Malaysia
At least three principal cultural influences—Indonesian, Hindu, and Islamic—left their musical marks in Malaysia. The Indonesian influence is seen principally in musical forms, participants, and paraphernalia of the Malaysian shadow play (wayang kulit). It is said that the Indian epics and, especially, the Panji tales of Java came to Malaysia via Indonesia, but there are songs in certain plays and musical instruments (e.g., the double-headed drum and oboe) that could have reached Malaysia from India through other routes. Islamic traces are evident in melismatic songs among the Malay groups in songs connected with religious rituals and in choral singing in the mak yong plays. Chinese music, a more recent development, is largely practiced among the Chinese communities, principally in Singapore.
Before Malaysian independence, the nobat, an old royal instrumental ensemble dating back to about the 16th century, played exclusively for important court ceremonies in the palaces of the sultans of Perak, Kedah, Selangor, and Trengganu. Today, in Kedah, the ensemble consists of five instruments: one big goblet drum (negara), two double-headed drums (gendang), one long oboe (nafiri), one small oboe (nafiri), and one gong. The music, which consists of 10 surviving pieces, is broadcast today and performed live.
Three shadow plays exist, principally in the state of Kelantan. The wayang gedek is the Thai form; wayang Jawa, a Malay form, is almost extinct; and the wayang Siam, which is a combination of Thai and Malay influences, is the most popular form of puppet shadow play. The operator of the performance is the narrator (dalang), who manipulates the leather figures, introduces important characters, and describes different scenes with the accompaniment of the orchestra. The music is led by a two-stringed lute (rehab) in the Ramayana, or an oboe (serunai) in the Mahabharata and Panji cycles. The melodic instruments are supported by a percussion group consisting of pairs of goblet-shaped drums (gedombak), cylindrical drums (gendang), barrel drums (geduk), gongs lying on a support (canang), suspended gongs (gong) or, sometimes, a row of gongs played by two or three men, and one pair of cymbals (kesi). The music usually begins with a prelude followed by a list of pieces the sequences of which are dictated by the narrator.
The mak yong, a dance drama that probably dates back more than 1,000 years, was introduced in Kelantan under the patronage of the royal courts. In the 20th century it existed as a folk theatre with an all-female cast. The music that accompanies 12 surviving stories is played by an orchestra of one bowed lute (rebab), two suspended gongs, and a pair of double-headed drums (gendang). A heterophony (simultaneous variation of the same melody) between a solo voice, a chorus, and the rebab creates a music with a Middle Eastern flavour.
A rich musical heritage in the rural sections of Malaysia is shown in musical instruments used by Malay, Thai, Semang, and Senoi groups. Idiophones include shell and coconut rattles, the jew’s harp (mostly pulled by a string, rather than plucked), bull-roarers, bamboo clappers, and the bamboo slit drum. Aerophones include the buffalo horn, wooden and clay whistles, nose flutes, end-blown flutes, and the oboe. Chordophones are two- and three-stringed fiddles with coconut resonators, monochords, and tube zithers. One membranophone is a double-headed cylindrical drum.
In Borneo among the Malay, Kadazan, and Iban groups, the principal instruments are gongs in a row (gulintangan) played with suspended gongs of different types (canang, gong, tawak-tawak). Among the Murut, Kenyah, and Iban the mouth organ with a calabash resonator (sompoton) plays a melody with a drone accompaniment. The jew’s harp (ruding), bamboo zither (tongkungon), nose flute (tuali), hourglass drum (ketubong), and vertical flute (suling) may be heard among different ethnic groups. Iban ceremonial songs are sung in connection with rice festivals and rituals to prevent sickness, while mourning songs make up a rich repertoire of solo and leader–chorus singing. The Kenyah are particularly adept at blending low voices of men singing a melody supported by a drone.
The Philippines
Two musical cultures—Western and Southeast Asian—prevail in the Philippines. Western music is practiced by some 90 percent of the population, while Southeast Asian examples are heard only in mountain and inland regions, among about 10 percent of the people.
The Western tradition dates back to the 17th century, when the first Spanish friars taught plainchant and musical theory and introduced such European musical instruments as the flute, oboe, guitar, and harp. There subsequently arose a new music related to Christian practices but not connected with the liturgy. Processional songs, hymns in honour of the Blessed Virgin, Easter songs, and songs for May (Mary’s month) are still sung in different sections of the country. A secular music tradition also developed. Guitars, string ensembles (rondalla), flute, drum, harps, and brass bands flourished in the provinces among the principal linguistic groups and still appear during town fiestas and important gatherings. Competing bands played overtures of Italian operas, marches, and light music. Young men, like their counterparts throughout the Hispanic world, sang love songs (kundiman) in nightly serenades beneath the windows of their beloved. It was not uncommon in family gatherings for someone to be asked to sing an aria, play the harp, or declaim a poem. Orchestral music accompanied operas and operettas (zarzuelas), while solo recitals and concerts were organized in clubs or music associations. With the advent of formal music instruction in schools, performance and composition rose to professional levels. Beginning in the 20th century, several symphony orchestras, choral groups, ballet companies, and instrumental ensembles performed with varying regularity.
A Southeast Asian musical tradition exists completely apart from the Western tradition. In the north, flat gongs are played in different instrumental combinations (six gongs; two gongs, two drums and a pair of sticks; three gongs). In the ensemble with six gongs, four are treated as “melody” instruments, one as ostinato, and another as a freer layer of improvisation. The melody consists of scattered tones produced by strokes, slaps, and slides of the hands against the flat side of the gong. Other musical instruments in the northern Philippines are bamboo. These are the nose flute (kalleleng), lip-valley or notched flute (paldong), whistle flute (olimong), panpipes (diwdiwas), buzzer (balingbing), half-tube percussion (palangug), stamping tube (tongatong), tube zither (kolitong), and jew’s harp (giwong). Leader–chorus singing among the Ibaloi is smooth and sung freely without a metric beat, while the same form among the Bontoc is emphatic, loud, and metric. Scales in songs and musical instruments use from two to several tones within and beyond an octave and are arranged as gapped, diatonic, and pentatonic varieties.
In the southern Philippines (particularly the Sulu archipelago and the western portion of the island of Mindanao), the more-developed ensemble is the kulintang, which, in its most common form, consists of seven or eight gongs in a row as melody instruments accompanied by three other gong types (a wide-rimmed pair; two narrow-rimmed pairs; one with turned-in rim) and a cylindrical drum. The kulintang scale is made up of flexible tones with combinations of wide and narrow gaps sometimes approaching a Chinese pentatonic variety and oftentimes not. Its melody is built on nuclear tones consisting of two, three, or more tones to form a phrase. Several phrases may be built, repeated, and elongated to complete one rendition lasting two to three minutes. Pieces of music are played continuously for a long period during the night.
In the central west Philippines on the island of Mindoro, love songs are sung that are based on reciting tones with interludes played by a miniature copy of the Western guitar or a small violin with three strings played like a cello.
José MacedaThe performing arts
In variety of dance and theatrical forms and in the number of performing groups, no area in the world except India and Pakistan compares to Southeast Asia. Some form of the performing arts is a normal part of life throughout the several nations. Sophisticated performing groups cluster in and around the present and former court cities—Yogyakarta and Surakarta in Java, Ubud and Gianyar in Bali, Bangkok in Thailand, Mandalay in Myanmar, Siĕmréab near Angkor and Phnom Penh in Cambodia, Hue in Vietnam—where drama, puppetry, dance, and music have been cultivated for 10 centuries or more. Hundreds of commercial theatrical and dance groups perform in such newer centres as Yangon, Saigon, and Jakarta and in scores of provincial cities and towns. Wandering troupes of actors, puppeteers, singers, and dancers travel from village to village in areas adjacent to these population centres. There are few communities in which some form of folk dance is not performed by local people.
In the West, music, dance, and drama are usually separate arts, whereas in all areas of Southeast Asia, drama, dance, mime, music, song, and narrative are integrated into composite forms, often with masks or in the form of puppetry. The spectator’s senses, emotions, and intellect are bombarded simultaneously with colour, movement, and sound. The result is a richness and a vividness in the theatre that is absent in most Western drama, so much of which rests on a literary basis.
More than 100 distinct forms or genres of performing arts can be distinguished in Southeast Asia. These can be grouped, according to which of the various stage arts is emphasized, into (1) masked dance and masked dance-mime, (2) unmasked dance and dance-drama, (3) drama with music and dance, (4) opera, (5) shadow-puppet plays, and (6) doll- or stick-puppet plays.
Diverse traditions in the performing arts
Four relatively distinct traditions exist in the performing arts: folk, court, popular, and Western.
The folk tradition
Dances in the folk tradition are exceptionally numerous and widespread. Some are performed as religious ritual, others, particularly on the Indonesian island of Bali, by highly trained and respected artists, and still another kind as entertainment in which the community participates. Folk theatre is more complex than folk dance and thus less widespread, but it has deep connections with religious ritual. Although the origins of most folk performing arts lie in remote times, later court forms exerted important influence on many of the folk forms. Conversely, folk forms have been a source of inspiration to court artists.
The court tradition
The shadow play and masked and unmasked dance are court arts reflecting centuries of subtle refinement under the patronage of kings and princes. In Southeast Asia the shadow theatre is a major classic art. Leather puppets of mythological figures, the bodies intricately incised to allow light to pass through, are attached to sticks for manipulation. A lacy shadow is created by a flaming lamp as the puppet is pressed against the back of a vertical screen of white cloth. The flickering and insubstantial shadow seen from the other side creates for the understanding viewer a mystic world with deep symbolic meaning. In Java, Bali, Malaysia, Cambodia, and Thailand shadow plays and their techniques have been emulated by human actors and dancers and have been the models for marionette and doll-puppet theatre.
Dance troupes have been a part of court life at least since recorded history began. In the mainland courts of Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, and Burma, concubines of the ruler’s harem who performed female dances were segregated from male performers, giving rise to separate forms of female unmasked dance and male masked dance-mime. Although certain dances traditionally are performed only by men or only by women in Indonesia and Vietnam, mixed casts have a long history, especially in dramatic pieces. Court dance on the mainland and in Indonesia has been influenced by Indian dance style, and Vietnamese dance by the dance styles of Chinese opera, but they have acquired a distinctly Southeast Asian character. Court dance reached its greatest development when applied to mythological and legendary themes, often taken from the shadow theatre. The resulting dance-dramas and masked dance-mimes of Thailand, Cambodia, and Java are world famous for their magnificent scale and elegance of execution. Some of these court arts are no longer performed, and others face increasing difficulty securing financial support, yet they remain important.
The popular and Western traditions
In the popular traditions are those 400 to 500 professional troupes who perform, except in the Philippines, in commercial theatre buildings of major cities for an urban ticket-buying audience. Some forms of popular theatre are directly modeled on court dance-drama, but most are spoken drama in which court-derived music, song, and dance movements have been inserted. Local legend and history provide the subject matter for many of these plays. As in much of Asia, the performer in the popular tradition is seldom accorded status and may be despised as a vagabond.
The spoken drama, the ballet, and the modern dances are known only superficially in Southeast Asia. The sole exception is the Philippines, where amateur performances of Western plays constitute the country’s main theatrical tradition. Southeast Asian audiences generally find Western plays based mainly on dialogue to be uninteresting and deficient in artistic qualities. European and American films and television programs, however, are widely shown and appreciated, and popular Western dances are found in major urban areas. Undoubtedly the impact of these forms on local audiences will continue to increase, possibly to the detriment of the indigenous traditions.
Characteristics of dance
Dramatic and nondramatic forms
In the parts of Southeast Asia influenced by Indian forms—everywhere except for Vietnam and the Philippines—nondramatic and dramatic dance are both known. Nondramatic, or “pure,” dances that do not express emotional states of characters are numerous in both folk and court traditions. Among court dances, the Javanese bedaja is typical. Nine dancers move in unison, without emotional expression, in precisely fixed choreographic patterns designed to demonstrate sheer grace of movement. The maebot, composed as a Thai “alphabet of dance,” is used to train pupils in the basic movements of court dance. Other dances that include character impersonation yet are not explicitly storytelling dances lie between nondramatic and dramatic dance. In the Thai praleng, two performers wearing god masks and holding peacock feathers in both hands perform an offertory dance to the god before the main dance-play begins. The Balinese legong, danced by a pair of preadolescent girls, may have only the most tenuous dramatic content. Its interest lies in the girls’ unison rapid foot movements and fluttering movements of eyes and hands. Dramatic dance is seen at its best in full dance-dramas and in the excerpts from them that are sometimes danced in concert form.
Styles and conventions of movement and costuming
General characteristics of both dramatic and nondramatic dance are (1) slowness of tempo except in battle scenes, (2) controlled and reserved movements rather than expansive ones, (3) little of the leaping typical of Western ballet but, instead, a feeling of closeness to the ground, and (4) extensive use of arm and hand gestures. From Indian dance has come an open and flexed position of the legs, a side-to-side sliding movement of the head and neck, and a rigidly codified vocabulary of hand and finger gestures known as mudras or hastas in India. In most cases the Indian elements have been altered greatly over their 1,000-year period of assimilation. In Thai, Cambodian, and Lao dance, the 24 to 32 Indian mudras have been reduced to 9; in Javanese dance 7 can be recognized, and in Bali only 1 or 2. They have also been altered in their shape, and the many specific meanings attached to each in India have become fewer, while in some cases a gesture has no specific meaning. Such hand gestures as shading the eyes and tying the sash, which appear in Javanese dances, are unknown in India. Foot movements in India typically follow the rhythm of a drum, often with vigorous stamping sounds that are emphasized by bells on the ankles, but such movements are virtually absent in Southeast Asia. The exaggerated eye, eyebrow, cheek, mouth, and chin movements through which the Indian dancer expresses a broad gamut of emotions are nowhere to be seen. Balinese dancers use darting eye movements, but the court dancer’s face is composed into an almost unchanging expression of aloof gentility. Close contact between neighbouring countries has led to the development of two regional Indian-influenced dance styles, one for Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar and one for Indonesia and Malaysia. Characteristics of the former style include the soft pi phat music of bamboo xylophones, drums, gongs, and oboe as accompaniment, bent-back finger positions not seen elsewhere in Asia, similar and often identical movements for male and female roles, courtship dances in which lovers touch each other and move in unison, and, in dance-drama, lengthy pure-dance pieces inserted solely for their beauty. In the latter style, the performance is accompanied by music of the gongs and metal bars of the gamelan orchestra. Scarves draped from the waist or neck are flicked for effect and manipulated to indicate strength or flying, and male and female dance are clearly distinguished by the powerful masculine lunges of the men and the tiny steps of the women, who also dexterously manipulate the train of the skirt with their feet. Visually, the mainland dance sparkles. Costumes of brilliant silk are covered with sequins and even jewels, and golden crowns and sparkling body ornaments glitter with reflected light. The male dancer in Indonesia wears a soft batik skirt of brown and white, the female a black velvet bodice. Arms and shoulders are bare and powdered golden brown, creating a subdued and warm effect.
The main style in Vietnam, apart from folk dance, is dramatic and highly pantomimic, like the movements of Chinese opera. In classical opera, the flowing white sleeves and the pheasant feathers bobbing from the general’s headdress are twirled and flicked by the actor in many conventionalized movements derived from Chinese forms. Battle scenes are choreographed into precise dance patterns, but the acrobatic movements common in Chinese opera are seldom seen.