Music, and the Rice-Year

By Bunga Pakma

KL is not so boring after all.  A week ago an old friend e-mailed to invite me to a concert of the Malaysia Philharmonic Orchestra, and I accepted with enthusiasm. The next day we met at the LRT station and the train whisked us into the Twin Towers Station.

I had never heard the MPO. It’s not that I didn’t want to, I had no one to go with. As Mark Twain said, you have to share a joy with someone to get real pleasure out of it. Johan treated me to the ticket. If he’s reading this, thanks again!

On 8 June we shall be marking the 200^th birthday of German composer Robert Schumann, and in his honour, the programme that Sunday was all Schumann, his Overture, Scherzo and Finale, the Piano Concerto, and the Symphony Nr 1.

Up to that time, I had heard no live, acoustic music for nearly two years. Simply opening my ears to real instruments would have been delight enough. But here was a whole orchestra of all kinds of strings, winds, brass and percussion, played on by women and men who really knew their stuff, directed by a master conductor, playing the work of a genius, and I was more than having fun—I was up there in serga ti pengabis tinggi!

A few years ago there was a teapot-tempest of controversy surrounding the MPO. Nobody knew how much it cost to keep it going—symphony orchestras do not come cheap—and a few voices grumbled that hosting a “western” artistic institution was not the kind of thing “we Asians” wanted to spend our oil-money on. I don’t think any such carpers still exist. If such a one does, I’ll treat her or him to a concert. I reckon there’s over a 99% chance that the skeptic will come out of the hall smiling and elated, vowing that he’d hadn’t spent a better two hours in years. If the hearer remained morose and sour, all I have to say about him, Shakespeare already said:

The man that hath no music in himself,

Nor is not moved by concord of sweet sounds,

Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;

The motions of his spirit are dull as night,

And his affections dark as Erebus:

Let no such man be trusted…

In a country otherwise as stubbornly philistine—and perversely proud of it—as Malaysia, the MPO is a glorious exception and a sublime national achievement. After my first exposure I looked up their programme on the net. Of course the MPO isn’t set up for the sole purpose of performing Dead White Males; no orchestra in the world has done that for twenty years. The MPO is a group of very fine musicians who play the best music of any kind, and I note as much classic jazz and classic Asian music on their calendar as western classical.

Why can’t the Sunday matinées of this Malaysian treasure be broadcast through the country each week? This would do more to civilize Malaysia than the Brits accomplished in 100 years!  In fact, the trouble with imperialism was that while Britain, Holland, France, et al. were loudly claiming to be bringing “civilization” here, they were in fact doing nothing of the sort. They were exporting garbage: the garbage economics of exploitation, garbage imperialist education and social engineering and the cheapest kind of garbage culture. The Malaysian founders of the MPO chose in contrast to establish and nuture the very best. We should all share this Best.

Every musician knows that if he plays next to someone more skilled, he himself plays better, and if he plays next to someone less skilled, he plays worse. That goes for all of life. It is in our interests aesthetically, intellectually, morally and spiritually to get as close to the best in human endeavour as often as we can. The musicians of the MPO do very well and are there for us.

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Gawai will come especially happy to all Dayaks this year, after the court decision in favour of the Kayan community in Long Teran Kanan and after the decision by the High Court to award RM6.5 million to the Temuan of Bukit Tampoi and to recognize their land-rights. I am also inclined to think that a good chunk of the Dayak community is well pleased with the BN’s defeat in Sibu.

I’ll know soon. In a short while I’ll be off to home and talking with my neighbours and relatives while we enjoy the holidays.

In the Pasar Pakma district longhouses were broken up during the Japanese occupation when families put as much space between themselves as the Japanese as they could, moving into the ulu close to their gardens and orchards.  After the war some longhouses re-established themselves, others never did, and over the years most people took to living in separate houses.

When longhouses flourished, the gawai after the bringing in of the rice-harvest was spiritually a much more serious occasion, though not less full of mirth and tuak. Plenty of pagans still practiced their religion, and not a few of the Christians were crypto-pagans. Gawai was a time of community thanksgiving. Each longhouse celebrated its gawai at a different time, when they had got the rice in. The month or so after harvest had no chores scheduled, and people made the rounds of gawais between longhouses in a fairly continuous party.

With the disappearance of longhouses and urban drift the sense of kampong community is not quite so close-knit. Not everybody grows rice now, which has eliminated the keen spiritual reason for gawai. The modern holiday, as it was institutionalised in 1964, has changed character in two directions. At present, Gawai is on the one hand notorious as an excuse for bujang going out drinking. Cautious people stay at home and beware of driving on the evening of 31 May.

On the other hand, Gawai has been developing the character of a family holiday. The tribe may no longer command a loyalty strong enough to move people to gather in communal celebration. Family has replaced tribe (or, tribe has dwindled to family), and Gawai is most sincerely observed when children and children’s children return to their parents’ home, and close cousins, uncles, aunts, nephews and nieces meet, and share company and a meal. The ancient meaning of the harvest gawai as a party of thanks thrown for the gods who gave the rice has revived in a new form among Christian Dayaks. Gawai remains a thanksgiving. I certainly have plenty to be thankful for.

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