About the speaker

Dr Tan Sooi Beng is Honorary Professor of Ethnomusicology at the School of Arts, Universiti Sains Malaysia, and President of the International Council for Traditions of Music and Dance. She authored Bangsawan: A Social and Stylistic History of Popular Malay Opera (1993) and co-authored Longing for the Past: The 78 RPM Era in Southeast Asia (2013) and Music of Malaysia (2017). Longing for the Past received the Society for Ethnomusicology's joint Bruno Nettl Prize in 2014, and in 2025 Tan received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 20th BOH Cameronian Arts Awards. For over three decades, she has developed community musical theatre with young people in Penang, using soundscape mapping and location-based research to foster collaborative music-making. She has also worked with heritage masters to document and revitalise Penang's Potehi glove puppetry, establishing the Ombak Potehi apprentice ensemble to perform localised stories. Through these initiatives, she brings scholarship into the community, enabling traditions to evolve through the participation of a new generation.