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Performing arts Background The traditional performing arts of Malaysia are extremely diverse in nature, taking in the music

and dance of the indigenous peoples of both Peninsular and East Malaysia, the Hindu-Buddhist dance-drama traditions associated with the ancient royal courts and the music and dance of the Islamic communities, together with a large corpus of Malay folk music and dance developed over a period of many centuries in the wake of these and other important cultural influences. To these forms, in multicultural Malaysia, must also be added the performing arts of its sizeable Chinese and Indian communities. Indigenous music and dance of Peninsular Malaysia Some of the oldest surviving Malaysian performance traditions may be found among the indigenous Orang Asli communities of Peninsular Malaysia, which survive only in small numbers and in scattered groups throughout the Malay Peninsula. Of the three main sub-groups, the Negrito communities (incorporating the Bateq, Jahai, Kensui, Kintak, Lanoh and Mendriq peoples) are found mostly in Kelantan, Pahang, Perak and Terengganu, the Senoi (incorporating the Che Wong, Jahut, Mahmeri, Semai, Semoq Beri and Temiar peoples) mainly in Kelantan, Pahang, Perak and Selangor, and the ProtoMalay (including Jakun, Orang Kanaq, Orang Laut, Orang Seletar, Semelai and Temuan) majoritively in Johor, Melaka, Negeri Sembilan and Pahang. While performance styles vary significantly from community to community among the Orang Asli, music, song and dance invariably function together with the production of art objects as an expression of animist beliefs, performed since time immemorial to commemorate the whole cycle of social events, including birth, male initiation, female puberty, courtship, marriage, warfare, a good harvest and death. Orang Asli music and dance has much in common with that of Melanesia, to the people of which the Orang Asli are distantly related. Musical accompaniment is generally provided by instruments made from natural materials, including bamboo mouth-blown and nose flutes, bamboo zithers, bamboo stampers, jew's harps, metal mouth harps and (a later Malay influence) gongs; the dance which it accompanies is performed mainly in groups, although some interesting solo masked dances performed in imitation of animal or spirit figures are also to be found. Indigenous music and dance of East Malaysia The performance traditions of the Dayak communities of East Malaysia also contain elements of great antiquity. Here too, music, song and dance are an integral component of the many feasts and rituals which mark the passing of the seasons in traditional society. The largest indigenous group in Sarawak is that of the Iban people, a predominantly farming society whose settlement is concentrated mainly in the basins of the Lower Rajang, Saribas and Batang Lupar rivers. Other important groups which practise settled agriculture include the Bidayuhs, who live upstream from Kuching, and the coastal-dwelling Melanaus, Kedayans and Bisayas. In the upland regions, living as shifting cultivators, hunters and collectors of jungle produce are the Kayans, the Kenyahs, the Muruts and the Kelabits. In Sabah the largest indigenous group are the Kadazan-Dusun, an agricultural people who grow rice through irrigation. Other important farming communities include those of Sabah's second largest indigenous group, the Bajaus, a collective term which describes a number of predominantly Muslim

maritime communities originating from the southern Philippines, the Rungus of the Kudat and Bengkoka peninsulas, the Tambanuo, Kimarangan and Sanayo of the Bengkoka, Kaindangan, Tengarason and Sugut river valleys and the Minokok and Tengara of the upper Kinabatangan river. Numerous Murut communities are also to be found in the state. With some two hundred different Dayak tribes located throughout the island of Borneo, great diversity characterizes the indigenous performance tradition, although certain common elements are to be found. Prior to the fourteenth century the Dayak instrumentarium is likely to have been fabricated entirely of natural materials, and indeed musical instruments made of bamboo and wood continue to play an important role in indigenous music-making today. Bamboo gongs such as the togunggak or tagunggak of the Kadazan Dusun and Murut peoples of Sabah and the pirunchong of the Bidayuh of Sarawak are often used in lieu of metal gongs, along with a variety of other ideophones such as Sabah's gambang or wooden xylophone (often used in conjunction with vertical slit wooden gongs known as kantung) and membranophones such as the Iban hourglass drum or ketebong of Sarawak, the single-headed karatung drum of the Kadazan Dusun and the double-headed gandang drum of the Bajau. A range of different-sized end-blown bamboo mouth flutes, known variously among the Bidayuh of Sarawak as branchi, kroto and nchiyo and throughout much of Sabah as suling, are also in use, as are bamboo nose flutes such as the silingut of the Orang Ulu communities of Sarawak and the turali of the Kadazan Dusun communities of Sabah. Another instrument in common use throughout Borneo is the cylindrical bamboo zither with strings cut out of it, known among the Bidayuh as tinton, among the Orang Ulu as satong and among the Kadazan Dusun as tongkungon. A bamboo-and-gourd mouth-organ akin to the Lao-Isaan khene is used widely throughout Borneo; in Sabah it is known as sompoton or (in its smaller upland version) sigi, while its larger Sarawakian cousin is the keladi. Perhaps the most popular instrument found in Borneo is the sape, a delicate four-stringed lute carved from the trunk of a tree and found among the Kenyah, Kayan, Kelabit, Penan and other upland Orang Ulu groups of Sarawak. Its Sabahian counterpart is the long-necked sundatang lute of the Kadazan Dusun and Lotud Dusun peoples. Metal gongs were not traditionally made in Borneo, and it is believed that the instruments of the gongchime tradition were increasingly traded in via Brunei in the wake of that sultanate's rise to prominence during the fourteenth century. Subsequently, under the strong influence of Javanese and Malay culture, the gong-chime ensemble became a key element of the performance which accompanied indigenous ritual ceremonies and large-scale social gatherings. Extant gong and drum ensembles include the engkerumong of Sarawak (Iban, Bidayuh), the sopogandangan or sompogogungan (Kadazan Dusun) of Sabah and, in coastal areas, the Philippine-style kulintangan; all these ensembles incorporate large individual gongs, suspended sets of smaller gongs and drums. Music is performed in its own right, as an accompaniment to singing, or in conjunction with the many different Dayak dances. In the latter connection the accompaniment it provides is predominantly percussive, with the colourfully costumed dancers often supplementing the rhythm by singing and clapping their hands.

East Malaysia boasts an enormous variety of indigenous dances, most of which traditionally bore a deep ritual significance. However, in recent years the emphasis on ritual has steadily disappeared, to be replaced in many dances by a more celebratory function; such is the nature of the dances presented as substantive performances in modern Borneo. One of the most important traditional dances emanating from Sarawak is the ngajat, a generic dance style performed by the Iban and several other Dayak groups and found in a number of different forms. Among the Iban the most noteworthy are the welcoming dance ngajat nganti penatai temuai, the harvest festival dance ngajat lesong and the war dance ngajat pahlawan. All variations of ngajat make use of spectacular costumes and head-dresses and are performed to the accompaniment of gongs and bamboo percussion. Other noteworthy dances from Sarawak include the datun julut, a traditional dance performed by the Orang Ulu to celebrate the return of warriors from a successful raid or war, and its related warrior dance, the kanjet ngeleput; the mengarang menyak of the Melanau, which depicts the processing of the sago palm; and from the Bidayuh community, the langgi pinyambut and langgi pingadep welcoming dances and the tolak bala harvest dance. From Sabah comes the sumazau, one of the best-known Kadazan dances, which involves two rows of men and women dancing slowly and rhythmically, face to face, in their characteristic, beautifully decorated black costumes. Accompaniment for this dance, which also features hand movements likened to the flight of birds, is provided by gongs and drums of varying sizes. Other important dances from Sabah include the andui-andui and berunsai social dances of the Bajau and Murut peoples. The latter group often perform on a special wooden platform sprung with bamboo, known as a lansaran. Proto-theatrical Malay performance forms Among the Malay community, elements of a pre-Hindu-Buddhist tradition are also preserved in a number of proto-theatrical forms. As elsewhere in Asia, ancient animistic genres such as epic recitation, poetry games and shamanism contributed significantly to the development of traditional Malay theatre. A number of these proto-theatrical forms are still to be found today. The singing of epics, penglipur lara, survives in the form of awang batil (Perlis) and awang selampit (Kelantan), while pantun singing, in which performers present memorized newly composed verse arranged in quatrains, is still found in some rural areas. Call-and-response singing is also undoubtedly a very ancient genre in Malaysia, and was to form the basis for several later performance styles, including the Islamic-influenced dikir barat from Kelantan and boria from Pinang, as well as the Straits-Chineseinfluenced dondang sayang, a style of musical repartee set to the accompaniment of violin, drums and a gong which became popular in Melaka towards the end of the nineteenth century and later spread to Pinang and Singapore. Trance-dances persist in a number of different forms. The ulek bandul dance centres on the communication of a female dancer with the rice spirit, while the ulek meyang features a man holding an arca-nut root entering into a trance to the chant of a male chorus. One of the best-known trance-dances is the Johor/Selangor possession rite kuda kepang, which involves men possessed by horse spirits performing various amazing feats. The latter often appears as part of the reog or barongan dance-theatre which Malaysia shares with Indonesia, in which the mythical lion-figure of Balinese fame appears. Perhaps most significant of all such forms is the main puteri, a therapeutic dance-theatre style found in Terengganu, Kelantan and some parts of southern Thailand, in which male healers (tok puteri) enter a

trance, diagnose and then treat (usually female) patients to the accompaniment of a spiked violin or rebab and a copper gong. The development of a Malay classical performance tradition The classical Malay music and dance tradition began to evolve during the latter half of the first millennium AD in the wake of developments in the Indonesian archipelago. The Srivijayan kings of Sumatera (eighth to thirteenth centuries) are thought to have been the first South-East Asian rulers to use female dance as an integral part of the ritual surrounding the devaraja ideology of divine kingship; their lead was subsequently followed by the Sailendra and Mataram rulers of Java, who took the process one stage further by sponsoring the development of related courtly performance genres, commissioning distinctive Javanese reworkings of the great Hindu epics Ramayana and Mahabharata as source material and confirming the pre-eminence of the gong-chime as a source of courtly music. In subsequent centuries the devaraja ideology and its associated performance genres spread throughout mainland South-East Asia, a key point of dissemination being the Khmer kingdom of Angkor. Evidence that this development did not overlook the kingdoms of the Malay Peninsula may be found in the northernmost states bordering what was the once kingdom of Pattani (now Thai territory), and in the southernmost state of Johor, where the music of the gamelan and the shadow theatre and female dance traditions of the ancient court traditions still remain relatively strong today. Gamelan Under the influence of Java from the eighth century onwards, the gong-chime ensemble rapidly supplanted the older indigenous bamboo and wooden instrumentarium to become an indispensable feature of Malay courtly culture; thus did the embryonic gamelan find its way from Indonesia to Malaysia. While its size and format can vary widely according to its function, the Malay gamelan today generally incorporates the rebab or spiked violin, the serunai or reed oboe, the saron or bronze xylophone, a variety of different drums including the single-headed gedombak and the double-headed gendang and gedok, large hanging gongs known as tetawak, small gongs suspended in a frame known as canang, and metal clappers known as kesi. As in Indonesia, the Malay gamelan provides the basic musical accompaniment to many different types of traditional theatre, in addition to performing music in its own right. An aristocratic style of gamelan music known as nobat subsequently evolved in the courts of the Malay Peninsula and is still performed today for state and other special occasions.

Wayang kulit Four types of Malaysian shadow puppetry may currently be identified, the origins of which also date back to pre-Islamic Javanese influence in the Malay peninsula. The most widely distributed, popular and aesthetically unique of the Malay forms is wayang kulit kelantan (formerly known as wayang kulit siam), which uses smaller puppets than its Javanese counterpart and is presented largely through the medium of Kelantanese dialect in the border provinces of Kelantan, Terengganu and Pahang, and in southern Thailand. It recounts stories based on the Malay epic Hikayat Seri Rama, the Malay version of the Ramayana.

wayang kulit

gamelan

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