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A New Multi-Ethnic Art Form

by

Dr Ghulam-Sawar Yousof

 

 

Bangsawan: A social and stylistic History of Popular Malay Opera 
By Tan Sooi Beng
The Asian Centre, Penang, Reprint 1997.

BANGSWAN AND BORIA  are two important forms of Malay theatre that have special connections with Penang by virtue of their first introduction and subsequent development on the island of Penang. Both developed out of artistic traditions that reached  Penang from India in the mid-nineteenth century.  Boria had roots in Shia Islam. On the other hand the theatre of the high Renaissance-- more specifically the kind of theatre that developed  in the court of Louis XIV of France-- found an ardent imitator in the person of Wajid Ali Shah, the last Nawab of Oudh. 

Massive  performances  incorporating drama, dance,  music and spectacle of every variety came to be produced at court, using material from legends and fairy tales such as  The Green Fairy and Gulfam  (Zabz Peri wa Gulfam).   A  turn in the history of  Oudh, saw the overthrow  and banishment of Wajid Ali Shah  by the British, and with that the kind of  opulence  and decadence the court had begun to  favour. 

The court artists, now itinerant, eventually  found support in Bombay among Parsi merchants. Wajid Ali Shah's theatre, with appropriate adjustments and  further  borrowing of ideas and techniques from  Renaissance  theatre became  the highly popular,  urban Parsi Theatre.  To some extent Parsi Theatre continues to be performed in India in and around Bombay and  Hyderabad, Deccan.  It  inspired the development of new genres, but as elsewhere, it has given way to the modern theatre as well as the cinema. 
 
The Parsi Theatre 
 Parsi  theatre groups began visiting Penang some time during the  last quarter of the nineteenth century to entertain Indian merchants and Sepoy regiments, performing in the Urdu-Hindustani language. The Parsi Theatre gave way to local imitations, and eventually to bangsawan, with suitable adaptations in content, style and language, so as to make it suitable for  Malaysian audiences. Bangsawan certainly inherited much from the Parsi Theatre, including a part of  its highly heterogeneous  repertoire of stories, its music,  its technical innovations, and the whole idea of the sung and spoken drama, more popularly known in these parts, for want of a more appropriate label,  as "opera." 

Spreading  beyond Penang into the newly developing  urban centres in the Malay peninsula, Singapore as well as  into some of the islands now comprising Indonesia, bangsawan eventually developed into virtually a South-East Asian  style of theatre, inspiring many new forms of theatre including possibly the Thai likay.  In a sense bangsawan filled a vacuum much as did kabuki  in  17th century  Edo,  catering for the new-emerging urban society  in the absence of any other form of entertainment capable of satisfying an ethnically  mixed population. 

It should be remembered, of course, that Chinese opera and puppet theatre were already active in Penang   at the time that  bangsawan  had just come into being. There was no equivalent "Indian" theatre genre, while the traditional Malay forms of theatre such as wayang kulit were occasionally performed here as was the Thai menora. 
 
Bangsawan and Boria













 

 .As far as Malaysia is concerned, bangsawan emerged as a sort of "national" art form, the first urban theatre style in the sense that it was performed  in standard Bahasa Melayu , not in  a regional dialect. It was a form  that did not belong to any  Malayan  state or district  in particular,  unlike  wayang kulit, and mak yong, which haven been and still continue to be essentially rural-based.   Even   boria, still remains essentially a Penang art form.  Bangsawan  was commercial theatre style in every sense of the word, unlike the traditional styles of  Malay folk theatre. 

One final point is worth noting — bangsawan was, at least in its early stages, a multi-ethnic theatre style, with both participants and audience members coming from virtually every race in the country. It did not "belong"  to the Malays, and could not in any true sense of the word  be described as "Malay" art form.  Much indeed has changed in bangsawan since those  early days of its often obscure history. 


 

Tan Sooi Beng's "Bangsawan"  is an important and distinguished study of the history of bangsawan. It is in fact the most comprehensive study of the genre ever done, in any language.  Developed from a doctoral dissertation submitted to Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, the volume is an invaluable history of the genre.

The author, in her Preface, clearly states  that her book, "relates the development of bangsawan to the wider patterns of social and political change, and establishes in  chronological order the ties that link them."  This, then, is one of the book's principal aims.   To this end, the author illustrates the relations between the theatrical conventions of the genre including repertoire and plot structure, scene types, music, character types, costumes and language and the wider social and historical reality, highlighting the syncretism — the blending  in the genre  of elements of  two or more cultures, these in turn involving changes of value and form. 

Not a Typical Work
  Due to this objective, which the author has carried out admirably in the volume, the book is not  a typical  work  on theatre as such, both in content and in the methodology that went into the research resulting in this volume. The author used documents and oral history,  recordings of music as well as performances, and she participated in actual workshops.  The focus of the work is the period between the early twentieth century and the 1980's. 

The volume contains a record of  extensive interviews and meetings with a large number of bangsawan practitioners – actors and actresses, musicians as well as entrepreneurs — narratives  that make fascinating "case histories,"  details  of their personal lives as well as  information regarding  their involvement in bangsawan  companies in the face of dramatic changes in social as well as political life that the country experienced. It was after all, a century which saw two World Wars, British rule, Japanese occupation as well as independence, not to mention post-independence upheavals,  including the May 13 incident in 1969.  All of these events have  had a bearing upon  the lives of Malaysians and upon the cultural policy of the country. Inevitably, they had a bearing too upon  the evolution of bangsawan, as Tan Sooi Beng's study makes  evident. 

Bangsawan itself, unlike any other genre of  Malaysian theatre,  was used in  diverse ways to achieve specific objectives: as a tool of political propaganda, as an   expression of nationalistic or even racial sentiments. Tan Sooi Beng's books has been able to present this kind of  global  view  in a highly  readable manner.  At the same time the "old world" charm of bangsawan  itself  emerges in fascinating detail - the personalities, some of whom were to become better known through the medium of the films that first competed with and eventually almost  succeeded  in  destroying bangsawan,  the large repertoire of  tremendously  varied   stories and the setting in which bangsawan was presented. 

 
Bangsawan as a Theatre Genre













  Beginning with a brief record of personal involvement on the part of the author in bangsawan workshops conducted by the Malaysian  Ministry of Culture Arts and Tourism and Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM)  in 1985  and her "discovery" of  bangsawan,  the two opening chapters of the  work trace  the development of the urban entertainment and commercial theatre during the first fifty years or so from the 1880's to the 1930's  of the existence of bangsawan. . Following chapters  deal with the variety, adaptability, novelty and spectacular nature of bangsawan  (chapter 3), the  star system (chapter 4) , the development of the Orkestra Melayu during the same period (chapter 5),  details of music genres and their use in bangsawan (chapter 6),  scene types, plot structures and stock characters (chapter 7), and  categories of musical pieces and their dramatic uses (chapter 8). The final chapter discusses some of the reasons for the decline of bangsawan during the period following the Second World War, and some attempts at its revival during the 1970's and 1980's. 

Sufficient  information is provided for the theatre scholar as well as someone exposed to  bangsawan for the first time,  to understand and appreciate bangsawan as a theatre genre, and the technical requirements characteristic of this "operatic" style of  theatre, characteristics bangsawan shares with  many other  theatre forms including the Thai likay and the Spanish-Filipino zarzuela.  The two chapters on music certainly emerge strongest amongst those dealing with technical aspects of bangsawan. This is understandable, given the author's own background. 

The most  stimulating  chapters in the work, however are those not dealing specifically with technical material. These are chapters 1, 2, 3 and 9 in which  the  author draws  the reader's attention to bangsawan's social history  and  to present her views  regarding two key issues:  (a) whether or not bangsawan is a form of "traditional" theatre, and (b) the question of whether or not there has been any direct attempt on the part of the Malaysian government and its agencies to turn bangsawan into a Malay art form, reflecting some of its own thinking and the Malay ideology, and, if indeed this has been the case, what were the government's aims and,  how far has it succeeded? 

Outlining her involvement during the earliest days of her  research into bangsawan, with  Universiti Sains Malaysia troupe, Bangsawan Seri  USM in particular,  and  the practical training  in acting provided by the instructors in that troupe, Pak Alias Abdul Manan and Puan Aminah Nani,  Tan Sooi Beng  points out that  the training  emphasized traditional elements, including court etiquette,  within bangsawan.  Furthermore the repertoire of stories selected for performance by the USM troupe  consisted mainly of Malay legends such as Laksamana Bentan, Laksama Mati Dibunuh, Raden Mas, Mahsuri, and  Tengku Sulong Mati Digantung. At that point she was convinced, that bangsawan was a "traditional" art form.

Not Traditional Art Form
 Her later research, however,  convinced her otherwise: that bangsawan was in fact not a traditional art form but a new one.  Clear definitions of what may be considered "traditional" and what may be considered non-traditional are given elsewhere in the book. Material  is also cited from other sources to clarify the meaning of the term "traditional." Tan Sooi Beng is convinced that, using these various criteria, including internal features within bangsawan, the repertoire of stories, the music and so on, as well as the multi-ethnic involvement of Malaysians in every aspect of bangsawan production and promotion as well as in the businesses aspects of bangsawan, it is possible to confirm that bangsawan cannot be regarded as a genre of traditional theatre. 

The social and political situation in Malaysia of course, underwent  tremendous changes  between  the  pre-war days  and the 1980's.  Tan Sooi Beng presents the history of the involvement of the  Malay intelligentsia first into rejecting  the old style bangsawan, and  their support in  the development, first of the semi-realistic sandiwara and then of  the modern Western-style drama, realistic in style, and attempting to present contemporary themes and issues. Fairy tales and romances were consigned to the dustbin of rubbish. 

Theatre history  the world  over shows that this kind of rejection of older forms of theatre in favour of new ones is nothing new, particularly in societies where traditions are founded upon weak foundations. The coming of Realism transformed  world theatre, and in this acceptance of realistic drama in the 1950's, Malaysia was no exception. 

Bangsawan Hijacked
 From a multi-ethnic theatre style bangsawan developed into a genre  associated principally with the Malays, and with legendary Malay history, perhaps rooted in a desire to reassert Malay identity, perhaps from a sense of  self-weakness and vulnerability.  Ironically, the very adaptability of the genre that made it so attractive in the early decades of its existence, had come to turn bangsawan into a staid art form that symbolized the traditional values of one particular community, with the virtual shutting out of the other communities. Bangsawan had indeed been hijacked. 

But the truth remains, and here one must agree with Tan Sooi Beng, that by any stretch of the imagination,  bangsawan was a new art form, not a traditional one.  It has usually, and perhaps more appropriately, been described as a "transitional" art form, a form that stands between the traditional and the modern. Technically modern theatre came into being with Realism, with the literature's  concern for the real men and women and their problems, not with royal or mythical characters and their idiosyncrasies. 

The contrast between what may be regarded as an early kind of bangsawan  and  the new Malay bangsawan emerged  very clearly in two recent productions: that of Sam Pek Eng Tai in Penang in a sense was representative of the old styles bangsawan, including the wide variety of extra-turn it presented, while the production of Siti Zubaida in Kuala Lumpur attempted to present a kind of bangsawan that glorified Malay  and Islamic values.  Perhaps Tan Sooi Beng, and all of us who long nostalgically for the early, "original"  bangsawan, and all it stood for can take consolation in the fact that Sam Pek Eng Tai was produced. 

 
Controlling the Arts
 

Tan Sooi Beng's next important point is that the government and its institutions   and agencies have been controlling the arts. Some control has inevitably always been there, even under the changing administration of the British, the Japanese and then the Malaysians authorities themselves, in the form of censorship and the  requirements to obtain permits for performances. One wishes this was not the case for the sake of freedom of expression, and quality in the arts. The problem of censorship and the requirements to obtain a permit has affected all the arts, not just bangsawan, and much of the traditional theatre in the Malay heartland has also declined or died out due to this and a host of other problems, some of which Tan Sooi Beng has highlighted.  As far as bangsawan is concerned, such direct control is not always the reason for the performance of particular scripts. 

According to Tan Sooi Beng  since the 1970's with the Malaysian government's attempts to intervene, directly or through its agencies,  in the performing arts, bangsawan has become increasingly "Malayized."  The change in fact began much earlier, perhaps immediately after World War II. With the rising sense of Malay nationalism as well as  the political  and social events that took place before and soon after independence and more particularly since 1969, the measures taken just  became that much more drastic.  But the need to reassert Malay identity through the arts and the desire to preserve Malay art forms  have not always seen positive results, and the overall, decline of Malay art forms  is self evidently due to a wide range of factors some of which have, in the case of bangsawan, been stated by Tan Sooi Beng. 

True, over the decades bangsawan  has become less  syncretic, losing , according to Tan Sooi Beng,  its creativity, flexibility and adaptability, and her  conclusion  that the present day bangsawan is artificial is to some extent a valid one. But direct control is not always the reason for the evolution of a performance genre or art form,  nor  is it the reason for the performance of a  particular story or for the involvement of  only a particular community in a production.  There may be other circumstances. In the case of  Universiti Sains  Malaysia, the bangsawan project  was developed as a means of preserving that genre,  of creating interest in it. A similar project was developed for mak yong. There  was never a policy decision to perform only Malay scripts. Besides the Urdu-Hindustani  play Bunga Bakawali, other plays, including Hamlet  were considered, to provide  a balanced repertoire, a true sense of what bangsawan was really like . But there were constraints. 

As stated earlier the Malay's search for roots and a cultural identity as well as a sense of nationalism indeed did result to some extent in the use of bangsawan a vehicle for the sense of "Malayness, " but this did not guarantee the survival of the genre. Today new measures are being considered to place bangsawan squarely on the stage of the new National  Theatre in Kuala Lumpur without much  apparent success either. Perhaps all of this means that bangsawan is,  after all,  doomed. 

The quality of Tan Sooi Beng's volume has been  considerably  enhanced by the beautiful  drawings of  Mohd Baharoodin Ahmad, the large number of musical examples and the photographs depicting posters of bygone productions as well as gramophone records. In addition there are several appendices, consisting of musical transcriptions, synopses of bangsawan plays,  and an extensive glossary of terms as well as a substantial bibliography. 

Altogether Tan Sooi Beng's book, Bangsawan: A Social and Stylistic History of Popular Malay Opera shows a high level of consistent scholarship. It is an interesting and insightful  examination of the genre, particularly in the context of the changes that took place within bangsawan  during the past century or so, as well as the social and political milieu in which this important genre of Malaysian theatre was performed. # 

[The illustrations are from the book]

 
 The Penang File is sponsored by the family of the late Ooi Boon Lay 
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