), and Kunga (c.1970-2018) (#11).
His mother Sibay was an accomplished kulintang musician, and his father Kalanduyan was an accomplished kutiyapi (two-stringed boat lute) musician. He was raised in a musical family, in the countryside. His mother took care to train her children in the indigenous music of their culture. Of the five schools of Maguindanaon kulintang music, Danny and his extended family played the older, upriver or upstream style known as Dulawan-style.
His grandparents were farmers, but they were stripped of their land, as were many Maguindanaon natives, when the government of the Republic of the Philippines deliberately created official written titles to ancestral farmlands in Mindanao, and then gave those titles away to entice settlers from the north and central regions of the Philippines. Eventually, many of Danny's family members ended up living in a five-acre family compound located in the municipality (similar to "county") of Datu Odin Sinsuat, not far from Cotabato City.
His maternal uncle Kamensa Batawan was married to the sister of the acclaimed Maguindanaon kulintang master Amal Lemuntod. As a teenager, Danny had the great experience of playing excellent kulintang ensemble music with his Bapa (Uncle) Amal, and his maternal cousins Madendog "Pendog" Kamensa, Musib Kamensa, and also a beloved paternal Tanggo cousin (who died young, in Manila, in his very early 20s). Danny excelled in traditional gandingan (set of four hanging gongs) competitions.
As a result of various problems, likely the result of learning disabilities, he was expelled from elementary school and later taken in by one of his mother's cousins, an educator in Dadiangas (currently known as the City of General Santos), a man who was well known for supporting the educational needs of the extended family. Danny lived with his Mangulamas cousins for some years until he could return to his home near Datu Piang. Eventually, he returned to school while in his teens and graduated from Notre Dame of Dulawan High School, Batch (Class) of 1968.
Upon graduation from high school, his goal was to continue his education in a location far from home.
After attending Mindanao State University at Marawi City, Lanao del Sur, taking eight years to earn a Bachelor's degree in Community Development, he went on to became the Official Campus Musician in the office of the President of MSU-Marawi. He spent about ten years at Mindanao State University, and for six of those years he was an official musician for the Darangan Cultural Troupe of MSU-Marawi City. As such, he was able to go on tour with the Darangan Troupe to perform and travel in the Philippines away from Mindanao, and in a few locations in Southeast Asia. He was a highly valued member of the Darangan Cultural Troupe. While he was a Darangan member, he incorporated Maranao kulintang music into his repertoire, making him perhaps the only person in the world who could easily perform -- onstage -- the traditional kulintang music of two different cultures of the Philippines.
Inspired by the possibility of moving to America, Danny sought opportunities for education overseas, and in the early 1970s he was accepted to both attend and teach kulintang music at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, on full scholarship and more: his travel, housing, food, and books would be provided. He was thrilled, and prepared to travel to Dublin. However, an Irish Catholic MSU campus priest heard of his good fortune and asked him to reconsider. As dangerous as many people think Mindanao might be, in the early and mid-1970s, there was absolutely no question that Dublin, Ireland was one of the most dangerous places in the world, due to active warfare in the area. Danny thought long and hard, and decided his safety was most important, so he decided to look for something else.
He next obtained admission at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. However, the partial scholarship offered to him did not cover more than a portion of tuition, and did not cover travel, housing, food, or books. He was extremely disappointed in what appeared to be a half-hearted offer of support, and he was even a little embittered by it, but continued looking for opportunity abroad.
Finally, through a series of connections, he was asked to attend the graduate music program at the University of Washington at Seattle, with the long-term goal of obtaining a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology. After ten years at Mindanao State University, and with the help of a Rockefeller Foundation Grant obtained by the University of the Philippines Alumni Association (UPAA) based in Northern California, he traveled to Seattle in 1976, leaving his wife and two toddlers behind in the Philippines.
Danny was an Artist-in-Residence at UW for eight years, obtaining his Masters degree in Ethnomusicology in 1984.
While teaching at the University of Washington, he lived in a student apartment, which he shared with a number of visiting master musicians over the years. One of his roommates was the Shona master musician Abraham Dumisani "Dumi" Maraire, of then-Rhodesia (currently, Zimbabwe). Perhaps not by coincidence, both Danny and Dumi had been invited to the University of Washington by the same person, Professor Robert Garfias (currently University of California professor emeritus). Professor Garfias successfully established the graduate ethnomusicology department at the University of Washington.
News of a kulintang master in Seattle reached San Francisco, California, and Danny was asked to teach some workshops there by Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo. After being in rainy Seattle for so many years, Danny was pleased by a chance to have a change of scenery.
Because Danny was in the United States on a student visa, as he prepared to complete the degree program at UW, he made arrangements to marry an American citizen who had previously helped a foreign student obtain his green card (her previous husband, a European, had been attending UCLA). In January 1984, he married Doris Helen Fuge in Seattle, Washington. Through that marriage, he obtained permanent residence in the U.S., and later U.S. citizenship. He was subsequently remarried to his first wife.
Danny moved to San Francisco to work with a newly formed Filipino American performing arts group, Kalilang. He worked closely with Robert Henry, Alleluia Panis, and Marcella Pabros.
For many years, well over a decade, he earned rent money for his tiny studio apartment by working as a part-time usher at Golden Gate Theater in San Francisco, ushering for the national tours of Broadway shows.
In September 1986, the non-profit corporation Kulintang Arts was established, replacing Kalilang. Their jazz fusion music and dance ensemble, also called Kulintang Arts, performed with Danny, most notably in a collaboration with Fred Ho (aka Fred Houn) in a performance piece called "A Song for Manong." The performance was recorded and released on vinyl by San Francisco-based Asian Improv Records.
In 1988, Danny separated from Kulintang Arts, Inc. (later known as Kularts) and established his own performing arts group, the Palabuniyan Kulintang Ensemble, which presented traditional music and dance of the Southern Philippines. Briefly, he was a member of Seattle-based Mindanao Kulintang Ensemble, and he was also briefly involved with the World Kulintang Institute located in southern California.
He received funding from the California Arts Council under the Artist in Community program, and presented free public workshops at the Philippine consulate building in San Francisco with the assistance of the University of the Philippines Alumni Association (UPAA).
He found support in the local, state, and national arts community, and in arts administrators David Roche and Terry Liu.
In 1995, Danny was awarded the National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship for Traditional Arts, the highest honor bestowed upon a traditional artist. He, his wife and daughter, and his traditional kulintang music group traveled to Washington D.C. to perform at the White House complex (at the building then-known as the OEOB). Up to the time of his death, he was the only Filipino American musician/culture bearer ever to receive this high honor.
In 1996, Danny suffered the first of a series of heart attacks, and was hospitalized. Although he drastically changed his diet and habits, as advised by his health care providers, he was noncompliant when it came to prescription medications. He also avoided medical attention even when it was clearly necessary, and when he had to go to an emergency room, he (inexplicably) preferred to take public transportation (he would actually go to a bus stop and take a bus). He never had a driver's license, and did not know how to drive a car.
In 1998, he traveled to Washington D.C. to attend the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall, because the Philippine program featured a number of people from his own Maguindanaon culture, including his brother Kanapia Kalanduyan. The other Maguindanaon kulintang musicians in the Philippine delegation included Aga Mayo Butocan, Sinsuat Dalgan, Labaya Piang, and Dinanding Kalimudan; the latter two ladies were partners in playing a kulintang style called "sinirikit" where each person plays the kulintang with one hand and the dabakan (drum) with the other. Danny also met with the great kulintang gong maker Zacaria Akmad Amboa, son of Amboa, who was an excellent gong maker based in Kalanganan, Cotabato City. Zacaria Amboa was also part of the Philippine delegation brought to the U.S. to give demonstrations at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.
In 1999, Danny went on the first of four performance tours in Alaska undertaken by his group, the Palabuniyan Kulintang Ensemble. All four tours, which took place between 1999 and 2005, were arranged by Filipino-Alaskan politician and cultural worker Thelma Buchholdt.
In February 2000, Danny co-founded the California non-profit corporation Mindanao Lilang-Lilang, and served as CEO for more than 16 years, until his death.
In early 2000, he was invited to be an APPEX Artist at the UCLA Center for Intercultural Performance. During his summer residency at UCLA, where he received room and board and a generous honorarium, he worked with musicians and artists from around the world to create collaborative performance pieces. They learned each other's traditional music, and how to perform fusion pieces together on stage. Upon his return home to the San Francisco Bay Area, he said the APPEX residency was one of the best experiences of his life.
In early 2001, he began a working relationship with the San Francisco State University-based student percussion group "Ating Tao" and he taught kulintang music to members of that group.
In mid- to late 2001, he collaborated with Philippine television news journalist Howie Severino in the filming of a short documentary piece on a traditional Maguindanaon kulintang competition, held on September 15, 2001 at his family's compound just outside of Cotabato City. This documentary piece was shown on Philippine television.
In October 2002, while preparing for his third performance tour in Alaska, he became quite ill with a kidney infection. For personal reasons, he refused medical care, and was unable to join his group when they left for Alaska. Some days later, mortally ill, he reluctantly called friends to bring him to an emergency room. He was hospitalized for nearly three months, and underwent open heart surgery. He was told that he would have to repeat the surgery in 10 to 12 years.
Almost immediately after his release from the hospital, in January 2003, he began teaching as a Guest Lecturer at the Music department and at the Dance department at San Francisco State University. When the California state budget was cut to eliminate all Lecturer positions at the California State Universities, his kulintang course was transferred from the Music and Dance departments to the Ethnic Studies department, which managed to keep him on as an Instructor. He also began teaching at Skyline College, a junior college in nearby San Bruno, with the assistance of that college's Kababayan program.
He continued to suffer from cardiac arrhythmias and was quietly hospitalized from time to time. Finally, a cardiology specialist discovered an ectopic foci, a congenital abnormality. Essentially, Danny had been born with an extra SA node, which was removed by laser surgery performed at a very small specialty hospital in Redwood City.
In July 2005, he joined in a final Alaskan performance tour with the Palabuniyan Kulintang Ensemble. After having several experiences kicking off the winter Performance Art seasons in Alaska, he wanted to have the chance to join in Alaska's summertime salmon fishing. He loved the experience of dipnet-fishing at the mouth of the Kenai River.
In 2006, his father Kalanduyan Tanggo passed away at age 90, after many years of dementia. His mother Sibay Batawan had suddenly passed away from complications of high blood pressure many years earlier, in 1991. After leaving the Philippines to attend the University of Washington in 1976, Danny had never been reunited with his beloved mother. Because he was the eldest child in the family, and because of his father's severe memory loss, Danny had become the Kalanduyan family patriarch upon his mother's death, about 15 years before his father's passing.
In 2007 and 2008, he spent his summers in Honolulu, Hawaii teaching an intensive Maguindanaon language course at a language school.
He retired from teaching in 2009. In retirement, he focused on traditional kulintang music fused with jazz, and worked with ethnomusicologists Royal Hartigan and Hafez Modirzadeh on the Kul-X project. He also worked with Bo Razon, Frank Holder, Chris Trinidad, and others, in the all-male kulintang fusion group Subla; the group released a CD of their music.
After he was nominated by the Alliance for California Traditional Arts staff to be an awardee for the United States Artists' fellowship, he was named a US Artists Broad fellow in late 2009. He used his fellowship funds to spend time at his childhood home in Mindanao, with his relatives.
In 2013, he returned to Mindanao to participate with his family members under the group name "Maguindanao Kulintang Ensemble" at the First International Gongs and Bamboo Music Festival held in Dipolog City, Zamboanga del Norte. That event was a project of The [Philippines] National Commission for Culture and the Arts-National Music Committee (NCCA-NMC) through the Musicological Society of the Philippines (MSP) in partnership with the Dipolog City Government in cooperation with Municipality of Maasin-Iloilo and the UP Center for Ethnomusicology (UPCE).
But, prior to arriving at Dipolog City, he and his family members and his family's music associates participated in the filming of a short documentary and recording of a high quality studio album, at Cotabato City. The film, which was released in 2014, is "The Cotabato Sessions." A soundtrack CD of the same name was also intended to be released.
In June 2014 and again in June 2015, he performed at the Pagdiriwang Festival, held at the Seattle Center in Seattle, Washington.
His health took a major turn in February 2015, when he was hospitalized repeatedly for pneumonia, and subsequently suffered from heart failure which greatly affected his mobility and stamina but not his ability to play kulintang music from a sitting position. Notably, he lost the ability to walk and talk at the same time, but he successfully kept that loss hidden from all but a small handful of people.
In August 2015, he was able to realize a long-held plan when he was able to send his wife away to live with their son's family in San Diego. Although Danny had dreamed for years, while he was a student and instructor at the University of Washington, of bringing his wife and children to live with him in America, it had not turned out nearly as well as he had hoped. His wife had come to the U.S. expecting to live the privileged lifestyle that Danny's hard-earned U.S. dollars had given her when she was raising their children in the Philippines. At last, nearing the end of his life, he was relieved to have finally managed a mutually agreed-upon separation from her, which gave him hope at a time when he desperately needed hope due to the decline in his health.
In September 2015, he performed for the last time with his traditional kulintang music group Palabuniyan Kulintang Ensemble, at an event presented at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Gardens by the Alliance for California Traditional Arts.
In November 2015, he rehearsed and performed with his kulintang/jazz fusion group Subla, in a collaboration with the Los Angeles Master Chorale and composer Nilo Alcala. The performance venue was the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and received a very lengthy standing ovation.
In December 2015, he performed traditional kulintang music with members of his Subla and Palabuniyan groups at a Smithsonian-sponsored event at the California Museum of Oakland, as part of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival's Sounds of California program. He had been quite ill, so there was no rehearsal for that performance.
In January 2016, he was given an opportunity to return to Mindanao for five weeks, to visit his large extended family. Despite his joy and excitement to return home to Mindanao, he did not tolerate the long journey well, and spent many weeks in recuperation. In February 2016, while in Mindanao, he was employed for one day as a judge at the Kulintang Ensemble Competitions held as part of the Sagayan Festival (later known as the Inaul Festival) held in Buluan, Maguindanao. His brothers Kanapia, Datuan, and Kunga also served as paid judges at the festival's music competitions.
Despite his failing health, he decided against remaining in Mindanao, and he returned to the United States in order to fulfill a contractual obligation, working with Stockton, California-based Little Manila Dance Collective, to teach the Fil-Am community in Stockton about kulintang music, through a Living Cultures grant provided by the Alliance for California Traditional Arts (ACTA). For this grant, he collaborated with former students to form an in-person "Kulintang Academy" from which an initial class was graduated.
At the end of May 2016, he experienced sharp pain in his hands, and it became extremely difficult for him to play kulintang music. Still, he completed his final performance obligations, in June and in July 2016. His last performance as part of a kulintang ensemble was with the Little Manila Dance Collective in Stockton, California, in July 2016.
His health declined even further while he awaited approval to undergo an experimental heart valve replacement procedure, which was administered only to cardiac patients as a last resort. Despite his waning energy, he remained optimistic and hopeful that the cardiac procedure would make him "good as new" although he became quite frail. When meeting people at his home, he wore multiple layers of clothing under a down-insulated vest under a leather vest, to hide his weight loss. He was no longer able to provide for his own needs, or care for himself. Faced with that reality, he asked his wife to return to live in the family apartment in South San Francisco, and he moved into the living room where he no longer needed to climb stairs.
After a four month wait, which he survived through pure strength of will, he was admitted to the Stanford University Medical Center. He passed away at the cardiac procedures ICU after suffering a fatal hemorrhagic stroke on the evening of September 27, 2016. He had been successfully resuscitated earlier in the day from a cardiac arrest, his body's immediate response to intubation prior to the procedure. Subsequent to cardiac resuscitation, he was placed on life support to undergo the mitral valve replacement procedure, which was successful, and he was still on life support when he suffered an intracranial bleed some hours later, the result of his decreased liver function. He was removed from life support the following afternoon, surrounded by family and friends.
He was given a proper Muslim burial, with bathing, enshrouding, and funeral prayers at a local mosque, and burial within 24 hours of his death.
He was survived by his wife Josefina "Pina" Luayon Kalanduyan (1947-2023) of South San Francisco, California; son Dennis and his wife Rossana and their six children, of San Diego, California; daughter Yasmin K. Rosales and her husband Allan and two children, of South San Francisco; former son-in-law Renato Gloria of Redwood City, California; brother Kanapia Kalanduyan of Taguig, MetroManila, Philippines; brother Karatuan "Datuan" Kalanduyan and sister Guiawalia Kalanduyan Gumama of Rajah Buayan/Sultan sa Barongis in Maguindanao province, Philippines; brother Kunga Kalanduyan (c. 1970 - 2018) and sister Kenaot "Taut" Guiaman of Datu Odin Sinsuat in Maguindanao province, Philippines; and hundreds of cousins, nieces, and nephews living in the Philippines, and in Saudi Arabia.
RIP Danny. Thank you for bringing your culture's music to America.
Master musician and culture bearer. Teacher of pre-colonial Philippine arts and culture, with an emphasis on Maguindanaon kulintang (bronze gong) ensemble music.
His name at birth:
Danongan Sibay Kalanduyan
Pronounced with all syllables emphasized equally --
"Dah-nohng-ahn. See-bye. Kah-lahn-doo-yahn."
First-born child of Sibay Undol Batawan (c.1921-1991) and Kalanduyan Tanggo (1916-2006). His parents were married in the mid-1930s, when his father was about 19 or 20 years old.
In Maguindanoan tradition, his given name Danongan was a formal name. While in Maguindanao, his informal name was Penong. As a teenager, his uncle in General Santos called him Danny, and Danny became the name he used after he moved to the United States.
His paternal grandfather's name was Tanggo, and paternal grandmother was Kaumpong.
His maternal grandparents were Kalinawag Batawan and Undol Sabal. His maternal grandmother Kalinawag Batawan was a daughter of Batawan (of the Buayan sultanate) and Melag; the father of Batawan was Datu Mindo Anguso. Kalinawag and her sisters, and her daughters, were known as remarkable kulintang musicians. Because Undol Sabal died young, his daughters were raised primarily by their mother Kalinawag, and so Danny Kalanduyan never knew his ancestry through his maternal grandfather Undol.
His maternal grandfather Undol Sabal was the son of Datu Sabal Dalgan, who was the son of the Raja Muda (Crown Prince) Dalgan, who was the younger brother of Datu Utto, the 18th Sultan of Buayan. The two brothers, Raja Muda Dalgan and Datu Utto (d.1902), were sons of Sultan Bangon sa Didagen bin Sultan Maitem a Sultan sa T'lu a inged (Buayan, Maguindanao, Kabuntalan). Thus, Danny Kalanduyan was a direct descendant and a third-great-grandson of Sultan Bangon sa Didagen, the 16th Sultan of Buayan.
He was born at Tangguapo, a sitio located in a barangay near the ancient town of Dulawan (currently known as Datu Piang) in Maguindanao province, along the Pulangi River (aka Mindanao River, aka Rio Grande de Mindanao, aka Tamontaka River) in central Mindanao Island, in the southern Philippines. He was raised at the nearby barangay of Inaladan.
His birthplace of Tangguapo, which is located within the political boundaries of the municipality (similar to "county") of Datu Piang, is now very nearly a ghost town, with (as of 2023) between only five to ten households remaining.
He had no birth certificate. In the 1970s, when he first applied for a Philippine passport so that he could perform abroad as a member of Mindanao State University's Darangan Cultural Troupe, a possible ambiguity in the Tangguapo mosque records was identified. His elders were consulted, and a decision was made to set his birthday as May 1, 1947. It is more likely that his actual birthdate was August 18, 1940, which is closer in time to his parents' marriage in the mid-1930s.
He was the first-born of 11 children, and the eldest of eight siblings who survived childhood. He survived his siblings Alunto (died young) (#2), Sinaliya Kalanduyan Mamaluba (1949-2012) (#3), Maisalam Kalanduyan Malugayak (c.1951-2011) (#4), Manguntela (died young) (#6), and Sinauya (died young) (#10).
At his death, his five remaining siblings, in birth order, were Kanapia (#5, born 1954), Guiawalia (#7), Kanaot (#8), Karatuan (#9), and Kunga (c.1970-2018) (#11).
His mother Sibay was an accomplished kulintang musician, and his father Kalanduyan was an accomplished kutiyapi (two-stringed boat lute) musician. He was raised in a musical family, in the countryside. His mother took care to train her children in the indigenous music of their culture. Of the five schools of Maguindanaon kulintang music, Danny and his extended family played the older, upriver or upstream style known as Dulawan-style.
His grandparents were farmers, but they were stripped of their land, as were many Maguindanaon natives, when the government of the Republic of the Philippines deliberately created official written titles to ancestral farmlands in Mindanao, and then gave those titles away to entice settlers from the north and central regions of the Philippines. Eventually, many of Danny's family members ended up living in a five-acre family compound located in the municipality (similar to "county") of Datu Odin Sinsuat, not far from Cotabato City.
His maternal uncle Kamensa Batawan was married to the sister of the acclaimed Maguindanaon kulintang master Amal Lemuntod. As a teenager, Danny had the great experience of playing excellent kulintang ensemble music with his Bapa (Uncle) Amal, and his maternal cousins Madendog "Pendog" Kamensa, Musib Kamensa, and also a beloved paternal Tanggo cousin (who died young, in Manila, in his very early 20s). Danny excelled in traditional gandingan (set of four hanging gongs) competitions.
As a result of various problems, likely the result of learning disabilities, he was expelled from elementary school and later taken in by one of his mother's cousins, an educator in Dadiangas (currently known as the City of General Santos), a man who was well known for supporting the educational needs of the extended family. Danny lived with his Mangulamas cousins for some years until he could return to his home near Datu Piang. Eventually, he returned to school while in his teens and graduated from Notre Dame of Dulawan High School, Batch (Class) of 1968.
Upon graduation from high school, his goal was to continue his education in a location far from home.
After attending Mindanao State University at Marawi City, Lanao del Sur, taking eight years to earn a Bachelor's degree in Community Development, he went on to became the Official Campus Musician in the office of the President of MSU-Marawi. He spent about ten years at Mindanao State University, and for six of those years he was an official musician for the Darangan Cultural Troupe of MSU-Marawi City. As such, he was able to go on tour with the Darangan Troupe to perform and travel in the Philippines away from Mindanao, and in a few locations in Southeast Asia. He was a highly valued member of the Darangan Cultural Troupe. While he was a Darangan member, he incorporated Maranao kulintang music into his repertoire, making him perhaps the only person in the world who could easily perform -- onstage -- the traditional kulintang music of two different cultures of the Philippines.
Inspired by the possibility of moving to America, Danny sought opportunities for education overseas, and in the early 1970s he was accepted to both attend and teach kulintang music at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, on full scholarship and more: his travel, housing, food, and books would be provided. He was thrilled, and prepared to travel to Dublin. However, an Irish Catholic MSU campus priest heard of his good fortune and asked him to reconsider. As dangerous as many people think Mindanao might be, in the early and mid-1970s, there was absolutely no question that Dublin, Ireland was one of the most dangerous places in the world, due to active warfare in the area. Danny thought long and hard, and decided his safety was most important, so he decided to look for something else.
He next obtained admission at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. However, the partial scholarship offered to him did not cover more than a portion of tuition, and did not cover travel, housing, food, or books. He was extremely disappointed in what appeared to be a half-hearted offer of support, and he was even a little embittered by it, but continued looking for opportunity abroad.
Finally, through a series of connections, he was asked to attend the graduate music program at the University of Washington at Seattle, with the long-term goal of obtaining a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology. After ten years at Mindanao State University, and with the help of a Rockefeller Foundation Grant obtained by the University of the Philippines Alumni Association (UPAA) based in Northern California, he traveled to Seattle in 1976, leaving his wife and two toddlers behind in the Philippines.
Danny was an Artist-in-Residence at UW for eight years, obtaining his Masters degree in Ethnomusicology in 1984.
While teaching at the University of Washington, he lived in a student apartment, which he shared with a number of visiting master musicians over the years. One of his roommates was the Shona master musician Abraham Dumisani "Dumi" Maraire, of then-Rhodesia (currently, Zimbabwe). Perhaps not by coincidence, both Danny and Dumi had been invited to the University of Washington by the same person, Professor Robert Garfias (currently University of California professor emeritus). Professor Garfias successfully established the graduate ethnomusicology department at the University of Washington.
News of a kulintang master in Seattle reached San Francisco, California, and Danny was asked to teach some workshops there by Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo. After being in rainy Seattle for so many years, Danny was pleased by a chance to have a change of scenery.
Because Danny was in the United States on a student visa, as he prepared to complete the degree program at UW, he made arrangements to marry an American citizen who had previously helped a foreign student obtain his green card (her previous husband, a European, had been attending UCLA). In January 1984, he married Doris Helen Fuge in Seattle, Washington. Through that marriage, he obtained permanent residence in the U.S., and later U.S. citizenship. He was subsequently remarried to his first wife.
Danny moved to San Francisco to work with a newly formed Filipino American performing arts group, Kalilang. He worked closely with Robert Henry, Alleluia Panis, and Marcella Pabros.
For many years, well over a decade, he earned rent money for his tiny studio apartment by working as a part-time usher at Golden Gate Theater in San Francisco, ushering for the national tours of Broadway shows.
In September 1986, the non-profit corporation Kulintang Arts was established, replacing Kalilang. Their jazz fusion music and dance ensemble, also called Kulintang Arts, performed with Danny, most notably in a collaboration with Fred Ho (aka Fred Houn) in a performance piece called "A Song for Manong." The performance was recorded and released on vinyl by San Francisco-based Asian Improv Records.
In 1988, Danny separated from Kulintang Arts, Inc. (later known as Kularts) and established his own performing arts group, the Palabuniyan Kulintang Ensemble, which presented traditional music and dance of the Southern Philippines. Briefly, he was a member of Seattle-based Mindanao Kulintang Ensemble, and he was also briefly involved with the World Kulintang Institute located in southern California.
He received funding from the California Arts Council under the Artist in Community program, and presented free public workshops at the Philippine consulate building in San Francisco with the assistance of the University of the Philippines Alumni Association (UPAA).
He found support in the local, state, and national arts community, and in arts administrators David Roche and Terry Liu.
In 1995, Danny was awarded the National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship for Traditional Arts, the highest honor bestowed upon a traditional artist. He, his wife and daughter, and his traditional kulintang music group traveled to Washington D.C. to perform at the White House complex (at the building then-known as the OEOB). Up to the time of his death, he was the only Filipino American musician/culture bearer ever to receive this high honor.
In 1996, Danny suffered the first of a series of heart attacks, and was hospitalized. Although he drastically changed his diet and habits, as advised by his health care providers, he was noncompliant when it came to prescription medications. He also avoided medical attention even when it was clearly necessary, and when he had to go to an emergency room, he (inexplicably) preferred to take public transportation (he would actually go to a bus stop and take a bus). He never had a driver's license, and did not know how to drive a car.
In 1998, he traveled to Washington D.C. to attend the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall, because the Philippine program featured a number of people from his own Maguindanaon culture, including his brother Kanapia Kalanduyan. The other Maguindanaon kulintang musicians in the Philippine delegation included Aga Mayo Butocan, Sinsuat Dalgan, Labaya Piang, and Dinanding Kalimudan; the latter two ladies were partners in playing a kulintang style called "sinirikit" where each person plays the kulintang with one hand and the dabakan (drum) with the other. Danny also met with the great kulintang gong maker Zacaria Akmad Amboa, son of Amboa, who was an excellent gong maker based in Kalanganan, Cotabato City. Zacaria Amboa was also part of the Philippine delegation brought to the U.S. to give demonstrations at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.
In 1999, Danny went on the first of four performance tours in Alaska undertaken by his group, the Palabuniyan Kulintang Ensemble. All four tours, which took place between 1999 and 2005, were arranged by Filipino-Alaskan politician and cultural worker Thelma Buchholdt.
In February 2000, Danny co-founded the California non-profit corporation Mindanao Lilang-Lilang, and served as CEO for more than 16 years, until his death.
In early 2000, he was invited to be an APPEX Artist at the UCLA Center for Intercultural Performance. During his summer residency at UCLA, where he received room and board and a generous honorarium, he worked with musicians and artists from around the world to create collaborative performance pieces. They learned each other's traditional music, and how to perform fusion pieces together on stage. Upon his return home to the San Francisco Bay Area, he said the APPEX residency was one of the best experiences of his life.
In early 2001, he began a working relationship with the San Francisco State University-based student percussion group "Ating Tao" and he taught kulintang music to members of that group.
In mid- to late 2001, he collaborated with Philippine television news journalist Howie Severino in the filming of a short documentary piece on a traditional Maguindanaon kulintang competition, held on September 15, 2001 at his family's compound just outside of Cotabato City. This documentary piece was shown on Philippine television.
In October 2002, while preparing for his third performance tour in Alaska, he became quite ill with a kidney infection. For personal reasons, he refused medical care, and was unable to join his group when they left for Alaska. Some days later, mortally ill, he reluctantly called friends to bring him to an emergency room. He was hospitalized for nearly three months, and underwent open heart surgery. He was told that he would have to repeat the surgery in 10 to 12 years.
Almost immediately after his release from the hospital, in January 2003, he began teaching as a Guest Lecturer at the Music department and at the Dance department at San Francisco State University. When the California state budget was cut to eliminate all Lecturer positions at the California State Universities, his kulintang course was transferred from the Music and Dance departments to the Ethnic Studies department, which managed to keep him on as an Instructor. He also began teaching at Skyline College, a junior college in nearby San Bruno, with the assistance of that college's Kababayan program.
He continued to suffer from cardiac arrhythmias and was quietly hospitalized from time to time. Finally, a cardiology specialist discovered an ectopic foci, a congenital abnormality. Essentially, Danny had been born with an extra SA node, which was removed by laser surgery performed at a very small specialty hospital in Redwood City.
In July 2005, he joined in a final Alaskan performance tour with the Palabuniyan Kulintang Ensemble. After having several experiences kicking off the winter Performance Art seasons in Alaska, he wanted to have the chance to join in Alaska's summertime salmon fishing. He loved the experience of dipnet-fishing at the mouth of the Kenai River.
In 2006, his father Kalanduyan Tanggo passed away at age 90, after many years of dementia. His mother Sibay Batawan had suddenly passed away from complications of high blood pressure many years earlier, in 1991. After leaving the Philippines to attend the University of Washington in 1976, Danny had never been reunited with his beloved mother. Because he was the eldest child in the family, and because of his father's severe memory loss, Danny had become the Kalanduyan family patriarch upon his mother's death, about 15 years before his father's passing.
In 2007 and 2008, he spent his summers in Honolulu, Hawaii teaching an intensive Maguindanaon language course at a language school.
He retired from teaching in 2009. In retirement, he focused on traditional kulintang music fused with jazz, and worked with ethnomusicologists Royal Hartigan and Hafez Modirzadeh on the Kul-X project. He also worked with Bo Razon, Frank Holder, Chris Trinidad, and others, in the all-male kulintang fusion group Subla; the group released a CD of their music.
After he was nominated by the Alliance for California Traditional Arts staff to be an awardee for the United States Artists' fellowship, he was named a US Artists Broad fellow in late 2009. He used his fellowship funds to spend time at his childhood home in Mindanao, with his relatives.
In 2013, he returned to Mindanao to participate with his family members under the group name "Maguindanao Kulintang Ensemble" at the First International Gongs and Bamboo Music Festival held in Dipolog City, Zamboanga del Norte. That event was a project of The [Philippines] National Commission for Culture and the Arts-National Music Committee (NCCA-NMC) through the Musicological Society of the Philippines (MSP) in partnership with the Dipolog City Government in cooperation with Municipality of Maasin-Iloilo and the UP Center for Ethnomusicology (UPCE).
But, prior to arriving at Dipolog City, he and his family members and his family's music associates participated in the filming of a short documentary and recording of a high quality studio album, at Cotabato City. The film, which was released in 2014, is "The Cotabato Sessions." A soundtrack CD of the same name was also intended to be released.
In June 2014 and again in June 2015, he performed at the Pagdiriwang Festival, held at the Seattle Center in Seattle, Washington.
His health took a major turn in February 2015, when he was hospitalized repeatedly for pneumonia, and subsequently suffered from heart failure which greatly affected his mobility and stamina but not his ability to play kulintang music from a sitting position. Notably, he lost the ability to walk and talk at the same time, but he successfully kept that loss hidden from all but a small handful of people.
In August 2015, he was able to realize a long-held plan when he was able to send his wife away to live with their son's family in San Diego. Although Danny had dreamed for years, while he was a student and instructor at the University of Washington, of bringing his wife and children to live with him in America, it had not turned out nearly as well as he had hoped. His wife had come to the U.S. expecting to live the privileged lifestyle that Danny's hard-earned U.S. dollars had given her when she was raising their children in the Philippines. At last, nearing the end of his life, he was relieved to have finally managed a mutually agreed-upon separation from her, which gave him hope at a time when he desperately needed hope due to the decline in his health.
In September 2015, he performed for the last time with his traditional kulintang music group Palabuniyan Kulintang Ensemble, at an event presented at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Gardens by the Alliance for California Traditional Arts.
In November 2015, he rehearsed and performed with his kulintang/jazz fusion group Subla, in a collaboration with the Los Angeles Master Chorale and composer Nilo Alcala. The performance venue was the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and received a very lengthy standing ovation.
In December 2015, he performed traditional kulintang music with members of his Subla and Palabuniyan groups at a Smithsonian-sponsored event at the California Museum of Oakland, as part of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival's Sounds of California program. He had been quite ill, so there was no rehearsal for that performance.
In January 2016, he was given an opportunity to return to Mindanao for five weeks, to visit his large extended family. Despite his joy and excitement to return home to Mindanao, he did not tolerate the long journey well, and spent many weeks in recuperation. In February 2016, while in Mindanao, he was employed for one day as a judge at the Kulintang Ensemble Competitions held as part of the Sagayan Festival (later known as the Inaul Festival) held in Buluan, Maguindanao. His brothers Kanapia, Datuan, and Kunga also served as paid judges at the festival's music competitions.
Despite his failing health, he decided against remaining in Mindanao, and he returned to the United States in order to fulfill a contractual obligation, working with Stockton, California-based Little Manila Dance Collective, to teach the Fil-Am community in Stockton about kulintang music, through a Living Cultures grant provided by the Alliance for California Traditional Arts (ACTA). For this grant, he collaborated with former students to form an in-person "Kulintang Academy" from which an initial class was graduated.
At the end of May 2016, he experienced sharp pain in his hands, and it became extremely difficult for him to play kulintang music. Still, he completed his final performance obligations, in June and in July 2016. His last performance as part of a kulintang ensemble was with the Little Manila Dance Collective in Stockton, California, in July 2016.
His health declined even further while he awaited approval to undergo an experimental heart valve replacement procedure, which was administered only to cardiac patients as a last resort. Despite his waning energy, he remained optimistic and hopeful that the cardiac procedure would make him "good as new" although he became quite frail. When meeting people at his home, he wore multiple layers of clothing under a down-insulated vest under a leather vest, to hide his weight loss. He was no longer able to provide for his own needs, or care for himself. Faced with that reality, he asked his wife to return to live in the family apartment in South San Francisco, and he moved into the living room where he no longer needed to climb stairs.
After a four month wait, which he survived through pure strength of will, he was admitted to the Stanford University Medical Center. He passed away at the cardiac procedures ICU after suffering a fatal hemorrhagic stroke on the evening of September 27, 2016. He had been successfully resuscitated earlier in the day from a cardiac arrest, his body's immediate response to intubation prior to the procedure. Subsequent to cardiac resuscitation, he was placed on life support to undergo the mitral valve replacement procedure, which was successful, and he was still on life support when he suffered an intracranial bleed some hours later, the result of his decreased liver function. He was removed from life support the following afternoon, surrounded by family and friends.
He was given a proper Muslim burial, with bathing, enshrouding, and funeral prayers at a local mosque, and burial within 24 hours of his death.
He was survived by his wife Josefina "Pina" Luayon Kalanduyan (1947-2023) of South San Francisco, California; son Dennis and his wife Rossana and their six children, of San Diego, California; daughter Yasmin K. Rosales and her husband Allan and two children, of South San Francisco; former son-in-law Renato Gloria of Redwood City, California; brother Kanapia Kalanduyan of Taguig, MetroManila, Philippines; brother Karatuan "Datuan" Kalanduyan and sister Guiawalia Kalanduyan Gumama of Rajah Buayan/Sultan sa Barongis in Maguindanao province, Philippines; brother Kunga Kalanduyan (c. 1970 - 2018) and sister Kenaot "Taut" Guiaman of Datu Odin Sinsuat in Maguindanao province, Philippines; and hundreds of cousins, nieces, and nephews living in the Philippines, and in Saudi Arabia.
RIP Danny. Thank you for bringing your culture's music to America.
His name at birth:
Danongan Sibay Kalanduyan
Pronounced with all syllables emphasized equally --
"Dah-nohng-ahn. See-bye. Kah-lahn-doo-yahn."
First-born child of Sibay Undol Batawan (c.1921-1991) and Kalanduyan Tanggo (1916-2006). His parents were married in the mid-1930s, when his father was about 19 or 20 years old.
In Maguindanoan tradition, his given name Danongan was a formal name. While in Maguindanao, his informal name was Penong. As a teenager, his uncle in General Santos called him Danny, and Danny became the name he used after he moved to the United States.
His paternal grandfather's name was Tanggo, and paternal grandmother was Kaumpong.
His maternal grandparents were Kalinawag Batawan and Undol Sabal. His maternal grandmother Kalinawag Batawan was a daughter of Batawan (of the Buayan sultanate) and Melag; the father of Batawan was Datu Mindo Anguso. Kalinawag and her sisters, and her daughters, were known as remarkable kulintang musicians. Because Undol Sabal died young, his daughters were raised primarily by their mother Kalinawag, and so Danny Kalanduyan never knew his ancestry through his maternal grandfather Undol.
His maternal grandfather Undol Sabal was the son of Datu Sabal Dalgan, who was the son of the Raja Muda (Crown Prince) Dalgan, who was the younger brother of Datu Utto, the 18th Sultan of Buayan. The two brothers, Raja Muda Dalgan and Datu Utto (d.1902), were sons of Sultan Bangon sa Didagen bin Sultan Maitem a Sultan sa T'lu a inged (Buayan, Maguindanao, Kabuntalan). Thus, Danny Kalanduyan was a direct descendant and a third-great-grandson of Sultan Bangon sa Didagen, the 16th Sultan of Buayan.
He was born at Tangguapo, a sitio located in a barangay near the ancient town of Dulawan (currently known as Datu Piang) in Maguindanao province, along the Pulangi River (aka Mindanao River, aka Rio Grande de Mindanao, aka Tamontaka River) in central Mindanao Island, in the southern Philippines. He was raised at the nearby barangay of Inaladan.
His birthplace of Tangguapo, which is located within the political boundaries of the municipality (similar to "county") of Datu Piang, is now very nearly a ghost town, with (as of 2023) between only five to ten households remaining.
He had no birth certificate. In the 1970s, when he first applied for a Philippine passport so that he could perform abroad as a member of Mindanao State University's Darangan Cultural Troupe, a possible ambiguity in the Tangguapo mosque records was identified. His elders were consulted, and a decision was made to set his birthday as May 1, 1947. It is more likely that his actual birthdate was August 18, 1940, which is closer in time to his parents' marriage in the mid-1930s.
He was the first-born of 11 children, and the eldest of eight siblings who survived childhood. He survived his siblings Alunto (died young) (#2), Sinaliya Kalanduyan Mamaluba (1949-2012) (#3), Maisalam Kalanduyan Malugayak (c.1951-2011) (#4), Manguntela (died young) (#6), and Sinauya (died young) (#10).
At his death, his five remaining siblings, in birth order, were Kanapia (#5, born 1954), Guiawalia (#7), Kanaot (#8), Karatuan (#9), and Kunga (c.1970-2018) (#11).
His mother Sibay was an accomplished kulintang musician, and his father Kalanduyan was an accomplished kutiyapi (two-stringed boat lute) musician. He was raised in a musical family, in the countryside. His mother took care to train her children in the indigenous music of their culture. Of the five schools of Maguindanaon kulintang music, Danny and his extended family played the older, upriver or upstream style known as Dulawan-style.
His grandparents were farmers, but they were stripped of their land, as were many Maguindanaon natives, when the government of the Republic of the Philippines deliberately created official written titles to ancestral farmlands in Mindanao, and then gave those titles away to entice settlers from the north and central regions of the Philippines. Eventually, many of Danny's family members ended up living in a five-acre family compound located in the municipality (similar to "county") of Datu Odin Sinsuat, not far from Cotabato City.
His maternal uncle Kamensa Batawan was married to the sister of the acclaimed Maguindanaon kulintang master Amal Lemuntod. As a teenager, Danny had the great experience of playing excellent kulintang ensemble music with his Bapa (Uncle) Amal, and his maternal cousins Madendog "Pendog" Kamensa, Musib Kamensa, and also a beloved paternal Tanggo cousin (who died young, in Manila, in his very early 20s). Danny excelled in traditional gandingan (set of four hanging gongs) competitions.
As a result of various problems, likely the result of learning disabilities, he was expelled from elementary school and later taken in by one of his mother's cousins, an educator in Dadiangas (currently known as the City of General Santos), a man who was well known for supporting the educational needs of the extended family. Danny lived with his Mangulamas cousins for some years until he could return to his home near Datu Piang. Eventually, he returned to school while in his teens and graduated from Notre Dame of Dulawan High School, Batch (Class) of 1968.
Upon graduation from high school, his goal was to continue his education in a location far from home.
After attending Mindanao State University at Marawi City, Lanao del Sur, taking eight years to earn a Bachelor's degree in Community Development, he went on to became the Official Campus Musician in the office of the President of MSU-Marawi. He spent about ten years at Mindanao State University, and for six of those years he was an official musician for the Darangan Cultural Troupe of MSU-Marawi City. As such, he was able to go on tour with the Darangan Troupe to perform and travel in the Philippines away from Mindanao, and in a few locations in Southeast Asia. He was a highly valued member of the Darangan Cultural Troupe. While he was a Darangan member, he incorporated Maranao kulintang music into his repertoire, making him perhaps the only person in the world who could easily perform -- onstage -- the traditional kulintang music of two different cultures of the Philippines.
Inspired by the possibility of moving to America, Danny sought opportunities for education overseas, and in the early 1970s he was accepted to both attend and teach kulintang music at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, on full scholarship and more: his travel, housing, food, and books would be provided. He was thrilled, and prepared to travel to Dublin. However, an Irish Catholic MSU campus priest heard of his good fortune and asked him to reconsider. As dangerous as many people think Mindanao might be, in the early and mid-1970s, there was absolutely no question that Dublin, Ireland was one of the most dangerous places in the world, due to active warfare in the area. Danny thought long and hard, and decided his safety was most important, so he decided to look for something else.
He next obtained admission at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. However, the partial scholarship offered to him did not cover more than a portion of tuition, and did not cover travel, housing, food, or books. He was extremely disappointed in what appeared to be a half-hearted offer of support, and he was even a little embittered by it, but continued looking for opportunity abroad.
Finally, through a series of connections, he was asked to attend the graduate music program at the University of Washington at Seattle, with the long-term goal of obtaining a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology. After ten years at Mindanao State University, and with the help of a Rockefeller Foundation Grant obtained by the University of the Philippines Alumni Association (UPAA) based in Northern California, he traveled to Seattle in 1976, leaving his wife and two toddlers behind in the Philippines.
Danny was an Artist-in-Residence at UW for eight years, obtaining his Masters degree in Ethnomusicology in 1984.
While teaching at the University of Washington, he lived in a student apartment, which he shared with a number of visiting master musicians over the years. One of his roommates was the Shona master musician Abraham Dumisani "Dumi" Maraire, of then-Rhodesia (currently, Zimbabwe). Perhaps not by coincidence, both Danny and Dumi had been invited to the University of Washington by the same person, Professor Robert Garfias (currently University of California professor emeritus). Professor Garfias successfully established the graduate ethnomusicology department at the University of Washington.
News of a kulintang master in Seattle reached San Francisco, California, and Danny was asked to teach some workshops there by Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo. After being in rainy Seattle for so many years, Danny was pleased by a chance to have a change of scenery.
Because Danny was in the United States on a student visa, as he prepared to complete the degree program at UW, he made arrangements to marry an American citizen who had previously helped a foreign student obtain his green card (her previous husband, a European, had been attending UCLA). In January 1984, he married Doris Helen Fuge in Seattle, Washington. Through that marriage, he obtained permanent residence in the U.S., and later U.S. citizenship. He was subsequently remarried to his first wife.
Danny moved to San Francisco to work with a newly formed Filipino American performing arts group, Kalilang. He worked closely with Robert Henry, Alleluia Panis, and Marcella Pabros.
For many years, well over a decade, he earned rent money for his tiny studio apartment by working as a part-time usher at Golden Gate Theater in San Francisco, ushering for the national tours of Broadway shows.
In September 1986, the non-profit corporation Kulintang Arts was established, replacing Kalilang. Their jazz fusion music and dance ensemble, also called Kulintang Arts, performed with Danny, most notably in a collaboration with Fred Ho (aka Fred Houn) in a performance piece called "A Song for Manong." The performance was recorded and released on vinyl by San Francisco-based Asian Improv Records.
In 1988, Danny separated from Kulintang Arts, Inc. (later known as Kularts) and established his own performing arts group, the Palabuniyan Kulintang Ensemble, which presented traditional music and dance of the Southern Philippines. Briefly, he was a member of Seattle-based Mindanao Kulintang Ensemble, and he was also briefly involved with the World Kulintang Institute located in southern California.
He received funding from the California Arts Council under the Artist in Community program, and presented free public workshops at the Philippine consulate building in San Francisco with the assistance of the University of the Philippines Alumni Association (UPAA).
He found support in the local, state, and national arts community, and in arts administrators David Roche and Terry Liu.
In 1995, Danny was awarded the National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship for Traditional Arts, the highest honor bestowed upon a traditional artist. He, his wife and daughter, and his traditional kulintang music group traveled to Washington D.C. to perform at the White House complex (at the building then-known as the OEOB). Up to the time of his death, he was the only Filipino American musician/culture bearer ever to receive this high honor.
In 1996, Danny suffered the first of a series of heart attacks, and was hospitalized. Although he drastically changed his diet and habits, as advised by his health care providers, he was noncompliant when it came to prescription medications. He also avoided medical attention even when it was clearly necessary, and when he had to go to an emergency room, he (inexplicably) preferred to take public transportation (he would actually go to a bus stop and take a bus). He never had a driver's license, and did not know how to drive a car.
In 1998, he traveled to Washington D.C. to attend the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall, because the Philippine program featured a number of people from his own Maguindanaon culture, including his brother Kanapia Kalanduyan. The other Maguindanaon kulintang musicians in the Philippine delegation included Aga Mayo Butocan, Sinsuat Dalgan, Labaya Piang, and Dinanding Kalimudan; the latter two ladies were partners in playing a kulintang style called "sinirikit" where each person plays the kulintang with one hand and the dabakan (drum) with the other. Danny also met with the great kulintang gong maker Zacaria Akmad Amboa, son of Amboa, who was an excellent gong maker based in Kalanganan, Cotabato City. Zacaria Amboa was also part of the Philippine delegation brought to the U.S. to give demonstrations at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.
In 1999, Danny went on the first of four performance tours in Alaska undertaken by his group, the Palabuniyan Kulintang Ensemble. All four tours, which took place between 1999 and 2005, were arranged by Filipino-Alaskan politician and cultural worker Thelma Buchholdt.
In February 2000, Danny co-founded the California non-profit corporation Mindanao Lilang-Lilang, and served as CEO for more than 16 years, until his death.
In early 2000, he was invited to be an APPEX Artist at the UCLA Center for Intercultural Performance. During his summer residency at UCLA, where he received room and board and a generous honorarium, he worked with musicians and artists from around the world to create collaborative performance pieces. They learned each other's traditional music, and how to perform fusion pieces together on stage. Upon his return home to the San Francisco Bay Area, he said the APPEX residency was one of the best experiences of his life.
In early 2001, he began a working relationship with the San Francisco State University-based student percussion group "Ating Tao" and he taught kulintang music to members of that group.
In mid- to late 2001, he collaborated with Philippine television news journalist Howie Severino in the filming of a short documentary piece on a traditional Maguindanaon kulintang competition, held on September 15, 2001 at his family's compound just outside of Cotabato City. This documentary piece was shown on Philippine television.
In October 2002, while preparing for his third performance tour in Alaska, he became quite ill with a kidney infection. For personal reasons, he refused medical care, and was unable to join his group when they left for Alaska. Some days later, mortally ill, he reluctantly called friends to bring him to an emergency room. He was hospitalized for nearly three months, and underwent open heart surgery. He was told that he would have to repeat the surgery in 10 to 12 years.
Almost immediately after his release from the hospital, in January 2003, he began teaching as a Guest Lecturer at the Music department and at the Dance department at San Francisco State University. When the California state budget was cut to eliminate all Lecturer positions at the California State Universities, his kulintang course was transferred from the Music and Dance departments to the Ethnic Studies department, which managed to keep him on as an Instructor. He also began teaching at Skyline College, a junior college in nearby San Bruno, with the assistance of that college's Kababayan program.
He continued to suffer from cardiac arrhythmias and was quietly hospitalized from time to time. Finally, a cardiology specialist discovered an ectopic foci, a congenital abnormality. Essentially, Danny had been born with an extra SA node, which was removed by laser surgery performed at a very small specialty hospital in Redwood City.
In July 2005, he joined in a final Alaskan performance tour with the Palabuniyan Kulintang Ensemble. After having several experiences kicking off the winter Performance Art seasons in Alaska, he wanted to have the chance to join in Alaska's summertime salmon fishing. He loved the experience of dipnet-fishing at the mouth of the Kenai River.
In 2006, his father Kalanduyan Tanggo passed away at age 90, after many years of dementia. His mother Sibay Batawan had suddenly passed away from complications of high blood pressure many years earlier, in 1991. After leaving the Philippines to attend the University of Washington in 1976, Danny had never been reunited with his beloved mother. Because he was the eldest child in the family, and because of his father's severe memory loss, Danny had become the Kalanduyan family patriarch upon his mother's death, about 15 years before his father's passing.
In 2007 and 2008, he spent his summers in Honolulu, Hawaii teaching an intensive Maguindanaon language course at a language school.
He retired from teaching in 2009. In retirement, he focused on traditional kulintang music fused with jazz, and worked with ethnomusicologists Royal Hartigan and Hafez Modirzadeh on the Kul-X project. He also worked with Bo Razon, Frank Holder, Chris Trinidad, and others, in the all-male kulintang fusion group Subla; the group released a CD of their music.
After he was nominated by the Alliance for California Traditional Arts staff to be an awardee for the United States Artists' fellowship, he was named a US Artists Broad fellow in late 2009. He used his fellowship funds to spend time at his childhood home in Mindanao, with his relatives.
In 2013, he returned to Mindanao to participate with his family members under the group name "Maguindanao Kulintang Ensemble" at the First International Gongs and Bamboo Music Festival held in Dipolog City, Zamboanga del Norte. That event was a project of The [Philippines] National Commission for Culture and the Arts-National Music Committee (NCCA-NMC) through the Musicological Society of the Philippines (MSP) in partnership with the Dipolog City Government in cooperation with Municipality of Maasin-Iloilo and the UP Center for Ethnomusicology (UPCE).
But, prior to arriving at Dipolog City, he and his family members and his family's music associates participated in the filming of a short documentary and recording of a high quality studio album, at Cotabato City. The film, which was released in 2014, is "The Cotabato Sessions." A soundtrack CD of the same name was also intended to be released.
In June 2014 and again in June 2015, he performed at the Pagdiriwang Festival, held at the Seattle Center in Seattle, Washington.
His health took a major turn in February 2015, when he was hospitalized repeatedly for pneumonia, and subsequently suffered from heart failure which greatly affected his mobility and stamina but not his ability to play kulintang music from a sitting position. Notably, he lost the ability to walk and talk at the same time, but he successfully kept that loss hidden from all but a small handful of people.
In August 2015, he was able to realize a long-held plan when he was able to send his wife away to live with their son's family in San Diego. Although Danny had dreamed for years, while he was a student and instructor at the University of Washington, of bringing his wife and children to live with him in America, it had not turned out nearly as well as he had hoped. His wife had come to the U.S. expecting to live the privileged lifestyle that Danny's hard-earned U.S. dollars had given her when she was raising their children in the Philippines. At last, nearing the end of his life, he was relieved to have finally managed a mutually agreed-upon separation from her, which gave him hope at a time when he desperately needed hope due to the decline in his health.
In September 2015, he performed for the last time with his traditional kulintang music group Palabuniyan Kulintang Ensemble, at an event presented at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Gardens by the Alliance for California Traditional Arts.
In November 2015, he rehearsed and performed with his kulintang/jazz fusion group Subla, in a collaboration with the Los Angeles Master Chorale and composer Nilo Alcala. The performance venue was the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and received a very lengthy standing ovation.
In December 2015, he performed traditional kulintang music with members of his Subla and Palabuniyan groups at a Smithsonian-sponsored event at the California Museum of Oakland, as part of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival's Sounds of California program. He had been quite ill, so there was no rehearsal for that performance.
In January 2016, he was given an opportunity to return to Mindanao for five weeks, to visit his large extended family. Despite his joy and excitement to return home to Mindanao, he did not tolerate the long journey well, and spent many weeks in recuperation. In February 2016, while in Mindanao, he was employed for one day as a judge at the Kulintang Ensemble Competitions held as part of the Sagayan Festival (later known as the Inaul Festival) held in Buluan, Maguindanao. His brothers Kanapia, Datuan, and Kunga also served as paid judges at the festival's music competitions.
Despite his failing health, he decided against remaining in Mindanao, and he returned to the United States in order to fulfill a contractual obligation, working with Stockton, California-based Little Manila Dance Collective, to teach the Fil-Am community in Stockton about kulintang music, through a Living Cultures grant provided by the Alliance for California Traditional Arts (ACTA). For this grant, he collaborated with former students to form an in-person "Kulintang Academy" from which an initial class was graduated.
At the end of May 2016, he experienced sharp pain in his hands, and it became extremely difficult for him to play kulintang music. Still, he completed his final performance obligations, in June and in July 2016. His last performance as part of a kulintang ensemble was with the Little Manila Dance Collective in Stockton, California, in July 2016.
His health declined even further while he awaited approval to undergo an experimental heart valve replacement procedure, which was administered only to cardiac patients as a last resort. Despite his waning energy, he remained optimistic and hopeful that the cardiac procedure would make him "good as new" although he became quite frail. When meeting people at his home, he wore multiple layers of clothing under a down-insulated vest under a leather vest, to hide his weight loss. He was no longer able to provide for his own needs, or care for himself. Faced with that reality, he asked his wife to return to live in the family apartment in South San Francisco, and he moved into the living room where he no longer needed to climb stairs.
After a four month wait, which he survived through pure strength of will, he was admitted to the Stanford University Medical Center. He passed away at the cardiac procedures ICU after suffering a fatal hemorrhagic stroke on the evening of September 27, 2016. He had been successfully resuscitated earlier in the day from a cardiac arrest, his body's immediate response to intubation prior to the procedure. Subsequent to cardiac resuscitation, he was placed on life support to undergo the mitral valve replacement procedure, which was successful, and he was still on life support when he suffered an intracranial bleed some hours later, the result of his decreased liver function. He was removed from life support the following afternoon, surrounded by family and friends.
He was given a proper Muslim burial, with bathing, enshrouding, and funeral prayers at a local mosque, and burial within 24 hours of his death.
He was survived by his wife Josefina "Pina" Luayon Kalanduyan (1947-2023) of South San Francisco, California; son Dennis and his wife Rossana and their six children, of San Diego, California; daughter Yasmin K. Rosales and her husband Allan and two children, of South San Francisco; former son-in-law Renato Gloria of Redwood City, California; brother Kanapia Kalanduyan of Taguig, MetroManila, Philippines; brother Karatuan "Datuan" Kalanduyan and sister Guiawalia Kalanduyan Gumama of Rajah Buayan/Sultan sa Barongis in Maguindanao province, Philippines; brother Kunga Kalanduyan (c. 1970 - 2018) and sister Kenaot "Taut" Guiaman of Datu Odin Sinsuat in Maguindanao province, Philippines; and hundreds of cousins, nieces, and nephews living in the Philippines, and in Saudi Arabia.
RIP Danny. Thank you for bringing your culture's music to America.
Inscription
Danongan Sibay Kalanduyan
May 1, 1947
September 28, 2016
May He Be Granted Mercy and Peace
Gravesite Details
No music is permitted at the gravesite.
