Like Tigers Around a Piece of Meat: The Baba Style of Dondang Sayang 9789814377782

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£ike &aerslround a?ieee of 'jileat The Saba Style of Dondang Sayang

The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies was established as an autonomous organization in May 1968. It is a regional research centre for scholars and other specialists concerned with modern Southeast Asia, particularly the multi-faceted problems of stability and security, economic development, and political and social change. The Institute is governed by a twenty-two-member Board of Trustees comprising nominees from the Singapore Government, the National University of Singapore, the various Chambers of Commerce and professional and civic organizations. A ten-man Executive Committee oversees day-to-day operations; it is chaired by the Director, the Institute's chief academic and administrative officer. The Oral History Programme of the Institute commenced in 1972. Eight years later it was subsumed under the wider rubric of "Local History and Memoirs". This has not only allowed for greater scope and flexibility, but also better reflected the Institute's real interest in the area. As in the case of the Oral History Programme, the emphasis has continued to be on the collection and publication of reminiscences, recollections, and memoirs of those who have participated in the history and development of the region generally, or in a particular event.

£ike iiaersBround a?ieee of 1i}eat The Baba Style of Dondang Sayang

PHILLIP l. THOMAS Murdoch University

I5EA5

Local History and Memoirs

INSTITUTE OF SOUTHEAS T ASIAN STUDIES

Cataloguing in Publication Data Thomas, Phillip Lee Like tigers around a piece of meat : the Baba style of dondang sayang. 1. Dondang sayang. 2. Malay p antuns. 3. Peranakan- Singapore. 4. Music, Malay. I Title. PL5137.1 T46 1986 ISBN 9971-988-28-3 (soft cover) ISBN 9971- 988-50-X (hard cover)

Published by Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Heng Mui Keng Terrace Pasir Panjang Singapore 0511 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior consent of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

© 1986 Institute of Southeast Asian

Studies, Singapore.

First published 1986.

The responsibility for facts and opinions expressed in this publication rests exclusively with the author and his interpretations do not necessarily reflect the views or the policy of the Institute or its supporters.

Cover Photo: The basic Dondang Sa yang instruments gong, and rebanas. Typeset by Print Graphic Services Printed by Kim Hup Lee Printing Co. Pte Ltd -

Singapore

violin,

In memona m Baba Boon Kim Yew

Buah rambutan buah remuma, Dikirim sahabat di Pantai K undur; Sudah mt:njadi resam dunia: Tua gugur mombang gugur. (Gwce Peng Kwee 1982, 1984)

Rambutan and remuma fruit, Arc sent by a friend in Pantai Kundur; So has been the way of the world: Ripe coconuts and green both fall.

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS lX

PLATES Xl

LIKE TIGERS AROUND A PIECE OF MEAT 1

1 A BRIEF HISTORY OF DONDANG SA YANG 3

2 THE TAJUK SYSTEM 11

3 SONGS OF LOVE : MALAY DONDANG SAY ANG 16

4

THE DEEP SEA: ABABA PANTUN SEQUENCE 20

5 MALAY AND BABA AESTHETICS

24 APPENDICES 37

BIBLIOGRAPHY 75

Acknowledgements

This project has been particularly fortunate in the amount and quality of assistance generously offered by Dondang Sa yang practitioners. Boon Kim Yew was the first to undertake the unenviable task of introducing me to the strategies of debate and poetic craft. With his passing, Gwee Peng Kwee next took up this role despite recent ill health and advanced age. His reputation is well enough known that it adds little to say that he has been Singapore's major Malay-language Baba poet over the past forty years . William Tan's contributions have been many. Since the first time I visited the Gunong Sayang Association, he taught me the techniques of Dondang Sayang composition and guided me to poets and musicians in Singapore, Malacca, and Penang . At his suggestion, I spent many fruitful days with Malim Osman. Both poet and violinist, he awoke me to the complexities of the musicianship required in Dondang Sayang, an area of performance literary critics may too readily overlook. Special recognition is owed to Yeo Kim Swee. Besides his instruction on the symbolic meanings and uses of Malay plants and fruits, one of his poems, a modification of "Pisang Em as", so affected my Singapore colleagues that their discussion cleared away much of the confusion that had kept me from understanding the dynamics of pantun construction. In Singapore, my special thanks are due to the family of the late Boon Kim Yew, Boon Kuan Fah and family, the members of the Gunong Sa yang Association, the family of Gwee Peng K wee, Lee Y ok Poh, Mock ram Kassim, the singers and dancers of Kelab Dondang Sayang, Mohammad Yusuf, Cik Puteh Sidik, Salcha Yakob, and Tan Geok Koon. In Malacca, advisers were Ainon Idrus, Chik Mohammad Amin, Rahim Jantan, and Yeo Kuan Jin. Information about Penang comes from Khoo Phee Tuan, Ramlah Jusoh, Tan Eng Cheng, Tan Koon Hoy, Yeoh Seng Hoe, and documents held by the Penang Dondang

Acknowledgements

X

Sayang Club. Rosli Ahmad and Subanum Marikan provided information for Kuching. Technical assistance was given by Patricia 0. Afable, Abang Amir Othman, Barbara Watson Andaya, Geoffrey Benjamin, Pamela Henry, Margaret Kartomi, Patricia Lim Pui Huen, Virginia Matheson, Malcolm Mintz, Vivienne Wee, Zaleha Tamby, RadioTelevision Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur, Kuching, and Malacca), and Singapore Broadcasting Corporation. A Fulbright-Hays post-doctoral fellowship, the Lee Foundation, the Sarawak Literary Society, the University of Auckland, and Murdoch University funded this project. Office and library facilities in Singapore were given by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies . A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (Singapore) in 1982. As this volume neared completion, my dear friend and teacher Baba Gwee Peng K wee passed on (1900-86). We had seen this book as a memorial to our friend Baba Boon Kim Yew. May it likewise serve as a token of Baba Gwee's long service to Dondang Sayang. Patah tiang rosak kemudi, Nakhota China berlabuh di Jawa; Patah tumbuh hilang berganti, Mana sa1na guru yang lama. Phillip L. Thomas

Gunong Sayang Association Executive Committee, 1982. Back row: Boon Kim Yew , Roystan T an , Scow Kway Chin, Peter Seen Fook Loy. Front row: Chan Swee Lee. C hong Swce Ho ck , L ee Yan g Tcck, Wee Thian B ock , C hia Kim Hcan , Ang Lian Tcng, C harlie Koh Kim C heong.

Baba Gwee Peng Kwee (1982) .

Dondang Sayang scene from the play, "Buang Keroh Pungot Jemih" (Let Bygones Be Bygones), February 1985. Singers: William Tan and Lee Yok Poh (right).

...

't:

·~

......

The late Mr Koh Hoon Teck, a founder member of the Gunong Sayang Association, and publisher ofDondang Sayang pantun books.

Baba Boon Kim Yew (1982).

Like Tigers Around a Piece of Meat

Burung cecawi di pohon sena, Pohonnya besar dahannya jarang; Biola, penyanyi, gong, rebana, Barulah jadi si Dondang Sayang. (William Tan 1982) 1 A drongo sits m the senna tree, The tree is large, its branches scarce; A violin, singer, gong, and tabor, Now you have Dondang Sayang. Shortly before he passed away in 1982, the master singer Boon Kim Yew recalled the Dondang Sa yang of twenty years earlier. He said, "In those days we used to be like tigers around a piece of meat, but today I think of quitting. There are no young people coming to Gunong Sayang to learn how to sing. There is no longer any challenge. Always the same people come forward." To what extent this pessimism is justified is difficult to say, but what is clear is that for many Malaysians, and increasingly more Singaporeans, the ability to understand Dondang Sayang has been lost. In this study, I outline the known history of the form and give an account of the Baba and, to a lesser extent, Malay aesthetic systems which generate and interpret this style of sung, poetic debate found in Malacca, Singapore, Penang, and Kuching. Because my emphasis here is on the Baba style of Dondang Sayang, the account of Malay practice is necessarily limited. Malay aesthetics requires a separate study; yet an understanding of Baba work is impossible without at least an elementary appreciation of its

2

Like Tigers Around a Piece of Meat

Malay roots. Babas view Malay Dondang Sayang as the model they aspire to, attributing to it a greater difficulty, a more refined use of language, different values of poetic creation, and above all, a more fluent poetic technique. In the following remarks, I have tried to suggest that Malay aesthetics has quite different values. These will be set out later in an appropriate work. 2

1 A Brief History of Dondang Sayang

The term "Baba" is applied to the Chinese living in Malaysia and Singapore who, for the most part, speak Malay as a home language and have adopted elements of Malay cooking and dress. 3 Most Babas - a female Baba is a "Nonya" or "Nyonya"- trace their ancestry from Fukien province in southern China. Sufficient diversity exists among the Babas that for many of them not all of these characteristics equally apply. For this discussion, "Baba" will primarily refer to the Chinese of Singapore and Malacca who speak Malay as a home language and who have made as part of their cultural entertainment the singing of the Malay poetic form known as "Dondang Sa yang". 4 This is a very limited set of those labelled as Babas, and much of the acrimony in the recent literature no doubt arises from attempts to generalize across groups which have only superficial resemblances . Dondang Sayang is a traditional Malay verbal art which employs a complex poetic form known as the pantun and requires a knowledge of such diverse aspects of Malay culture as fishing, cooking, farming, and history. In its unelaborated form, Dondang Sayang uses a small orchestra consisting of one or two Malay drums (rebana), a Western violin (biola), and a gong (gong) . Guitars, an accordion, Western drums, a tambourine, a flute, or an additional violin may supplement the core instruments. The orchestra and singer perform the song in three parts which come together at distant points of the musical phrases. The gong and drums play coordinated rhythms; the violin's melody, which shares only its key with that of the singer, offers little vocal support; and the singer sings in whatever key she or he prefers, taking care only to match the violin's cueing phrases. 5

3

Chapter 1

4

Many violinists who are competent performers of the repertoire of traditional Malay songs (lagu asl1) confess their inability to approximate even a mediocre rendition of the music for Dondang Sayang. The difficulty, one informant suggests, stems from the need to "play on all the strings". Dondang Sa yang violin requires the fullest range of notes possible on this instrument, and the violin~st, besides switching to each singer's key and maintaining a tempo which will bring him to the other's end point with reasonable accuracy, constantly improvises and embellishes his tune while continuing to play for several hours non-stop. When a flute or accordion is added to the orchestra, it shares or replaces the violin part. Because of the intricate semantic structure of the pantun, the short period given for composing a response, the lack of clear musical cueing, and the vast knowledge of Malay culture required, Dondang Sa yang is a difficult art to master and is considered so by its practitioners. The normal, four-line form of pan tun is used in Dondang Sa yang with a few important modifications. These are the repetition oflines and the inclusion of "fillers" after the third line and between the precaesural and postcaesural sections of the fourth line . The poem

Pisang emas bawa belayar, Masak sebiji di atas peti; Hutang emas dapat dibayar, Hutang budi dibawa mati. Emas bananas are taken sailing, One ripens on a box; Debts of gold can be repaid, Debts of kindness are borne till death. becomes:

A / 1. B / 2. C/1.

Pisang emas bawa belayar Masak sebiji di atas peti Pisang emas bawa belayar

5

A Brief History of Dondang Sayang

D / 3. E / 4. F/ 3. G/4.

Hutang Hutang Hutang Hutang

emas dapat dibayar, kawan ramai budi lah-budi dibawa mati emas dapat dibayar, dondang sayang budi lah-mati dibawa mati.

Numbers on the left indicate the "original" order of lines as usually printed in books or as conceived by singers. While the C-line occasionally repeats the B-line, it is most often a repetition of the A-line; F and G are always repetitions of D and E. The fillers, marlCed by bold print, may be altered at will. Those in the pantun's fourth lines are often formed from the last word of either half of the line. In this instance, lab budi (oh, good deeds) and Jab mati (oh, death) would be the most common choices. The fillers at the end of the third lines, kawan ramai (many friends) and dondang sayang (dear song), are laudatory comments addressed to the opposing singers - as, on occasion, are fourth-line fillers - even when the meaning of the poem may itself be derogatory. It should be noted here that lab, when used in third-line fillers, associates rightward, not leftward as is suggested by most grammars. In all other positions, it is sung as an independent word. There is no requirement that the repetition of a filler of the same type, for example, the third-line filler, be the same as its earlier instance, but within the same poem, third-line fillers are never identical with those of the fourth line. The form of Dondang Sayang which Babas look back to with nostalgia was practised in Malacca during the nineteenth century and into the 1960s. Friends would gather on the veranda of a house. One would play the violin while the others would take turns at singing and playing the drums or gong. The first three poems were the closest to prepared content during the night's proceedings . The host would sing, asking what the subject of the debate should be; the next person might suggest that both good deeds (bud1) and love (kasib) were fitting; and the host would respond that love follows from doing good deeds. The singing would then pass around the circle with the subject of budi often taking up to two hours. Normally, but not necessarily, kasib would follow. When there was a general

6

Chapter 1

feeling that another subject should be discussed, the subject or tajuk would be changed with a subject-changing poem. 6 The singing session, as it is now remembered, often continued throughout the night with brief periods of rest for the violinist and time for refreshments. While Nyonyas often sang at these familial gatherings, in more public performances, such as at clubs, competitions, or festivities at Baba spirit shrines (keramat) sponsored by the richer members of the town, singing groups were composed of Baba men, Malay men and women, and a small number of Indians. The close association and proximity of the Baba community and the Chitty Malacca or Malay-speaking Indians with Malays allowed for a sharing of Malay literary culture. 7 These Malays, however, have no special name given to them although there is a good reason to speculate that Malacca Malays form a distinct cultural subgroup within the wider Malay community. Although the music and poetry of Dondang Sayang are purely Malay, Dondang Sayang only achieved popularity in communities with rich ethnic mixtures . Where Malays live with fewer non- Malays, Dondang Sa yang is at most a minor part of their poetic and musical forms . For Babas, however, Malay Dondang Sayang and a small corpus of songs associated with it became a cherished and respected pastime which they studied in the hope of gaining full mastery. The earliest known Malay references I have found to Dondang Sayang-like activities appear in the anonymous Hikayat Hang Tuah and in the Silsilah Melayu dan Bugis and Tufat al-Nafis, which are generally attributed to Raja Ali Haji bin Ahmad. 8 Evidence from the Hikayat Hang Tuah, a work of the seventeenth or eighteenth century but whose printed editions are based on the nineteenth-century manuscripts, mentions singing to the accompaniment of a rebana and lists the other instruments employed in early Dondang Sayang, the gong and kecapi, an instrument often cited in pantun as a forerunner to the violin. At one point in the text where a sequence of pantun is presented, Hang Tuah's companions are said to bernyanyi dan berpantun dan bersloka berbagai-bagai ragamnya (to sing and to

A Brief History of Dondang Sayang

7

make pantun and to make seloka of various kinds). 9 Ragam may either mean that different tunes were employed or that the songs, pan tun, and seloka had a variety of subject matter. It is not clear from this passage in what manner these pantun were delivered as the use of dan (and) requires neither simultaneous performance nor chronological sequencing of the items it joins. The Silsilah portrays a scene during the wedding of Opu Daeng Cellak and Tengku Mandak in the eighteenth-century Riau court of Sultan Sulaiman where the wives of the court sing six pantun sindir-menyindir (reciprocal teasing). Each woman is described as playing a berbana (= rebana), and they sing in a symmetrical order: 1. wife of the Raja Negara 2. wife of the Batin Kupit 3 . wife of the Batin Sangira 4. wife of the Batin Sangira 5. wife of the Batin Kupit 6. wife of the Raja Negara Unfortunately, although the instrumentation, class of pantun, and order of singing are given, it is impossible to tell from this scene, written in 1865, whether the lines are repeated to form a seven-line sung stanza like Dondang Sa yang. 10 The Tuhfat, written around 1866, says that Raja Haji Engku Kelana Pangeran Suta Wijaya brought joget dancers from Selangor to Riau around 1777 and that Sharif Abd. al-Rahman al-Kadri and his wife often danced the Jambi style ofjoget when visiting Raja Haji in Pontianak during the same period. 11 As joget is often danced to Dondang Sa yang music and the corpus of tunes played by the same group of musicians, these may be the first indirect references to this style of pantun singing. More significant was the group of youths sent by the Yang Dipertuan Muda Raja Jafar of Riau to Malacca some time after 1812, for among the instruments they were sent to master was the violin. 12 Few of the non-Dondang Sayang sung pantun forms require this instrument. In 1845, Riau experienced a

8

Chapter 1

bout of religious zeal that led to the curtailment if not the prohibition of pantun singing when the Yang Dipertuan Muda Raja Ali "abhorred those who indulged in pleasures which led to loose behaviour between men and women, and those who sang and crooned pantun with veiled invitations to adultery". By 1857, joget was again being danced. 13 T. J. Newbold, who lived in Malacca from 1832 to 1835, implies the singing of pantun to a song called "Lagu Gunong Sayang", the name by which Dondang Sayang is today known in Sumatra and Riau . 14 Hussainmiya gives evidence that pantun were probably sung as far w est as Colombo in the nineteenth century, and it is likely that the Ambon region was the easternmost boundary . In all cases, it should be assumed that references to sung pantun do not refer to Dondang Sayang. The available evidence suggests that these other forms did not use a violin or orchestra, had specific, fixed pantun for each tune, or lacked the distinctive system of line repetitions and fillers. 15 Despite the amount of caution necessary in interpreting the available evidence, it seems not unreasonable to conclude that Dondang Sayang was an elaborated form of pantun singing which developed in Malacca and was supported by both royalty and commoners. Through the empire's maritime contacts and later British links it spread to other centres which accepted it with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Towards the end of the nineteenth century Dondang Sayang became most closely identified with the Straits Settlements and with the Riau court, the successor to the court of Malacca - until the court's demise in 1911. In 1910, the Gunong Sayang Association of Singapore, the first permanent association for supporting the singing of Dondang Sayang, was started by Singaporean Babas. This association, which is still active, marked the movement of Dondang Sa yang from the home into the more public world of urban life. Collections of pan tun for Dondang Sayang were published in Singapore, the most important being that from Koh and Company, Panton Dondang Sayang

A Brief History of Dondang Sayang

9

Baba Baba Pranakan, which ran into several reprintings of its five volumes, starting from 1911. These were created and compiled by Koh Hoon Teck, one of the founders of the Gunong Sayang Association, and his fathec He also introduced to the Association his nephew, Gwee Peng Kwee, who after World War II was to become Singapore's greatest singer of Dondang Sayang. Later, in 1926, an "Enchek Bulat" (a distant relative of Boon Kim Yew) published in Singapore a collection of 358 pan tun called Pan tun Dendang Sa yang dengan Cherita Buah Brakal. Singers made records in the 1920s; the public could hear performances at the city's huge amusement parks; and there emerged singers on the national radio who were known throughout the Malay peninsula . In Kuching, Mohd. Rakawi bin Yusuf wrote the first Borneo novel in 1932. This work decries the immorality of Gendang Perempuan (Women's Drum), a form similar to Dondang Sayang, which . included joget dancing by men. 16 One of the last written contributions to Dondang Sayang was Panton Dondang Sayang Baba Baba Pranakan by Malacca's greatest post-war Baba singer, Chia Ah Chin, better known by his alias as Chia Kim Teck or "Baba Kim Teck". It was first published in 1950 by a Mr Tan Seng Poh in Malacca. The year 1954 saw the official founding of the Penang Dondang Sayang Club which sponsors singing during the fifteenth and sixteenth days of the Chinese New Year celebrations. The same days had been chosen in the 1920s by its predecessor, the Chinese Amateur Dramatic Association (CADA), whose first presidents were Cheah Seng Kim, Y eoh Tin Kee, and Khoo Soo Ee. 17 The membership of these two organizations may have been quite exclusive as there is today little memory of the CADA by Dondang Sayang club members. Today, there are annual, national-level contests in Malaysia (Singapore does not participate) and frequent radio programmes for Dondang Sa yang. Singapore has weekly radio and TV programmes, and the Gunong Sayang Association holds regular practice sessions and performances under the leadership of its chief singer, William Tan. 18 A few Malay spirit shrines in Singapore

10

Chapter 1

and Penang patronized by Chinese still feature Dondang Sayang to entertain the resident datuk. With the advent of recordings and contests, structural changes in the Dondang Sayang argumentative style have appeared in the more publicly visible performances. These tend to oppose two star singers - in most cases a man and a woman - who narrate a confrontational debate: the hunter and the tiger, the gardener and the fruit buyer, the deep-sea sailor and the coastal yachtsman, or the lover and the lady. Each singer maintains a role throughout the sequence, and the debate is finished when the subject is exhausted or the alloted time completed. The older style, which is still supported by the clubs, flows from one subject area to another through connecting pantun. Because the participants are numerous and the singing circular, a singer may offer as his second poem one contrary in argument or role to his first. An ideal group of singers consists of at least two women and three or four men. Both pantun sequences discussed later show the star-performer style of Dondang Sayang with fixed roles and a lack of introductory and subject-changing poems. The poems in Appendices C and D exemplify the older style of multiple singers.

2 The Tajuk System

The low level of Baba partiCipation in Malaysian and Singaporean Malay broadcasting leads newcomers to assume that Dondang Sayang is today an art performed primarily by Malays. What people see on the television screen are gently swaying singers melodically rendering poems which exhibit mild joking. The graceful, undulating movements of joget dancers fill space, giving no differentiation to their dance regardless of whether the poems are about love or derision. Listeners from outside the Malay and Baba communities admit to fmding little of interest : the performance is, to them, soporific at best . There are present neither Baba Boon Kim Yew's tigers nor their piece of meat . The pussy cats have taken control. Or so the naive listener assumes. Aesthetic systems are transparent to their users while contrary systems are deemed untrue or unnatural, if they are thought to exist at all. Dondang Sayang, practised by Malays, Babas., and mixed groups of Malays and Babas, with occasional support by Indians, presents a particularly interesting case where a single art form is seen through multiple aesthetic standards. Early Western investigators of Malay poetry reported attempts to elicit from the Malays interpretations and explanations of pantun . Most failed to obtain answers meaningful to their Europ ean culture's idea of what poetry is all about. What they did not note was that Malays have no tradition of discussing poetry or of making explicit rules for its creation. Today we would not say that Malays have no rules, but that the rules are implicit and internalized, formed through an apprenticeship style of modelling. It could be pointed out that most Greek epic, lyric, and tragedy had been created and passed away before Aristotle wrote his Poetics. Traditionally, Malays make poetry; they do not analyse it.

11

12

Chapter 2

The one aberration to this maxim is that there are numerous books designed for the school system which are based on colonial scholars' writings. By using these and examining transcripts ol Malay Dondang Sayang to make explicit the actual methods and implicit values of composition, it is possible to compare Malay poetic technique and expectations with those of Baba performers. Babas do discuss poetry, having brought with them much of the attitude towards literature and literary discussion which formed pari of the imperial Chinese education system and which was late! transferred to the Malayan context. Moreover, the Babas, but no1 the Europeans, lived in sufficiently close proximity with the Malay~ so that they obtained glimpses into the actual practice of Malay poetics. Appendices A and Bare transcriptions from a performance by the Malay singers, Rahim Jantan and Fatimah Adan, and the "Baba' singers, Baba Chia Kim Teck and Chik Mohammad Amin, all fom coming from the Malacca-Muar cultural region . These texts are trm extemporaneous performances, but the singers are of differen1 generations. Baba Kim Teck died in the mid-1970s; his Mala) partner, Cik Chik is still alive, but no longer active. Rahim Jan tan i~ in his early forties and has performed with Baba and Malay groups ir Malacca and Singapore, and with the late Baba Kim Teck. I have no1 met his partner Fatimah Adan. Rahim's performance history is ; good example of how Malays act as cultural shifters between theiJ own and para-Malay cultures. Malay singers are fluent in Malay anc Baba Dondang Sayang, in each case suiting their style to thei1 immediate context. Appendices C and D are taken from a Peranakan party at the home of Baba Gwee Peng K wee. The singers are frequent performers at the nearby Gunong Sayang Association. While these poem~ are not specifically discussed here, they show the major features oJ what I have labelled as "Baba" Dondang Sayang. Both Baba and Malay poetics employ a system of pantur, classification according to tajuk or "subjects". Although the tajuk an identical for both groups, there is a distinct difference in the way each

The Tajuk System

13

manipulates the system. A tajuk represents a theme, method, mode, event or - outside of Dondang Sayang - a poet- audience age group. Tajuk elicited from different poets or found in books on pantun seldom agree on the names, numbers, or functions of the different tajuk. While the set is theoretically open, most are sung infrequently . Poets, when they prepare for a contest, practise through these subjects; for example, they sing a poem about love (kasih), answer it, and then attempt to respond to their own answer. Collections of Dondang Sa yang pan tun- there are few collections of any other kind of pan tun - are also arranged according to tajuk. It should b e noted that the class a pantun belongs to is determined solely by its second couplet, the maksud. 19 Some co mmon subjects are budi (good deeds), kasih (love), lautan (the sea), bunga (flowers), buah- buahan (fruit), harimau (tigers), emas dan intan (gold and diamonds), niaga (shopkeeping), dagang (the wanderer), nasihat (advice), sindiran (scorning), and teka teki (riddles) . Outside of Dondang Sa yang are found other subjects such as pantun orang tua (old people's poems), pantun kanak-kan ak (children's poems), pantun pemuda-mudi (youth poems), pantun berikat empat puluh (forty- stanza poems), and pan tun berkait (linked pantun) . 20 All of these subjects qualify as tajuk; however, when the discussion turns to who is or is not a good poet, it is clear that some of these subjects belong to different levels of classification. Average poets create pantun which are metrically correct and which constitute acceptable answers to the immediately preceding poem . These pantun are what Gwee Peng Kwee, the senior Singapore Baba poet, has dubbed "simple-language pan tun", "plain-language pan tun", or "ABC pantun". By this he means that the third and fourth lines , the maksud or " intention" section of the pan tun, speak directly about the subject under discussion. The first poem in the Rahim-Fatimah sequence, which warns Fatimah not to yield to her feelings, is such a plain-language pan tun. Average poets can continue only at this level while superior poets are never as specific as this except when introducing a new tajuk or, as here, in the lead pantun of a performance.

,j:o.

Figure 1 Dondang Sayang Tajuk

High level: theme:

kasih (love)

Middle level: buah-buah an m e taphor: (fruit) Low level: mode :

nasih at (advice)

sam butan OR ... (welco ming)

OR

budi (good deed s)

OR

OR

lau tan (seas)

OR

bung a (flowers)

OR ...

OR

sindiran (scorn)

OR

rendah diri (humility)

OR ...

9

-§.

...~

N

The Tajuk System

15

The alternative to plain-language pantun is "deep-meaning" pantun (pantun bermakna or meaningful pantun, pantun {men-] dalam or deep pantun, pantun kiasan or allusive pantun, or sometimes pantun ibarat or metaphorical pantun). This usually implies the use of a metaphor to discuss a higher level subject. An example of this is where love (kasih) is the higher subject and is argued through the metaphor of fruit (buah-buahan), the middle-level subject. The discussion is then complicated with the use at the lower level of such mode-changing tajuk as scorning the opponent (sindiran), giving advice (nasihat), bragging (tinggi din), or acting humbly (rendah din). For "deep-meaning" pantun, poets use the middle-level tajuk as the matter for their singing, with a confidential aside explaining that the high-level tajuk is the real theme. These tajuk are graphically represented in Figure 1. Achieving the level of deep-meaning pan tun requires the creation of a poem which resides within subjects at all three levels. 21 Plain-language poems act at only one or two levels . Accordingly, it is possible to sing a simple scorning poem at one's opponent, but the result does not create deep meaning; and however great the humour, the poem would rate poorly . Beyond these three public levels is a private one pointed out by Tengku Haji M. Lah Husny, a Medan critic of Sumatran traditions. This esoteric level is generally known only by the singer and his confederates, not necessarily by the other singers. In the earlier example of a love poem sung with the metaphor of fruit and the mode of advice, the Husny level could be about a discordant relationship between a government official and his constituency or about how a shopkeeper should treat his customers. Most often, however, this level makes personal references to members of the immediate group of singers and musicians. There is no way of penetrating this level without access to privileged information, although it is usual in Dondang Sayang performances presented before unfamiliar spectators to have few esoteric elements even at the expense of removing much of the social value of pantun singing which offers an opportunity to speak the prohibited in the guise of playfulness . 22

3 Songs of Love: Malay Dondang Sayang

The sequence in Appendix A is an eight-pantun series sung by Rahim Jantan and Fatimah Adan. It was probably issued some time between 1976 and early 1982 as it is not listed in Low's thesis (1976) . The tape labels the poems as "Dondang Sayang" without further identification. The first poem in the Rahim-Fatimah sequence (see Figure 2) begins with a plain-language pantun using the subject of advice (nasihat) about love (kasih), and this is followed by another love pantun which appeals to fate (nasib) . Fate can itself be a high-level subject, but here appealing to fate is used as an argumentative technique. This avoids answering the first pantun's suggestion that the passions of the heart are detrimental by tacitly admitting to the harm of love and asserting that this misfortune has long been fated . The maintenance of the high-level theme labels these poems as a love (kasih) sequence while the changing middle-level metaphor places it within the potpourri (rampaian) style where a selection of subjects most often sung separately are presented together. The singers then shift to deep-meaning poems. Additional complexity is introduced through the metaphor ofbusiness (niaga) while maintaining the subject of love, but the strategy of appealing to fate changes to one of "lowering oneself' (rendah din). "While you may be prospering", Rahim says, "I am wretched". 23 This poem is an old one, but would otherwise score points from the inclusion of a Malay proverb in its first couplet. 24 References to folklore or history are also valued. The fourth poem changes the middle-level subject from business to a subject sometimes listed as a kind of niaga but more often discussed as the subject of silk and sackcloth (sutera dan belacu). The poem continues with the theme oflove and the mode of

16

g>

~

~

Figure 2 Rahim Jantan and Fatimah Adan

Poem:

1

High:

kasih

2

Middle: Low:

nasihat

nasib

i

3

4

5

6

maga

sutera dan

belacu

ringgit

rendah diri .. . .. . . .. . . .. . puJian

7

8

sindiran

nasib

kasih 'love' ; nasib 'fate'; nasihat 'advice'; niaga 'business'; pujian 'praise'; rendah diri 'lowering (humbling) oneself'; ringgit 'money' ; sindiran 'scorn' ; sutera dan belacu 'silk and sackcloth' .

...... ~

18

Chapter 3

humbling oneself: "My love is not equal to yours", Fatimah replies . Maintenance of thematic continuity is a constant problem in the rampaian style as the high-level tajuk tends to be lost in the quest for novelty . Such is not the case here even though the shifting of tajuk in the third and fourth poems threatens to obscure their relationship to the first pair of poems. The first poem advised Fatimah about the wretchedness that comes from love . To counter h er acceptance of her misery as fated, Rahim argues in the third poem that if she is in a wretched state, he is even worse off than she is . Fatimah allows him no victory in lowering himself, an argumentative mode notoriously difficult to counter. She bottoms out by placing herself even more deeply in misery by identifying herself with a kind of cloth used only at funerals. The fifth poem responds to the silk and sackcloth metaphor at the middle level and changes the lower level mode to praising (pujian), saying, "You may not be like first-class silk, but ordinary cloth has its uses". The praising here is a curious mixture of "raising oneself' (tinggi din) applied to the other singer and "scorning" . It allows Rahim to answer Fatimah by agreeing with her low assessment of hers elf by praising h er. One implication of this pujian is that the fine silk is Rahim . In other words , Rahim has praised Fatimah while tactically placing her in an inferior position. The same sort of praise is continued into the sixth poem where the metaphor changes to money (ringgit), a type of niaga. Fatimah's poem has a double meaning, "even though money has holes in it, it is still usable" or "people pick over the money cautiously before they accept it". A third interpretation sometimes g iven is that coins were once pierced so that they could b e used as buttons. As they then became suspect as coins, they would only be accepted if hidden among legitimate coinage. She gains an advantage here in that while placing herself above Rahim, she offers no easy target for counter-attack. Had the silk argument been pursued, she would have been forced to defend the role of ordinary cloth and to point out the limited uses of silk. Plain language reappears in the seventh and eighth poems which by abandoning middle-level subjects signal closure for the sequence

Songs of Love

19

through the reinstatement of the two-level tajuk system of the first two pan tun. The seventh poem uses the mode of scorning while the eighth returns to the tactic of appealing to fate as represented by the will of Allah (God). Rahim has found no way of directly confronting the previous argument. Praising money is too overtly serious for Dondang Sayang. Instead, he wishes that he had never been born. Fatimah closes with an assertion of the power of Allah to which Rahim concurs in his spoken interjections. The tactical problem for Dondang Sayang debate which these last two poems illustrate is how to escape from the severe rebukes given in the fifth and sixth poems and yet have a suitable conclusion for the recording . Appeals to Allah must necessarily come late in a sequence as both custom and religion find no higher authority. In non-recorded Dondang Sayang, the natural end of a sequence is either a change in subject, the exhaustion of the performers, or the inability of an opponent to answer. There are no pantun for ending a sequence, though introductory pantun are numerous and varied.

4 The Deep Sea: ABaba Pantun Sequence

The second Dondang Sayang performance, also compnsmg eight poems, is taken from Low's transcription of a Malacca Radio Malaysia broadcast made in 1974. The text of this Baba Kim Teck-Cik Chik Mohammad Amin pantun sequence offers a poem cycle that gives fewer difficulties for the uninitiated or for listeners versed in written literature, yet much of the meaning comes from prior knowledge that a high-level subject has become fixed to the metaphor of the deep sea (lautan). Lautan may be used as a high-level subject, in which case the singers display their virtuosity and factual knowledge about nautical practices, fish habits, or the art of catching and cooking seafood. Some of this lore is displayed here, but the arguments are arranged to fill out the high-level tajuk: the challenge by one singer to the other ofhis or her right to sing among champions . 25 These two subjects, the singer's competence and the sea, are so firmly related that with only one exception no collection of poems has ever been made directly about the theme of a singer's competence, while almost all collections of .sea poems assume competence as their high-level subject. Challenge poems of this type are traditionally one of the most brutal of Dondang Sa yang forms. The gentle joking at the metaphorical level should not hide the seriousness with which the singer must attack the opponent. 26 The low-level tajuk of these lautan pantun begins with Cik Chik's advice that the sea is too rough for small nautical and poetic craft (see Figure 3). This is directed both to Kim Teck and to herself, leaving open the question of which of them may not have enough pantun to engage in this voyage. Kim Teck acknowledges this advice, then avoids it by fetching an experienced pilot, and suggests

20

;;2

Figure 3 Chia Kim Teck and Chik Mohammad Amin

"'

~

~

~

Poem: High:

1

2

3

4 [4.b)

5

6

7

8

Kela yak an pen yan yi .. .. ...... .. .. . ... ......... .. . .. .. . .. .... . .... .... .. ..... . . . ... ..... .. ... .

Middle:

Jautan .... ... . .......... . . .. ..... . ...... . ..... . .. . ........ . ..... . ............. .... . . . .. ... .... .

Low:

nasihat rendah diri

tinggi diri

sindiran

nasihat

sendiran

rendah nasihat diri

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

rendah diri

tinggi diri

sindiran

nasihat

sindiran

nasihat

tinggi diri

tinggi diri

kelayakan penyanyi 'singer's competence'; lautan 'the sea'; nasihat 'advice'; rendah diri 'lowering (humbling) oneself'; sindiran 'scorn'; tinggi diri ' raising oneself (bragging)'.

~

22

Chapter ·

that even large ships would sink. In this answer, he continues the ambiguity introduced by the first poem: is his craft small or is he sc clever that he can find help? Advice, self-praise, and speaking humbly are all present. Her response in the third poem is that her boat- her art- rna) be small but it survives, while a greater one, that is, Kim Teck's, may well sink. From this tinggi diri subject with its implied scornin§ of Kim Teck's consistent ability to win, he answers saying that he1 boat is rotten (sindiran), adding the advice that she need only make~ small mistake to sink. At this midpoint in the sequence the singer~ have returned to their initial modal position through answer~ utilizing the last mode of each previous poem followed by tht introduction of a new mode. With the shifting of modes and tht scarce use of pronominal references, it is easy for the inexperiencec singer to think that an opponent's pantun suggests capitulation wher in fact he himself is the butt of ridicule. Other sequences by Baba Kim Teck and Cik Chik frequentl) have one singer present two pantun sequentially. Here, withou access to the complete recording, it is difficult to tell whether th< transcript has one poem missing or whether Kim Teck continue: with an additional pantun. In the fifth poem, he warns that the waves of the sea of Si Aka} strike from every side. Singaporean singers suggest that Si Akap is ar island, possibly in Indonesia, and the sea of Si Akap is the wate around it. Alternatively, it is a part of the sea where sea perch an plentiful. The name does not appear in available Malaysian an< Indonesian maps, but there is a Tanjung Si Akap (Cape of Si Akap inland from Malacca Town. As capes should have seas, but this ow does not, the advice may imply that Cik Chik would have difficult~ sailing on a mud puddle. She replies in the sixth poem that she can and that he should, head for shore when the going gets rough. To this insult attenuated by a modicum of possible humility, Kin Teck chooses to agree with her by praising himself as a grea swimmer who can always reach the shore. Poetically, his claim i that in dealing with minor poets he can always escape fron

The Deep Sea

23

inadvertent mistakes. Cik Chik finishes off the sequence with the double modalities of advice and raising herself. He is the one to head for the shallows, not her. To make this final boast, she employs a slight variation in the repetition of the pan tun's fourth line, in effect creating a five-line pan tun. 27 The second half of the sequence repeats in the shorter space of the fifth and sixth poems the ring composition pattern of the first four poems while the final two poems state and contradict the modes of speaking humbly and bragging. This increase of tempo through the return to a particular mode across seven, then three, and finally two sequentially presented modes creates a climax which would not be usual in presentations with more singers or with ones less expert.

5 Malay and Baba Aesthetics

The two pantun sequences discussed earlier point out some subtle differences between Malay and Baba aesthetic values. As Tengku Lah Husny has suggested, Malay pantun avoid speaking directly to the question. We have seen how the high-level theme of love in the Rahim-Fatimah poems, although consistently held throughout the sequence, is suggested in the first two poems and is never again directly referenced. Further misdirection is created through scintillating and artful variation in the metaphoric and modal levels. The audience and the competing singers must be constantly alert to these variations, seeking the sense in which they constitute answers to the previous pantun and searching for further variations for the next reply. The viewing of Malay performances clouds even further the direct apprehension of the theme: songs of wretchedness or sea disasters are presented b y singers in glittering clothing and with not unsmiling faces, and the movements of the singers follow the music, but not the lyrics . Each pair of joget dancers faces a different direction. The violin, the drums and gong, and the singer all play tc the greatest extent possible three parts that eventually, almos1 reluctantly meet. Nothing is allowed to point towards the theme. I: pantun are, as Malays assert, the heart of Malay culture, ther Dondang Sayang is its ultimate perfection, for such apparent dis· order can only inhabit an art form in which underlying order i: abundant, however covertly it may be hidden. The Baba presentation ofDondang Sa yang closely follows that o the Malay . The complex music and the poetic form are the same Visually, the newcomer might note that the clothing is less glitter ing, that Baba men do not wear traditional or ethnic clothing whil, singing. More significant differences lie in the use of words anc exploitation of the first couplets .

24

Malay and Baba Aesthetics

25

Babas themselves are quick to point out that Baba Malay is not the same as that spoken by the Malays themselves. This means a slightly restricted Malay vocabulary enriched with some Chinese words and a different pronunciation and use of idioms . Many Babas begin by singing in the Baba dialect at home or with friends. Those who are more ambitious for wider opportunities learn the Malay style, that is, they pronounce their Malay in the local Malay dialect and use rhymes in accord with Malay speech. But these differences are trivial in comparison with the way Baba poets exploit the tajuk system and have introduced innovations in the first couplets of their pan tun. The concept of tajuk is the same for Malay and Baba master singers as are the requirements for deep-meaning pantun. While Malays tend to seek out apt replies, as evident in the Rahim-Fatimah poems, Babas approve of more consistent story lines at the metaphorical level and across the pembayang maksud sections while compounding the number and ambiguity of modes at the lower level. This is a matter of relative emphasis, however, not one of absolute difference. All modal arguments are related to two parts of a single scheme, as set out in Figure 4. The first emphasizes the distinction between giving advice (nasihat) and appealing to fate (nasib). Advice by one singer to another allows the other to improve his standing and therefore qualifies him to praise himself legitimately (tinggi din) or to receive praise (pujian). An appeal to fate is an admission of one's own low state (rendah din) and acquiescence to the rebuke (sindiran) of the opponent. The second part of the scheme is activated by using one of the other four elements . To argue by raising oneself above the other singer implies scorn just as lowering oneself results in indirect praise for the opponent. Conversely, praise for the opponent lowers the singer just as scorn is a way of vaunting oneself. The Kim Teck-Cik Chik poems make these relationships more obvious, but they are not lacking from the Rahim-Fatimah sequence. The second area of distinction between these poem sequences is the relationship between the two couplets, the pembayang maksud

Nl

0">

Figure 4 Modal Subjects (from singer's viewpoint)

Focus on Singer Singer Superior:

Opponent Superior:

Focus on Opponent

tinggi diri ............. sindiran ....... ... . .... nasihat

nasib ......... rendah diri .. .......... pujian

nasib 'fate'; nasihat 'advice'; pujian 'praise'; rendah diri 'lowering (humbling) oneself'; sindiran 'scorn', tinggi diri 'raising oneself (bragging)'.

9

~

~

v.

Malay and Baba Aesthetics

27

and the maksud. Earlier in this century colonial education authorities, desiring to make Malay an examinable subject, set the literary dogmas which they could test. One of these was that there is no necessity for a connection between the two couplets of a pantun. Partly because a major customer for literature books was the school-age reader population, the rule became firmly embedded in written Malay aesthetics. Taking into consideration Tengku Lah Husny's comments, there is a strong suspicion that two Malay groups have made the claim that there is no necessity for semantic connection between the pembayang maksud and the maksud, and that they are doing so for quite different reasons. The first group are themselves not experienced pantun poets of the oral tradition. The second, the poets themselves, take great delight in further deceiving the audience by their gothically intricate embedding of private meamng . The poems by Rahim and Fatimah exemplify how Malay poems have a delicate, semantically important relationship between their couplets. In the first, Rahim compares the surrender of desire to children seeking fruit from Medan (Sumatra). The word medan refers to a plain where battles are fought. The act is at once childish and dangerous. Fatimah then likens her unhappy love to yams, an edible starch, but one not highly valued. The third poem features a mat which is coming to pieces with one that is proper and presentable. In the fourth, Fatimah's love is compared to Rahim's as sackcloth is to silk or as oxen are to horses. In the fifth poem, the people sit in an undignified manner with their feet dangling; cheaper cloth is also less refined than the ideal. The sixth poem again refers to children, this time buying inexpensive shellfish. The latter are compared to money which is treated without respect. In the second last poem, Rahim introduces the image of a mango falling to the base of a plant. This image of falling downward, both of the plant and in birth, is reversed in the last poem in which the children are to reach up for the best fruit and there is an appeal to Allah, the highest authority. In most of these examples, a few words within the

28

Chapter 5

pembayang maksud allude to or develop a more refined meaning in the maksud section. Baba poets insist that both lines of the first couplet must be meaningful and make sense as a pair of lines. There is some reluctance to say that both couplets must share an overall meaning since performance conditions are so strenuous that major poets at times find themselves uttering nonsense. Examining the imagery of their best poems, one consistently detects a positive valuation for clearly related ideas across both couplets. This value results in three possible narrative sequences. In order of frequency these are (1) the series of obligatory answers placed in final couplets, (2) allusions in the first couplets to these answers and suggestions about possible interpretations, and (3) a story-line continuing from one first couplet to the next. The Kim Teck-Cik Chik poems use the pembayang maksud for several purposes not clearly present in the Malay poems. Not least is a desire to show off knowledge of Malay culture and lore about the natural world. In the third poem Cik Chik mentions the nocturnal singing of the bustard-quail and its feeding habits. She goes on to draw the parallel between the safe and satisfying landing of the bustard-quail with her small boat. Kim Teck's response need only be in the final couplet, but he takes up the food challenge as well by pointing out the difference between two subvarieties of mango, enlarging this with a pointer on how to eat them should there be no sugar. The parallel with the second couplet is that he knows that her boat is in a bad condition because he is a person who knows how to make distinctions. If he were sailing it, he would have alternatives for warding off disaster. The implication is that she has none. These kinds of meaning within poems and between first couplets exist throughout the sequence. The difference between what I have called "Malay" pantun and " Baba" poems is that the latter tend to emphasize the entire first couplet whereas the Malay poems find their connection with the maksud in a few words, most often the rhyme words, in one or both pembayang maksud lines. Baba sequences also show a greater interest in esoteric lore.

Malay and Baba Aesthetics

29

The point here is not that one aesthetic system is superior and the other inferior, that one produces "good" poems and the other "bad" poems, because this is simply not true. The fact is that there are two value systems among Malay singers who sometimes class themselves as "Malay" and sometimes as "Baba". Malay Dondang Sayang presents an image of smoothness and purposeful misdirection. The motion of the dancers and singers is a non-focused, continually swaying vision of space filled with curving lines and words . The singers' voices are smooth without bursts oflouder or softer sounds interrupting the flow of words. And neither the sounds nor the movements are affected by the subject matter of the poems. The poems emphasize the discontinuity between the overt image and the covert meaning with a marginally public connection between the pantun's couplets. Their brilliance comes from the perfect expression of ideas in the final couplets and allusions hidden in the first. Pan tun become the epitome of measured speech, but nonetheless a communication which deliberately directs the listener away from the meamng. Baba contributions to Dondang Sayang are several. Pantun are sung with what Low has called a "melodic voice". The volume, the tone, the phrasing are explosive. Some Baba singers can also perform· in the smoother Malay style of singing, but the terse, abrupt style has come to be associated with Babas and, in particular, the Babas of Malacca and Singapore. Baba aesthetics further require a much narrower definition of sticking to a subject at the high and middle levels while stacking one argumentative mode on top of another and ~xploiting ambiguities of personal reference. The result is debate and drama enriched by knowledge about Malay culture and the seafaring and agricultural world of the Malay peninsula. It is a fierce and lively contest of wit and learned verse recalling the competitive, scholastic explications of the Chinese literary tradition now sharpened into a tigerish art.

30

Notes

NOTES 1 Interview , 1982. See also, Za'ba, Kalong Bunga, Buku I (Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1964), p. 86, in which the first two lines are: Burung cecawi di pokok sena I pokok tinggi dahannya rendah. 2

This essay is one of a series aimed at an analysis of Malay oral poetry . Others are: "Syair and Pan tun Prosody", Indonesia, no . 27 (April 1979) : 51--63; "Long and Short Pan tun Lines" , Review of Indonesian and Malayan Affairs 14, no. 1 (1980): 23-39; "Anonymous Malay Poetry", Pacific Quarterly Moana 7, no . 2 (April1982): 60--70; "The Malay Pan tun: A Problem of Redundancy", Indonesia Circle, no. 33 (March 1984): 15-22; "Phonology and Semantic Suppression in Malay Pantun", Semiotica 57, no 1/2 (1985): 87-99; and Malay Poetics (forthcoming) .

3

Babas are also known as Peranakan or Straits-born Chinese. Some works on the Baba Chinese are: John R. Clammer, The Ambiguity of Identity: Ethnicity Maintenance and Change Among the Straits Chinese Community of Malaysia and Singapore, Occasional Paper No . 54 (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1979); and Straits Chinese Society: Studies in the Sociology of the Baba Communities of Malaysia and Singapore (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1980); Tan Chee-Beng, "Baba Chinese, Non-Baba Chinese and M alays: A Note on Ethnic Interaction in Malacca" , Southeast Asian journal of Social Science 7, no. 1-2 (1979): 20--29; "Baba M alay", journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society JMBRAS) 53, no. 1 (1980): 150--66; "Baba Chinese Publication in Romanized Malay", journal of Asian and Africian Studies, no. 22 (1981): 158-93; and "Mengenai Sebuah Pantun Baba dan Perkahwinan Dulu-kala Orang Cina", Jumal Sejarah Melaka, no. 7 (1982): 42-53; Queeny Chang, Memories of a Nonya (Singapore: Eastern Universities Press, 1981); Felix Chia, The Babas (Singapore: Times Books International, 1980) , and Ala Sa yang! A Social History of Babas and Nyonyas (Singapore: Eastern Universities Press, 1983); Ruth Ho, Rainbow Round My Shoulder (Singapore: Eastern Universities Press , 1975) ; and Katharine Sim, Flowers of the Sun, 2nd. edition (Singapore: Eastern Universities Press, 1982). 4

Penang Babas who now sing Dondang Sayang do not speak Malay as their sole home language, unlike those of Malacca and Singapore. The Penang Dondang Sa yang Club was formally established in 1954 by a small group of enthusiasts who had met informally a few years earlier at the home of the late Madam Yew Beng Guat. See note 17 below. 5

Until a forthcoming account by Vivienne Wee, the following is a provisional description as seen by the singer: the violin plays the melody and elusively cues the singer who performs the harmony . An elaborated tempo is maintained by the drum while the gong indicates poetic and musical closure at the end of the pan tun's

Notes

31

postcaesural half lines. New singers find the violin's cueing phrases impossible to grasp, and numerous stories are told of lapses by major singers. An analysis of the music together with an excellent selection of texts appears in the B.A . (Hons.) thesis by Low Kim Chuan, "Dondang Sayang in Melaka" (Monash University, 1976). The few available collections of pan tun outside of Don dang Sa yang do not give the names of their poets. Don dang Sa yang pan tun, in contrast, are mainly published by their "authors", who are usually Babas and, less frequently, Malays. Even so, these authors are more properly called "editors" as all Dondang Sayang pantun are said to be anonymously created . Singers are said to "have many pan tun" . These are ones they can perform with modifications required by the immediate context . Poets vigorously disclaim that they have created the poems, but will admit that they have improved on already existing ones. It is thus not possible to collect a major poet's ten best poems. For the problem of authorship, see my "Anonymous Malay Poetry", Pacific Quarterly Moana 7, no 2 (1982): 60-70. Malay pantun from Malacca are discussed by Alias Yunos in Pantun Melayu- Sastera Ra'ayat (Kuala Lumpur: Federal, 1966) . In contrast to the surface anarchy of Dondang Sayang is the attempt at unity described by Rahmah Bujang in "The Boria: A Study of a Malay Theatre in its Socio- Cultural Context" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Hull, 1977), pp. 215-16: "The song and dance keep time with the rhythm of the music accompaniment. The regularity of the song pattern- a four-lined stanza with about 14 to 20 stanzas per song - and the liveliness of the synchronized dance steps give the sequence a high regularity of movement. The three elements of music, song, and dance work together to create a simultaneous unity to this part of the show (the second part which is a song and dance section with the tukang karang leading a chorus of'sailors'). The uniform costume of the choral group with shirts and sash of bright shimmering satin contrasts with their sombre black or blue trousers. At rest, this accentuates the image of regularity; in motion it creates a kaleidoscopic effect." 6

The term "subject" is used technically by Peranakan poets speaking in English about their poems . I have reserved the term " topic" for its usual linguistic sense. Dondang Sayang poets have few technical terms for their craft, and many that are passively known come from reading books about pantun. The term "filler" is my own. 7

For a description of Malacca Chitties and Babas, seeK. Narinasamy, "The Melaka Chitties", in Kernial Singh Sandhu and Paul Wheatley, eds., Melaka : The Transformation of a Malay Capital, c. 1400-1980 (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press , 1983), vol. 2, pp. 239-63, and, in the same volume, John Clammer, "The Straits Chinese in Melaka" , pp. 156-73. 8

Kassim Ahmad, ed., Hikayat Hang Tuah, Siri Sastera DBP Bil. 17 (Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1973); and Raja Ali ai-Haji, Silsilah Melayu dan Bugis,

32

Notes

edited by Arena Wati (Kuala Lumpur: Pustaka Antara, 1973); and Rajah Haji Ahmad and Raja Ali Haji, Tuhfat al-Nafis, edited by Virginia Matheson (Kuala Lumpur: Fajar Bakti, 1982) . This appears in the English translation, with annotations, as Raja Ali Haji Ibn Ahmad, The Precious Gift: Tuhfat al-Nafis, translated by Virginia Matheson and Barbara Watson Andaya (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1982). In 1776, Thomas Forrest reported that he presented a violin to the Rajah Muda of Magindinao. The Rajah Muda's wife, Potely Pyak (daughter of the Sultan of Tukoran) "spoke good Malay and was fond of singing a Malay stanza, which I had the honour of teaching her." Thomas Forrest, A Voyage to N e w Guinea and the Moluccas, from Balambangan: Including an Account of Magindanao, Sooloo and Other Islands; Performed in the Tartar Galley belonging to the Honourable East India Company during the Years 1774, 1775, and 1776, 2nd. edition (London, 1780); reprinted in Travel Accounts of the Islands (1513-1787), vol. 19 (Manila: Filipiniana Book Guild, 1971), pp . 209-361, especially pp. 310-17. 9

Hikayat Hang Tuah, pp . 50, 132-33, and 159-60. The latter contains a five-poem tingg i diri sequence. 10

Silsilah, p. 4, and sections 13.16 - 13.21.

11 ThePrecious Gift, 206.1, 208.11 , and 218. 11. David). Goldsworthy, in "Melayu Music of North Sumatra" (Ph. D . dissertation, Monash University, 1979) , discusses various ronggeng or joget conventions in Sumatra and Malaya . 12

The Precious Gift, 306.1.

13 The Precious Gift, 423.1 and 440. 1. A similar identification of pan tun singing with un-Islamic behaviour has been responsible for the paucity of Dondang Sa yang in Malacca since the mid-1970s . A parallel example of the conflict between "unserious" cultural performances and "serious" religious and political reform is discussed by James L. Peacock in " Symbolic Reversal and Social History: Transvestites and Clowns of Java", in The Reversible World: Symbolic Inversion in Art and Society, edited by Barbara A . Babcock (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1978), pp. 209-24, especially p . 219 . 14

T .J. N ewbold, British Settlements in the Straits ofMalacca, vol. 2 (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1971 [1839]) , p . 348. Vivienne Wee' s field notes record in Riau a mention of "Gunong Sa yang" . In a reply to Y eoh Seng Hoe, Khor Chean Kee (in "Enchanting Memories ofRonggeng Singers", Star, 30June 1984), reports that Khoo Moh Suan ofPenang claims that the tune "Dondang Sayang" "in Penang was known as ' Gunung Sayang in Malacca"' before World War II . 15

B . A. Hussainmiya, "The Rise and Fall of Malay Literature in Sri Lanka" , Paper delivered at the International Symposium on Traditional Malay Literature (Bangi:

Notes

33

Jabatan Persuratan Melayu, Universiti Kebangsaan, 4-6 November 1982), pp. 14 and 29, n. 22. Another example of extemporaneous pan tun sung to a Dondang Sa yang orchestra and which incorporates joget is "Serampang Laut". In a version sung by Rahim Jantan and S. Fauziah, on the same tape as the Rahim-Fatimah sequence in Appendix A, is the fifth pantun by Rahim: (!.a) Anak itik I I (1. b) memakan dedak, (2.a) Anak ayam II (2.b) memakan padi; (3.a) Rupa cantik, I I (3. b) wajah pun sajak, (4.a) Pandai pun pulak I I (4. b) memikat hati. This becomes a six-line poem with two fillers or half-line repetitions whose positions are marked in bold print: (!.a) Anak itik I I (1. b) memakan dedak; (l.b) Memakan dedak II (2.a) anak ayam II (2.b) memakan padi; (2.aiF) Dendang-dendang ll (2.b) memakan padi; D. (3.a) Rupa cantik I I (3. b) wajah pun sajak; E. (3.b) Wajah pun sajak II (4.a) pandai pun pulak II (4. b) memikat hati; F. (FI4.a) Pandai pun pulak II (4.b) memikat hati. Fillers in this sequence are 1) dendang-dendang; 2) ah-lah sayang; or 3) the precaesural hemistich of the second or fourth lines. Like Dondang Sayang's third-line fillers, "Serampang Laut" fillers cumulatively equal one full metric line. A.

B. C.

16

Muhammad Rakawi bin Yusuf, Melati Sarawak [Sarawak Jasmine], 2nd. edition (Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1980 [1932)). Further details come from Rosenah Haji Ahmad of the Sarawak Literary Society. Gendang Perempuan, now known as Gendang Melayu Sarawak, features occasional pantun dialogues though today few m en are as competent as the women. The pantun of this art form employ line repetitions, fillers, and the nasalization of initial glottal stops. The last is also a feature of many Dondang Sa yang presentations in Malacca and Singapore. 17

Y eoh Seng Hoe and Khoo Phee Tuan provided the information and background research on the CADA. Its premises were located at No . 56, Transfer Road, Penang. 18

Many of Singapore Broadcasting Corporation's pantun are anonymously provided and edited by Malim Osman, violinist and leader of the Orkes Aslirama . Malim's pantun have pembayang maksud which show keen insight into the Malay world of Singapore. His contributions are generally unknown as few violinists attempt to sing while playing. 19

Pembayang maksud 'foreshadower of the intention' and maksud 'intention' are names for the first and second couplets of a pan tun. The terms are not in general use by Dondang Sayang poets .

34

Note5

2

°For examples of pantun berikat empat puluh and pantun berkait, see Mohd. AI bin Hitam, Mininjau Pantun Melayu Lama di-Pedalaman Dungun, Terenggam (Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1967); and Abdul Kadir bin Ahmad Pantun Berkait (Singapore: Malaysia Publications, 1964).

21

This three-tier system represents the bottom of a much larger poetic categoriza. \ tion: -shaped speech -verse - stanzaic poems -single-stanza poems -pan tun -pantun sequences -ex~hanged pantun -sung pantun -Dondang Sayang 22

Personal communication from Medan, dated 17 April 1982. Tengku H.M. La] Husny refers to poems with this tajuk as pantun politik, and suggests tha plain-language pantun lack an essential quality possessed by good Malay pantun For ethnographic examples, see his Langgam dan Pantun pada Upacara Perkawina. Menurut Adat Malayu di Sumatera Timur (Medan: Husny, 1977), pp. 9 and 15. !1 his book, Seni Bina Tari Tradisionil dan Pantun/Kuntai Melayu Sumatera Timu (Medan: Husny, 1977) , Tengku Lah Husny equates pantun politik with pantu berbisa (potent pan tun), p. 33. On p. 20 of the same work, he says that dancing i done in Medan to a tune called "Gunung Sa yang" . Poem 3 in Appendix D is a example of the Husny level. From this point onward, the poems also refer to Gwe Peng Kwee as the "old tiger" . 23

0ut of context, this poem is a traditional dagang (trader) poem, expressing th loneliness of the wanderer-trader far from his home village. 24

Proverbs and sayings (bidalan), according to Singapore Broadcasting Corporatio (SBC) rules for pantun contests, earn extra points. These rules may be influenced b Baba aesthetics as SBC has a close consultative relationship with leading Bat: smgers. 25

Challenge sequences appear early in the evening with the introduction of ne• singers or as reactions to bad singers who should be better. Boon Kuan Fah tells story that when he was a child in Malacca his father, who was not known to be ab to sing Dondang Sayang, attended a wedding. He was so repelled by the poe singing of a group that he interrupted their performance with a pan tun of his ow which suggested somewhat tersely that if they could do no better they should lea\

Notes

35

the stage. Malacca sing er Ain on Idrus, reco unting her debut as a singer beside Baba Kim T eck, says she w as terrified even before the singing bega n because he had already m ade a few comments abo ut how little girls should no t pres ume to sit by the experts. T errified or not, she promptly m ade her w ay amon g the g rand m asters of Malacca and was highly praised by Kim Teck after the sessio n . 26

For a similar sequence, see R.J. Wilkinson and R.O . Winstedt, Pantun Melayu, 4th . editi on (Singapore: M alaya Publishin g House, 1961 [1914]) , no. 846--76 . 27

Altern ati vel y, th e repetitio n o f th e las t co uplet (lines F and G) m ay have been sung by Kim T eck or by Kim T cck and C ik Chik to gether as a way o f endin g the sequ ence.

Appendices

37

Appendix A

Dondang Sayang sung by Rahim Jantan and Fatimah Adan. Kuala Lumpur: Bunga Emas - B1112. Side A . Tempo = 77. Time = 13 min. 34 sec. Transcription assistance was provided by Boon Kuan Fah, Gwee Peng K wee, Malim Osman, and William Tan. Sources for corrections: Atlas Kebangsaan Malaysia [AKM] (Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1977); Betty Molesworth Allen, Common Malaysian Fruits (Kuala Lumpur: Longman, 1975); H. F. Chin and H. S. Yong, Malaysian Fruits in Colour (Kuala Lumpur: Tropical Press, 1980); and Kamus Dewan [KD] (Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1970); Za'ba, Kalong Bunga, Buku I (Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1964).

KASIH Poem 1 Rahim Jantan: A. Budak-budak ke Tanjung Jati, B. Hendak mengambil si buah Medan, C. Budak-budak ke Tanjung Jati; D. Jangan diikut kehendak hati, kawan ramai E. Nescaya rosak lab rosak anggota badan; F. ]angan diikut kehendak hati, Cik Timab seorang G. Nescaya rosak lab badan anggota badan. (Interjection by Rahim) Ya. Ya, jawablah.

39

40

Appendix A

Children go to Cape Jati, To get the fruit of Medan, Children go to Cape Jati; Don't follow your heart's desire, Your body will certainly be ruined; Don't follow your heart's desire, Your body will certainly be ruined. (Interjection by Rahim) OK, answer now. NOTES (A4) medang? See KD. (B4) Boon and Tan: Fruit from Medan? Boon: you must have self-control.

Poem 2 Fatimah Adan: A. Dari Gersik ke Surabaya, B. Singgah mengambil ubi keladi, C . Dari Gersik ke Surabaya; D . Sudah nasib malangnya saya, ah lah sayang E. Tidaklah boleh lah lagi diubah lagi; (Interjection by Rahim) ... macam. F. Sudah nasib malangnya saya, dondang sayang G. Tidaklah boleh lah lagi diubah lagi. (Interjection by Rahim) Dengarlah ja wab, ya! (Interjection by Fatimah) Silakan. Going from Gersik to Surabaya, Stop to take some yams, Going from Gersik to Surabaya; My wretchedness has been fated, Nothing can be changed; My wretchedness has been fated, Nothing can be changed. (Interjection by Rahim) Listen to the answer, OK? (Interjection by Fatimah) Go ahead.

Appendix A

41

NOTES (ABCD) Gwee: An old poem . (A2) Or Gerisek, Johore (AKM). Boon: It's all fated . She ignores the advice .

Poem 3 Rahim Jantan: A. Kajang tuan kajang berlipat, B. Kajang saya mengkuang layu, C. Kajang tuan kajang berlipat; D . Dagang tuan dagang bertempat, kawan ramai E. Daganglah saya lab lalu terbuang lalu; F. Dagang tuan dagang bertempat, ab lab dendang G. Daganglah saya lab lalu terbuang lalu. (Interjection by Fatimah) Kasihan. (Interjection by Rahim) Dan nasib apa nak kata? Your mat is well pleated, Mine has frayed leaves, Your mat is well pleated; Your trade has its place, Mine has been cast away; Your trade has its place, Mine has been cast away. (Interjection by Fatimah) It's a pity. (Interjection by Rahim) And what can be said about fate? NOTES (C2) saya. (ABCD) Za'ba, p . 152; Gwee: An old poem . Gwee: (An answering maksud) Dadang pandai membawa diri;/ Di mana pergi dikasihan orang. If you know how to conduct yourself, people will show mercy. Boon: My fate is worse; 1 have no place to stay.

42

Appendix A

Poem 4 Fatimah Adan: A. Kereta kuda kereta lembu, B. Singgah berhenti Pengkalan Rama, C. Kereta kuda kereta lembu; D. Tuan sutera, saya belacu, dondang sayang Ku takut tidak lab sama menjadi sama; E. (Interjection by Rahim) Boleh-sama itu. Tuan sutera, saya belacu, dondang sayang F. G. Ku takut tidak lab sama menjadi sama. (Interjection by Fatimah) Jawab, Cik Rahim . (Interjection by Rahim) Boleh. Dengar, ya. (Interjection by Fatimah) N ga. Horse-carts, ox-carts, Stop in at Pengkalan Rama, Horse-carts, ox-carts; You are silk, I am sackcloth, I fear I am not your equal; (Interjection by Rahim) Yes, it's possible. We're the same. You are silk, I am sackcloth, I fear I am not your equal. (Interjection by Fatimah) Answer, Mr. Rahim. (Interjection b y Rahim) I can. Just listen. (Interjection by Fatimah) Go ahead. NOTES (B3-4) AKM: A place in Malacca State. (B3-4) Boon: Any popular jetty. (D) Tan: How can we mix?

Poem 5 Rahim Jantan: A. Ramai-ramai duduk di perigi, B. Duduk kerusi kaki dijuntai, C. Ramai-ramai duduk di perigi;

Appendix A

43

D. Sungguh cantik sutera di luji, kawan sayang E. Belacu juga lah juga elok dipakai; F. Sungguh cantik sutera di luji, Cik Timah seorang G. Belacu juga lah juga boleh dipakai. (Interjection by Fatimah) Sungguh ... ? (Interjection by Rahim) Hai. Betul ni. Boleh jawab? (Interjection by Fatimah) Boleh.

Many sit merrily at the well, Sit on a chair, feet dangling, Many sit merrily at the well; Though silk is pretty in the trading post, Sackcloth is also good to wear; Though silk is pretty in the trading post, Sackcloth can also be worn. (Interjection by Fatimah) Is that right? (Interjection by Rahim) What? It's right. Can you answer? (Interjection by Fatimah) I can. NOTES (D) Tan: "1 support the poor". Sackcloth is always used at funerals. Silk need never be used. (DF4) Gwee: dipuji?

Poem 6 Fatimah Adan: A. Ramai orang pergi seberang, B. Budak-budak membeli kerang, C. Ramai orang pergi seberang; D. Ibarat tuan ringgit berlobang, dondang sayang E. Dicampur gaullah orang dipilih orang; (Interjection by Rahim) Yakah? F. Ibarat tuan ringgit berlobang, dondang sayang G. Dicampur gaullah orang dipilih orang. (Interjection by Fatimah) Jawab, Cik Rahim? (Interjection by Rahim) Boleh. Dengar, ya.

44

Appendix A

Many people cross the river, Children buy cockles, Many people cross the river; You are like money with holes, Mixed and handled, peo ple choose it; (Interj ection by Rahim) Oh, is that right? You are like money with holes, Mixed and handled, people choose it. (Interjection by Fatimah) Can you answer, Mr Rahim? (Interjection by Rahim) I can. Just listen . NOTES (OF) O lder peo ple und ers tand this as C hinese cash; yo un ger people as wo rn paper money. Some sugges t that the mon ey is co unterfeit or damaged, o r that it is pierced so that it can be used as a button. Gwee : Yo u are no t readil y accepted. M alim : Sungguh hina, jadi berguna .

Poem 7 Rahim Jantan: A. Buah bacang buah kuini, B. jatuh sebiji pangkal mengkudu, C. Buah bacang buah kuini; D . Kalau ku tahu semacam ini, sobat ramai E. Tidak ku lahir lab ibu di perut ibu; (Interjection by Fatimah) M erajukkah? (Interjection by Rahim) Tidak . Kalau ku tahu semaca m ini, Cik Timab sorang .F. G. Tidak ku lahir lab ibu di p erut ibu . (Interjection by Rahim) Apa macam? Boleh jawab? (Interj ection by Fatimah) Jawa b, ya. (Interjection by Rahim) Silakan. Horse mango, wild mango, One falls at the base of the m en g kudu plant, Horse mango, wild m an go;

Appendix A

45

If I knew it was like this, I would never have been born in my mother's womb; (Interjection by Fatimah) Are you sulking? (Interjection by Rahim) No. If I knew it was like this, I would never have been born in my mother's womb. (Interjection by Rahim) Can you answer? (Interjection by Fatimah) Answer? Sure. (Interjection by Rahim) Go ahead .

NOTES (ABCD) Tan: (an answer) Tinggi-tinggi bukit Selegi,l Hutan darat ditanam pala;/ Apa tuan nak scsak lagi?l Suratan sudah di atas k epala, "Your fate is already written on your forehead". Gwee: (an answer) Membuang jala di ujung taJijung,l Dapat seckor ikan kerapu;/ Bukan salah ibu berkandung, / Permintaan sudah dari dahulu, "It was fated from the beginning". (Al-2) Mangifera foetida; see Chin and Yang, p. 13; Allen, p. 4. (A3-4) Mangifera odorata; see Chin and Yang, p. 15; Allen, p . 4. (B4) KD: Mordinda. Transcription of interjections doubtful.

Poem 8 Fatimah Adan: A . Budak-budak membawa galah, B. Hendak menjolok si buah jati, (Interjection by Rahim) Baik-baik. C. Budak-budak membawa galah; D. Kita di bawah perintah Allah, Cik Rahim seorang (Interjection by Rahim) Betul. Betul. E. Tidak boleh lah lagi diubah lagi; (Interj ection by Rahim) K uasa Allah, hendak. F. Kita di bawah perintah Allah, dondang sayang G. Tidaklah boleh lah lagi diubahlah lagi. (Interjection by Rahim) Betul-betul.

46

Appendix A

Children are carryin g a pole, Going to knock down the jati fruit , (Interj ection b y Rahim) V ery good. Children are carrying a pole; We are under Allah's rule, (Interjectio n by Rahim) Right. Right. Nothing can be changed; (Interjectio n by Rahim) With the power of Allah, it can. We are under Allah 's rule, Nothing can be changed . (Interjectio n by Rahim) That's right. NOTES Gwee: (a possible reply) Wang dan ringgit p erintah dunia,/ Allah ta 'ala perintah langit, "Money rules the world and almig hty Allah the heavens ".

Appendix B

The following pantun sequence is taken from Low Kim Chuan, "Dondang Sayang in Melaka" (B.A. Hons . thesis, Monash University, 1976), pp. 61-64. Singers: Chik Mohammad Amin and Baba Chia Kim Teck. Performed for RTM, Malacca, 1974. 12 minutes, 3. 7 seconds. Tempo = 80 (Low gives the tempo as 160). Based on Low's transcription and translation . Sources for corrections: Low, first pantun from recordings accompanying thesis; Gwee Peng Kwee, William Tan, Malim Osman; Betty Molesworth Allen, Common Malaysian Fruits (Kuala Lumpur: Longman, 1975); Atlas Kcbangsaan Malaysia [AKM] (Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1977); H.F. Chin and H.S. Y ong, Malaysian Fruits in Colour (Kuala Lumpur: Tropical Press, 1980); A. G. Glenister, The Birds of the Malay Peninsula, Singapore & Penang (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1971); Horridge, The Prahu: Traditional Sailing Boat of Indonesia (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1981); Kamus Dewan [KD] (Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1970); Mohd. Rakawi bin Yusuf, Melati Sarawak, 2nd. ed . (Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1980); Scholiast on Low's thesis (Sc.]; Bertram E. Smythies, The Birds of Borneo (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1960); and Wilkinson and Winstedt (WW], Pantun Melayu (Singapore: Malaya Publishing House, 1961 (1914]) .

47

AppendixB

48

GELOMBANG (LA UTAN) Poem 1 Chik Mohammad Amin: A. Sayang Cik (ng)Ali anak Cik Daud, B. Hutang yang banyak tidak terbayar, C. Sayang Cik (ng)Ali anak Cik Daud; D. Gelombang besar di tengah ]aut, ab lab dendang E. Perahu kechi] berlayar bolehkah berlayar? (Interjection by Baba Chia Kim Teck) Boleh. F. Gelombang besar di tengah ]aut, ab lab kawan G . Perahu kechi] berlayar boleh berlayar? Poor Ali, Daud's son, For great debts, paying's impossible, Poor Ali, Daud's son; Great breakers in mid-sea, With a small boat is sailing possible? (Interjection by Baba Chia Kim Teck) It's possible. Great breakers in mid-sea, With a small boat is sailing possible?

NOTES The recording announces the tajuk as gelombang. (Al-2) applause in recording; Low: anak Cik ng(Ali). (Bl) Low: hutangnya. (Cl) Low: anak. (CD) Malim: "I have few pantun; perhaps I shouldn't sing". (F) Low: ah lah dendang. (G4) Low: bolehkah. Low: The children of Mr Ali and Mr Daud,/ Have numerous debts which they cannot repay./ There are great waves in the middle of the sea, (Oh sing a song) / Can a small boat sail (on the sea)?

Poem 2 Baba Chia Kim Teck: A. Baik-baik berlayar malam, B. Arusnya deras karangnya tajam, C. Baik-baik berlayar malam;

49

AppendixB

D. E. F.

G.

Baik gua cari malim yang Di sini banyak tenggelam Baik gua cari malim yang Di sini banyak tenggelam

faham, chik sayang kapal tenggelam; faham, Chik sayang kapal tenggelam.

Sail cautiously at night, The current's strong, the corals sharp, Sail cautiously at night; I'd best seek a knowledgeable pilot, Here ships often sink; I'd best seek a knowledgeable pilot, Here ships often sink .

NOTES (Al-2) Low: baik, baik. (B3) Tan; Low: parangnya; Sc .: keris . (C2) Malim: dicari. Low: Be careful when you sail at night, / The current is fast, the machete is sharp,/ I'd better find an experienced navigator (Dear Chik),/ As many ships have been sunk here.

Poem 3 Chik Mohammad Amin: A. Burung puyuh berbunyi malam, B. Turun di pantai memakan kerang, C. Burung puyuh berbunyi malam; D . Sungguh banyak kapal tenggelam, Kim Teck sayang, E. Perahu kecil tenggelam tidakkan tenggelam;, F. Sungguh banyak orang tenggelam, Kim Teck sayang, G. Perahu kecil tenggelam tak takut karam; (Interjection by Baba Chia) Banyak berani. The night-singing bustard-quail, Lands on the beach to eat cockles, The night-singing bustard-quail; Though ships often sink,

My small boat won't Though people often This small boat fears (Interjection by Baba

sink. sink, not foundering . Chia) You're a brave one.

N OTES (A2) KD: Tumix suscitator atrogularis; Smythies, p. 165: co wmix chin cnsis (Linnacu s); Glenister, pp. 43-44: Tumicidae, Barred Bustard Quail. (G3) Tan; Low: tidak. Low: The bustard-quail sings at ni gh t, I It goes down to the beach to eat shellfish . I Although m any ships have sunk (Dear Kim Teck) , I (F) Although many people have drown ed (Dea r Kim Teck), I (G) This small boat w ill not fea r being wrecked . Interj ec tion: Oh yo u are very brav e.

Poem 4 Chia Kim Teck: A . Buah kedondong buah cemp edak , B. Tidak gula celupkan garam , C. Buah kedondong buah cempedak; D: Perahu Cik puan papan dah kopak, ah-lah sayang, Sikit salah kararn takut dikaram;, · E. Perahu Cik puan papan dah kopak, ah-lah sayang, F. Sikit salah kararn takut dikaram, . G. (Interjection by Chik) Lu mana tahu? Ho g plum and chempedak, Use sugar or dip in salt, Hog plum and chempedak; Your boat has rotten board s, One small error and I fea r it'll sink. (Interj ection by Chik) How do you know? Your boat has rotten boards, One small error and I fear it'll sink.

Appendix B

51

NOTES (Al-2) Spondias cytherea; see Chin and Yong, p. 40. (A3-4) Artocarpus integer; see Chin and Yong, p. 27; and Allen, pp. 25-26. (A4) Sc., Malim, and Tan; Low: kcdempak . (04) Low: dia karam . Low: Kedondong (hog-plum) fruit, the kedempak (herbal) fruit,/ If you have no sugar, dip it in salt./ The planks of your boat are cracked (Oh, what a pity), / If someone has committed a fault, I'm afraid the boat will sink . I Interjection: How do you know? Tan: a nasihat response to Pan tun 3 .

[One poem missing?]

Poem 5 Chia Kim Teck: A. Baik-baik berlayar cepat, B. Tali-mali semua mahu lengkap, C. Baik-baik berlayar cepat; D. Kalau kau tempuh lautan Si Akap, timang payung E. Ombaknya pukul kawan tangkap menangkap; F. Kalau kau tempuh lautan Si Akap, timang payung G. Ombaknya pukul kawan tangkap menangkap. It's best to sail quickly, Ropes and lines, all are ready, It's best to sail quickly; If you cross Si Akap's sea, The waves will strike, splashing on every side; If you cross Si Akap's sea, The waves will strike, splashing on every side. NOTES (Al-2) Low: baik, baik. (A4) Low: kekam; KD: kekat?; WW: girap?; Sc., and Horridge, plate 24: kolek. (Bl) Gwee and Tan; Rakawi, p. 9: tali-temali; Low: tadi pagi (C2) Low: kau tempoh. (04) Tan: sea where siakap fish are often caught; AKM: Tanjung Si Akap, an inland place in Malacca State; Low: siakap. Low : The debris floats on the sea,/ Everything must be ready by this morning. I If you wish to obtain some sea-perches now, (Weighing an umbrella),/ The waves on the sea are crashing to and fro.

52

Appendix B

Poem 6 Chik Mohammad Amin: A. Kalau kail ikan siakap, B. Dapat seekor rendam di air, C. Kalau kail ikan siakap; D. Gelombang besar tangkap-menangkap, Kirn Teck sayang E. Main di pantai rnain air di tepi air; F. Gelombang besar tangkap-menangkap, Kirn Teck sayang G. Lari ke tepi pantai web air di tepi air. When casting for sea-perch, Having caught one, keep it m water, When casting for sea-perch; If great breakers splash on every side, Play on the beach beside the water; If great breakers splash on every side, Run to the beach beside the water. NOTES (CD) a variant by Gwee: Ombak singgah melambung perahu ,/ Perahu tak karam, ombak berderai. (G) hypermetric. Low: If you bait for a sea-perch,/ You might get a water-python instead ./ The big waves swirl and froth (Dear Kim Teck),/ (We) play on the beach by the water./ We run to the water's edge.

Poem 7 Chia Kim Teck: A . ·Nampaknya jalan tergedek-gedek, (Interjection by Chik) Apa itu? Orangkah itek? (Interjection by Baba Chia) Itek tak apalah! B. Kalau tak salah si anak itek, C . Nampaknya jalan tergedek-gedek; D. Kalau gua karam di tempat cetek, Chik sayang E. Boleh senang balik berenang kan balik; F. Kalau gua karam di tempat cetek, Chik sayang G. Boleh senang balik berenang kan balik.

AppendixB

53

The walking looks like waddling, (Interjection by Chik) How's that? Is a duck a person? (Interjection by Baba Chia) What's wrong with a duck? No doubt it's a duckling, If shipwrecked in the shallows, It'll be easy to swim back; If shipwrecked in the shallows, It'll be easy to swim back. NOTES (A3-4) Tan; Low: gedeh-gedeh. Low: It waddles as it walks. (Interjection by Chik) What is it? Is it a man or a duck? And Baba Chia's answer: If it's a duckling, then it's all right. I If I'm not mistaken, it's a duckling. I If I founder in the shallows (Dear Cik), I can easily swim back .

Poem 8 Chik Mohammad Amin: A. Buah bacang, buah kuini, B. Bawa orang ke Air Molek, C. Buah bacang, buah kuini; D. ]angan lu pandang gua macam ini, Kim Teck sayang E. Baik kau balik cetek di tempat cetek; (Interjection by Baba Chia) Wah! Ikutkah cakap aku! F. Jangan lu pandang gua macam ini, Kim Teck sayang G. Gua tak balik cetek di tempat cetek. Horse mango, wild mango People take them to Air Molek, Horse mango, wild mango; Don't look at me like that, It's best you return from the shallows; (Interjection by Baba Chia) Wow! You're usmg my words! Don't look at me like that, I won't have to return from the shallows.

54

Appendix B

NOTES (A1-2) Mangifera foetida ; see Chin and Yong, p . 13; and Allen, p . 4. (A3-4) Mangifera odorata; see Chin and Yong, p. 15; and Allen, p.4. (B1) Gwee, Malim , Tan; Low: wang. (B3-4) Gwee & AKM: name of a town; Low: air molek. (FG) Tan: Possibly sung by Chia. Low: Horse-mango and wild mango fruits, I Pour us some sweet scented water./ You must not underestimate me (Dear Kim Teck) ,/ You'd better return to the shallows. (Interjection by Chia: You are imitating my style!) I (G) I will not return to the shallows.

Appendix C

Performance at the residence of Mr Gwee Peng K wee of Singapore, 19 October 1982. Music by the Orkes Aslirama under the direction of Malim Osman. Tempo = 57. Transcription assistance by William Tan and Gwee Peng K wee.

LAUTAN Poem 1 Lee Yok Poh: A. Pukul tujuh pukul delapan, B. Pukul encik keliling kota, C. Pukul tujuh pukul delapan; D. Cuaca baik angin selatan, ah lab ramal E. Angkat sauh kita belayar lah kita; F. Cuaca pun baik angin selatan, dindang sayang G. Angkat sauh kita belayar lah kita. Seven o'clock, eight o'clock, Time to stroll around the city, Seven o'clock, eight o'clock; Weather's good, wind's from the South, Lift the anchor, let's go sailing; Weather's good, too; wind's from the South, Lift the anchor, let's go sailing . Poem 2 Gwee Peng K wee: A. Duduk beraut sebatang kalam, B. Kalam diraut anak Melayu,

55

Appendi:x C

56

C. D. E. F. G.

Duduk beraut sebatang kalam; Mintalah redup lautan dalam, ah lah dendang sayang Perahu kecil lalu menumpang lalu; Minta redup lautan dalam, ah lah dendang sayang Perahu lah kecil lalu menumpang lalu.

Sit carving a reed stalk, The reed is carved by a Malay, Sit carving a reed stalk; Entreating the darkening deep sea, My small craft makes its way; Entreating the darkening deep sea, My small craft makes its way. NOTES (ABCDEFG) edited by Gwee. (F1) Gwee: dimintak.

Poem 3 Cik Fatimah [Saleha Yakob]: A. Kelotak kelapa buangkan sabut, B . Hendak dibawa pergi ke hulu, C. Kelotak kelapa buangkan sabut; D. Lautan sedang dipukul ribut, ah lah kawan ramai E. Hendak ke laut lah dulu sabar lah dulu; F. Lautan sedang dipukul ribut, ah lah kawan ramai G. Hendak ke ]aut lah laut sabar lah dulu. Split the coconut, discard its It must be taken upstream, Split the coconut, discard its The sea is still storm struck, Heading for the sea, first be The sea is still storm struck; Heading for the sea, first be NOTE (AC1) tetak?

husk, husk; patient; patient.

57

Appendix C

Poem 4 William Tan: A. Pintal-pintal tali berotan, B. Hendak lab bawa pergi sebarang, C . Pintallab pinta] tali berotan; D. Sunggub sejengkal nama lautan, ah lah dendang sayang E. jangan dibuat lah buat sebarang-barang F. Sunggub lab kecilnama lautan, ah lah dondang sayang G . jangan dibuat lah buat sebarang-barang; Coil and coil the rattan It must be taken across Coil up the rattan cord; Though the sea is truly Don't attempt anything, Though the sea is truly Don't attempt anything.

cord, the river, cold, small,

NOTES (AB) Gwee: (a variant) Pinta] memintal tali bulutan I Dinampak orang dari sebcrang. (DE) Gwee: You still have to heed it.

Poem 5 Cik Puteh Sidik: A. Makan nasi kita berulam, B. Hendak mencari si ulam pandan, C. Makan nasi kita berulam; D . Kapal besar tengab lautan, ah lah dindang sayang E. Kapal yang kecil yang kecil banyut sempadan; F. Kapal besar tengab lautan, ah lah dendang sayang G. Kapal yang kecillah kecil banyut sempadan Eating rice, we have vegetables, So pandan we must look for, Eating rice, we have vegetables; Large ships go on the high seas,

58

Appendix C

Small boats float near the shore; Large ships go on the high seas, Small boats float near the shore.

Poem 6 Mohamad Yusuf: A. Anak kepiting si anak kerang, B. Suka tinggal di dalam teluk, C. Anak kepiting si anak kerang; D. Di kanan beting di kiri karang, ah lah dendang sa yang E. Haluan lah mana belok hendak kau belok? F. Di kiri lah beting di kanannya karang, ah lah dindang sayang G. Haluan yang mana belok hendak kau belok? (Interjection) Salah! Young crabs, young cockles Like to live in the bay, Young crabs, young cockles; On the right reefs, on the left corals, In what direction will you head? On the left reefs, on the right corals, In what direction will you head? (Interjection) Wrong! NOTES (D)"Filler" by another singer. Interjection by another singer, noting the left-right switch in F. (B) Gwee: (variant) Suka tinggal dalam ceruk.

Poem 7 Lee Yok Poh: A. Pandai menyunting pandai mengarang, B. Anak Cik Ngah cucu penghulu, C. Anak Cik Ngah cucu penghulu; D. Di kiri beting di kanan karang, kawan ramal E. Sama tengah lalu lah saya lalu;

AppmdixC

F. G.

59

Di kiri beting di kanan karang, ab lab kawan Sama tengah lalu haluan ku ah lalu.

Good at selecting, good at composing, Is Cik Ngah's child, the penghulu's grandchild, Is Cik Ngah's child, the penghulu's grandchild; On the left reefs, on the right corals, Right through the middle I pass; On the left reefs, on the right corals, Right through the middle I pass.

Poem 8 Gwee Peng K wee: A. Nana sami sembayang Ponggul, B. Pisang dan kelapa dibagi-bagi, C . Nana sami sembayang Ponggul; D. Kesatu tenggelam kedua timbul, ab lab dendang sayang, E. Haluan jangan jangan ubahkan lagi; F. Kesatu tenggelam kedua timbul, ab lab dendang sayang, G. Haluan tidak lagi ubahkan lagi, The Hindu priest offers Ponggul devotions, Bananas and coconuts are divided up, The Hindu priest offers Ponggul devotions; Either you sink or you float, Don't keep changing the direction; Either you sink or you float, There is no more change of direction. NOTES (ACt) Nana lah sami. (AC2) Lah Sami. (A3-4) Ponnuthurai: Thaiponggol or Ponggol, a harvest festival for giving thanks to the sun.

60

Appendix (

Poem 9 Cik Fatimah [Saleha Y akob] : A. Buah cempedak di dalam dulang, B. Dibawa oleh anak Cik Daud, C. Buah cempedak di dalam dulang; D. Sa ya ini nakhoda terbilang, ab lab dondang sa yang E. Belum sekali lab ]aut karam di laut; F. Saya ini nakhoda terbilang, Pak William seorang G. Belum sekali lab ]aut karam di laut. Cempedak fruit in the pot Was brought by Cik Daud's son, Cempedak fruit in the pot; I am a famous captain, Who has never foundered at sea; I am a famous captain, Who has never foundered at sea. NOTE (DF2) Gwee: ingin .

Poem 10 William Tan: A. Puji lah gendang bertalu-talu, B. Orang berarak Datuk Dalam, C. Bunyi lah gendang bertalu-talu; D. Ingat dan ingat fikir dahulu, ab lab dondang sayang E. Kapal yang sarat yang sarat selalu tenggelam; F. Ingat dan ingat fikir dahulu , ab lab dendang sayang G. Kapal yang sarat yang sarat selalu tenggelam. The drum praises again and again, People parade the Datuk Dalam, The drum resounds again and again; Think and think and consider first,

61

Appendix C

The loaded ship always goes down; Think and think and consider first, The loaded ship always goes down. NOTES (B3-4) A local deity. Gwee: Deity after whom a Johore road is named.

Poem 11 Mohammad Yusuf: A. Sembah disambut ]emah dan Lela, B . Sembah dijunjung cara bersalam, C. Sembah disambut ]emah dan Lela; D. Turun ribut beliung menggila, ah E. Kapal dilambung tenggelam tentu Ai, turun ribut beliung menggila, F. G. Kapal dilambung tenggelam tentu

lah dendang sayang tenggelam; ah lah dondang sayang tenggelam.

Prayers are made by Jemah and Lela, Prayers are performed. with well wishing, Prayers are made by Jemah and Lela; Down comes the storm with squalls raging, The ship that is struck certainly sinks; Down ,comes the storm with squalls raging, The ship that is struck certainly sinks. NOTES (DF) Filler by another singer. (EG2) Gwee: terlambung.

Poem 12 Lee Yok Poh: A. Sembah disambut cucu Mat Lela, B. Anak menteri menyambut sembah, C. Sembah disambut cucu Mat Lela, D. Turun ribut topan menggila, dendang sayang E. Haluan tidak Tuan Oi ku ubah lagi;

62

F. G.

Appendix C

Turun ribut topan menggila, ah lah rama1 Haluan tidak lagi ku ubah lagi.

The festival IS celebrated by Mat Lela's grandchild, The minister's child celebrates the festival, The festival is celebrated by Mat Lela's grandchild; Though down comes the storm with typhoon ragmg, I won't change direction again; Though down comes the storm with typhoon ragmg, I won't change direction again. Poem 13 Gwee Peng K wee: A. Dari sini berjalan ke sana, B. Susur menyusur sampai ke hulu, C. Dari sini berjalan ke sana; D . Coba lah belayar di lautan Cina, ah lah sobat raja E. Baru mu tahu mu tahu untung nasib mu; F. Coba lah belayar di lautan Cina, ah lah sobat raja G. Baru mu tahu mu tahu untung nasib mu. From here walk up to there, Skirt along the edge, going upstream, From here walk up to there; Try to sail on the China Sea, Then you will know your fated lot; Try to sail on the China Sea, Then you will know your fated lot.

Appendix D

Performance at the residence of Mr Gwee Peng K wee of Singapore, 19 October 1982. Music by the Orkes Aslirama under the direction of Malim Osman . Tempo= 60. Transcription assistance by William Tan and Gwee Peng Kwee.

HARIMAU

Poem 1 Lee Yok Poh: A. Korek telaga di tengah padang, B. Ambil air siramkan kapas, C. Korek telaga di tengah padang; D . Jaga-jaga kambing di ladang, ah lah ramai E . Rimau yang garang lepas sudah terlepas; F. jaga-jaga kambing di padang, ah lah ramai G. Rimau yang garang lepas lah sudah dilepas, Dig a well in mid-field, Take water to sprinkle the cotton, Dig a well in mid-field; Keep watch on the goat in the field, A fi erce tiger is now loose; Keep watch on the goat in the field, A fierce tiger has been let loose. NOTE

(B4) Gwee: kcmpas.

63

64

Appendix D

Poem 2 Mohamad Yusuf: A. Pokok limau di tengah lalang, B. Kerengga hitam duduk menumpang, C. Pokok limau di tengah lalang; D. Jangan harimau nak tunjukkan belang, dendang sayang E. Nanti ku tunggu senapang dengan senapang; F. Jangan harimau nak tunjukkan belang, dendang sayang G . Nanti ku tunggu senapang dengan senapang; A lemon tree in the middle of the grass, Dark red ants make it their seat, A lemon tree in the middle of the grass; Tiger, don't go and show your stripes, For I'll be waiting with my gun; Tiger, don't go and show your stripes, For I'll be waiting with my gun. NOTE (F) Filler by another singer.

Poem 3 William Tan: A. Petiklah limau di pagi hari, B. Isikan mari di dalam dulang, C. Petiklah limau di pagi hari; D. Rimau dah tua dah tak ada gigi, ab lab dondang sayang E. Apalah takut lab takut rimau yang garang? F. Harimau dah tua dah tak ada gigi, ab lab dondang sayang G. Apalah takut lab takut rimau yang garang? Pick lemons in the morning, Come put them in the pot, Pick lemons in the morning; A tiger once old has no teeth,

AppendixD

65

Why fear this fierce tiger? A tiger once old has no teeth, Why fear this fierce tiger? NOTE (DE) Directed at Baba Gwee Peng Kwee.

Poem 4 Gwee Peng K wee: A. Limau purut bersegi-segi, B. Letakkan mari di dalam tangguk , C. Buab lab limau bersegi-segi; D. Rimau dab tua tidak ada bergigi, ab lab dendang sayang E . Coba lab Baba tengkuk bulurkan tengkuk; F. Rimau tua tidak ada bergigi, ah lah dendang sayang G. Coba lab coba tengkuk bulurkan tengkuk. Limes have many segments, Come put them in a basket, Limes have many segments; If an old tiger has no teeth, Just try, Baba, to stick out your neck; If a tiger once old has no teeth , Just try to stick out your neck. NOTES (A 1) Gwee (correction); tape:jika ke ]a dang m embeli limau, "If you go to the farm, buy limes". (B4) Laughter as other singers guess the rhyme for tangguk. (DF3) Tak ada.

Poem 5 Cik Fatimah [Saleha Yakob] : A. Ambil biola mari digesek, B . Gesek mari di tengab rumab, C . Ambil biola mari digesek; D. Harimau diamjangan diusik, Baba seorang

66

E. F. G.

Appendix D

Ka1au menerkam menerkam buruk padahnya; Harimau diam jangan diusik, William sayang Kalau menerkam menerkam buruk padahnya;

Take a violin, have it played, Come play in the middle of the house, Take a violin, have it played; Don't disturb a resting tiger, If it attacks, it'll be horrible; Don't disturb a resting tiger, If it attacks, it'll be horrible.

Poem 6 Lee Yok Poh: A. Pokok limau tepi perigi, B. Jangan dipetik buah yang muda, C. Pokok limau tepi perigi; D . Rimau dah tua tak ada gigi, ah lah sayang E. Saya menunggang kuda, sebagai kuda; F. Rimau dah tua tak ada gigi, dindang sayang G. Tunggang yang sa ya kuda sebagai kudai; A lemon tree beside the well, Don't pick fruit that's green, A lemon tree beside the well; A tiger once old has no teeth, I'll ride it like a horse; A tiger once old has no teeth, My mount that's like a horse.

Poem 7 Mohamad Yusuf: A . Cabut parang tengah gelanggang, B. Cabut lari lintanglah pukang, C. Cabut parang tengah gelanggang;

Appendix:D

D. E. F. G.

67

Harimau garang jangan ditunggang, ah lah gunong sayang Habis tengkuk belakang calar belakang; Harimau yang garang jangan ditunggang, dindang sayang Habis tengkuk belakang calar belakang;

Unsheath your sword in mid-battleground, Run away head over heels, Unsheath your sword in mid-battleground; Don't ride a fierce tiger, Or your throat'll be wasted, your backside gashed; Don't ride a fierce tiger, Or your throat'll be wasted, your backside gashed . NOTE (DE) Repeated by background speaker: H arimau garangjangan diwngg ang,/ Habis tengkuk dicalar belakang.

Poem 8 William Tan: A. Pagi lah pagi petikkan limau, B . Dipetik oleh budak lah budak, C. Pagi lah pagi petikkan limau; D. Jangan tak tahu resmilah rimau, ah lah dondang sayang E. Kalau menderam menderam tidak menangkap; F. Jangan tak tahu resmilah rimau, ah lah dondang sayang G. Kalau menderam menderam tidak menangkap; Early in the morning pick limes, Picked by many children, Early in the morning pick limes; Don't not know the tiger's customs, If it growls, it doesn't snatch; Don't not know the tiger's customs, If it growls, it doesn't snatch.

68

Poem 9 Gwee Peng K wee: A . Anak Cina menocok atap, B. Duduk menocok waktu pagi, C. Anak Cina menocok atap; D . Bila harimau mulai menangka p, ah lah Baba raja, E. Rambut tuan lagi pun tak tinggal lagi; F. Bila harimau mulai menangka p, ah lah Baba raja, G. Rambut tuan lagi pun tak tinggallag i; The Chinese man repairs his roof, Sits repairing in the morning, The Chinese man repairs his roof; When the tiger begins to snatch, You won't have a single hair left; When the tiger begins to snatch, You won't have a single hair left. NOTE (EG) Tu an II pun.

Poem 10 Fatimah [Saleha Yakob ]: A. Tvjuh petak tujuh penjuru, B. Bakar kemenyan di sudut laman, C. Tujuh petak tujuh penjuru; D. Kalau ada petua guru, ah lah dondang sayang E. Harimau garang lah teman ku buat ternan; F. jikalau ada petua guru, ah lah dondang sayang G. Harimau garang lah garang ku buat teman. Seven plots, seven corners, Burn incense in the yard's corner, Seven plots, seven corners; When I have my guru's charm,

Appendix D

AppendixD

69

I can make the tiger my companion; When I have my guru's charm, I can make the tiger my companion.

Poem 11 Mohamad Yusuf: A. Kalau pergi di Bukit Kepung, B . Ambilkan saya seguni tepung, C. Kalau pergi ke Bukit Kepung D. Harimau garang segera kau k epung, ah lah dondang sayang E. Tak habis lari sekampung orang sekampung; F. Harimau garang segera dikepung, ah lah dondang sayang G. Pun tak lari sekampung orang sekampung. If you go to Kepung Hill, Get me a sack of flour, If you go to Kepung Hill; The fierce tiger you'll corner at once, Before our villagers finish running; A fierce tiger is cornered at once, Our villagers won't even run . NOTE (AC4) C ik Puteh Sidik: Hill in Ncge ri Sembilan

Poem 12 Lee Yok Poh: A. Kalau pergi ke Bukit Kepung, B. Kirimkan saya sebiji lada, C. Kalau pergi ke Bukit Kepung; D. Jerat lu pasang senapang lu kepung, dindang sayang E. Rimau yang pandai juga dah terlepas lah juga; F. J erat lu pasang senapang lu kepung, dindang sayang G. Rimau yang garang juga terlepas juga.

70

If you go to Kepung Hill, Send me a pepper corn, If you go to Kepung Hill; Though nooses you fasten and with guns you surround, The clever tiger still escapes; Though nooses you fasten and with guns you surround, The fierce tiger still escapes. NOTE (E2-3) Pandai II dah.

AppendixD

Appendix E

GLOSSARY OF THIRD-LINE FILLERS

ah-lah Baba raja Baba seorang / sorangl Chik sayang Cik Rahim seorang l sorangl Cik Timah seorang / sorangl den dang don dang/ den dang/ din dang sa yang gunong sa yang

kawan kawan ramai ka wan sa yang Kim Teck sayang orang ramal Pak William seorang / sorangl ramal sobat (=sahabat) raja sobat ramai timang pa yung

71

oh! raja's baba; Baba like a raja unique Baba dear Chik unique Mr Rahim unique Miss Timah song dear song "dear mountain"; my love for you is as great as a mountain; the song "Dondang Sayang" friend(s) many friends, audience dear friend(s) dear Kim Teck many people unique Mr William many friend who is like a raja many friends "balance [with] an umbrella"; my love for you is as though I were carrying a baby in my arms beneath an umbrella

Appendix F "DONDANG SAY ANG" (arranged by Malim Osman)

72

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THE AUTHOR

Phillip L. Thomas is Lecturer in Southeast Asian literature at Murdoch University, Western Australia. He has written extensively on pantun prosody and meaning systems and is editor of several volumes of early Sarawak literature.