AsiaTimes : Malaysia: Traditional music gets new beat

Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2003 08:33:28 +0800
Newsgroups: soc.culture.malaysia,jaring.general
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From Asia Times
12 July 2003
Malaysia: Traditional music gets new beat
By Kalinga Seneviratne
PENANG, Malaysia - A unique orchestral performance is setting the
stage for an Asian musical beat that is contemporary yet firmly rooted
in the region's traditions, in this case the Indonesian gamelan, the
indigenous orchestra of bronze gongs.
Co-directed by ethnomusicologist Sunethra Fernando and environmental
scientist Jillian Ooi, the two-hour gamelan orchestral performance
called Laras Gong was held at the Komtar city auditorium here in late
June.
It combined traditional gongs, xylophones, zither and drums of the
Indonesian gamelan with the Chinese dagu (drum), a variety of Malay
drums, Indian flute and the Asli Malay singing style in the Chinese
model scale.
This is the fourth concert series of the Rhythm In Bronze group set up
by Sunethra seven years ago with the aim of producing a contemporary
Malaysian musical beat, one that could incorporate the major ethnic
musical traditions of this multicultural society.
She likes to describe the group's work as "consciously setting out to
develop the craft of performing gamelan through co-directing", where
players conspire to direct the pieces as they are being played by
working on visual cues.
"We did not make a conscious decision to fuse. It was not deliberate,
but, it turns out that we were pulling things from around us," said
Sunethra in an interview after the concert.
"We are trying to do whatever we can with the gamelan and in the
process create a new Malaysian identity," added Ooi.
The gamelan, the indigenous orchestra of Java and Bali and also played
in nearby countries, consists of a variety of bronze gongs of varying
sizes that are struck with mallets. It has been at the center of the
Indonesian art music tradition for centuries.
What the Rhythm In Bronze group is doing could thus upset some of the
cultural purists who would prefer to keep the Asian musical traditions
intact.
Sunethra, who was born and bred in Malaysia to Sri Lankan parents,
argues that her group is well grounded in the traditions of the
gamelan, but, "we don't have traditional references, full stop. We're
expressing in contemporary terms".
"This is Asian fusion music, but also trying to look for a Malaysian
identity," said Professor Tan Sooi Beng, head of the music department
at the Universiti Sains Malaysia. "In Malaysia we have the Malays,
Chinese and the Indians living in [cultural] segregation and this is
an attempt to create a Malaysian identity" bringing them together.
Tan has composed a piece for this series titled "Perubahan", which was
written in 1998 at the height of the reformasi protest movement
calling for political reforms in the country. She explained that the
piece reflects the mood for change at the time, as it incorporates
multicultural elements and brings in the Chinese shi-gu drums "with
its reverberating sounds" for the first time into a gamelan
"symbolizing change of tradition".
Sunethra feels that the traditional gamelan and her new beats could
co-exist in multicultural Malaysia because "we are performing in new
space and it is not seen as taking over their space".
Professor Anis Mohd Nor, an ethnomusicologist at the University of
Malaya, agrees. "Laras Gong is a serious attempt in reinventing
gamelan music as a modern art music in Malaysia," he said in an
interview.
Whatever it is called, "the basic structural discourse of cyclic gong
tunes are still strongly preserved, giving the listeners the
familiarity of the gamelan music and means to understand new
interpretations," he added.
Anis believes that Sunethra and her musicians - the ensemble includes
some 15 members and a good mix of Malay, Chinese and Indian with only
four male members - are democratizing gamelan by taking it out of the
"enclave of esoteric music of a faded courtly tradition".
This, Anis says, would allow new understanding and appreciation of the
many possibilities that gamelan has in contemporary Malaysian music,
"which has until recently was regarded as steep in 'tradition'
privileging traditional musicians".
Sunethra believes that she may be "concertizing" the gamelan by taking
it outside the traditional dance performances, dance drama and
theatre, as well as official government functions and convocation
ceremonies.
Yet, Anis warns that one should be careful not to import new
instruments into the gamelan ensemble. Instead he would like to see
the diasporic musical traditions in Malaysia fused with indigenous
sounds in the form of specific ensembles.
In working toward creating a genre of Asian fusion music, one of the
major barriers is the lack of young people who are able to play the
traditional Asian musical instruments, Tan says. "Before trying to mix
the music, you need to be able to play the instruments. That's the
hardest part," she said.
She laments the fact that many young people of middle-class
backgrounds learn Western instruments such as the piano and the violin
because it is a "status thing" - and even government schools do not
encourage its students to learn Malaysian musical instruments.
But things may be changing. Ooi noted that their concerts in Kuala
Lumpur and here in Penang have attracted almost full houses and the
audience has been almost exclusively middle-class urban Malaysians.
Recently, Sunethra was commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Theatre
in Britain to compose music for a play set in colonial Indonesia.
Tan argues that rather than encouraging the recreation of
"standardized traditions" in the form of spectacles to attract
tourists, the government must encourage musicians to start smaller
ensembles that could experiment with various traditions like what
Rhythm In Bronze has done.
"Maybe someday we will be able to get funding to bring a few composers
and musicians from the region together to create new music of the
region," she said. "In this age of globalization musicians should be
crossing boundaries."
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