Sikka Weft Textiles: A Tribute to Weaving Women

By Rita A.Widiadana

On the hillside of Watublapi village in Sikka, 30 kilometers from the largest city in Flores, East Nusa Tenggara, a number of women meticulously weave some of the world’s most refined and elaborate warp ikat textiles.

Thanks to these women’s superb talent, this centuries-old tradition is still well preserved and blossoming in the region.

Once called Copa de Flores in Portuguese — or the Isle of flowers — for its beauty, Flores is one of the Lesser Sunda Islands located in the eastern part of Nusa Tenggara Islands.

Locals called their island Nusa Nipa or the land of the snakes to illustrate the island’s shape and its grandeur. Snake designs have inspired various textile patterns and designs, and found their way onto house ornaments and a myriad of art local artefacts.

The island became a landmark when Portuguese traders and Catholic missionaries landed there in the 16th century, unravelling the richness of its culture and its nature, flora and fauna.

One of the region’s cultural gems is textile weaving. Prominent textile scholar John Gillow penned in his book on Traditional Indonesian Textiles that textile weaving was part of Indonesia’s cultural identity.

Magic hands: A woman meticulously weaves an ikat, one of the world’s most elaborate textile, in Flores.Magic hands: A woman meticulously weaves an ikat, one of the world’s most elaborate textile, in Flores.Most fine textiles in Indonesia, including in Sikka, Flores, have been produced by women. Men undertake some of the work in factories and workshops, such as building the tools used to produce these textiles — metal stamps or wooden looms. However, all the steps in creating the cloth — from preparing the ground, planting the cotton and gathering dye plants to weaving the patterned fabrics, are traditionally and exclusively undertaken by women.

In the village of Sikka, which was named after the mighty Queen Sikka Du’a Go’it of Sikka Kingdom, women play the most important role, running the textile “industry” for domestic, ritual and commercial purposes.

Given the island’s tropical climate, clothing requirements are relatively meager and garments are simple, traditionally composed of rectangular cloth.

Sikka women weave four main types of textiles: kain, which wraps around the waist and legs; sarong made of smaller kain shewn into a tube-shape; selendang breast and shoulder cloths and selimut, large-wrap-around mantles of blankets.

Women from these communities weave ikat textiles on backstrap looms during the quiet hours of the day, in the shelter of the recess under their stilted houses. Young girls learn the simpler techniques on small looms, leaving the finer weaving to their mothers and grandmothers.

Their weaving skills tend to make them the breadwinners in the family as they sell textiles in village markets and other provinces such as Bali, where tourists always look for exquisite and antique textiles.

Dong Song Legacy

Ikat (to tie or to bind) is a weaving method whereby the patterning of a textile is obtained by tying fiber tightly around the warp threads and then immersing the tied hanks in a dye bath. The basic ikat technique can be applied either to warp or to weft threads alone. Alternately, certain sections of the textile can be warp ikat, such as borders and other parts of weft ikat.

Traditionally, the color of the ikat has come from a wide variety of vegetable dyes, the most valued color originating from the natural, organic dyeing materials including great morinda (turkey red, mengkudu or kombu), true indigo, turmeric and sappan wood.

Warp ikat is primarily the preserve of ancient people who built the megalithic civilization, and the legacy of the Dongsong culture, which was preserved either in the rugged mountainous interiors of the main island, or on the outlying islands.

Dong Song culture introduced to the Indonesian islands the technique of weaving warp-ikat textiles on a simple backstrap loom.

In Indonesia, the ikat textile tradition spreads from North Sumatra across to Kalimantan, Bali, Lombok, West and East Nusa Tenggara including Flores and Sumba. Each region developed its own styles and patterns blending local and other cultural influences.

In Flores, each village has its own distinctive ikat textile patterns and motifs. But, like in other part of the country, strict rules specified which textiles were to be worn at every level of society – the ruling class, nobilities and commoners.

Spinning: Women from the village of Watublapi in Sikka, Flores, turn cotton slivers into yarn, before weaving ikat.Spinning: Women from the village of Watublapi in Sikka, Flores, turn cotton slivers into yarn, before weaving ikat.The textiles have a ritual significance that far exceeds utilitarian need and play a vital role in maintaining harmony and balance between spirits and humanity.

The world is changing fast in the late century. The culture of the Sikka people is still very strong, but prolonged contact with the outside world is bound to have detrimental effects, which will most probably lead to a lowering of the quality of their textiles.

The spreading of factories, machine-manufactured textiles into the remote island of Flores has threatened the existence of the village’s textile weaving heritage.

Women weavers are grouped into the village’s aging population without having opportunities to pass on their weaving skills to younger women in the community, who show less interest in preserving the tradition as the world is now wide open for them to pursue other career paths.

Despite modernity, Sikka’s wealth textile craftsmanship must continue to strive with help from various parties — the government, the private sector, artists, and individuals who care about the island’s priceless heritage.

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com

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New Cultural Wars

By Farish A Noor

In the process of rediscovering our past and our culture, let us not be narrow-minded in our approach. Southeast Asia is a rich patchwork of diverse communities and cultures, and we are all the richer because we share this common legacy together

Demo season has come early this year, and over the weekend it was reported that a number of anti-Malaysia demonstrations had flared up across several towns and cities in Indonesia. The reason for this latest round of acrimony lies in the claim that a tourism ad for Malaysia had presented a Balinese dance as being ‘Malaysian‘ and as such quite a number of Indonesians were miffed about it.

The ASEAN region seems to be facing the prospect of what can be aptly described as the new ‘cultural wars‘ of the era. Over the past few years, we have witnessed clashes (some of them violent) over temples, artefacts, words/signifiers, handicrafts and local products that some nations and communities claim as theirs, and which have been ‘stolen‘ by other societies. One of the hot topics at the moment is the Indonesian claim that Batik is a uniquely Indonesian invention and that countries like Malaysia and Singapore have ‘stolen‘ batik by claiming that it is theirs as well.

On a superficial level, one understands the nature of the complaint and the logic behind it. It would be perfectly reasonable for a country to be angry if its products were bought by another, only to be re-sold to the international market after the original ‘Made in X‘ label was removed and replaced with a ‘Made in Y‘ label. Intellectual copyright is something that this academic understands and appreciates very much, for it would be akin to someone stealing the contents of one of my academic papers or books and simply replacing the author‘s name with his/her own. That is theft and copyright infringement, plain and simple.

But when it comes to copyrighting cultures, we move to an altogether murkier and more complicated domain, for how does one copyright an idea, a colour, a theme, a sentiment or a musical note?

There are two points that require emphasis here, and both are related to the common shared cultural history of our Southeast Asian region.

First, it has to be recognised that much of the misunderstanding that has arisen thus far over issues of cultural borrowing has to do with the narrow nationalist histories that we have relied upon since the day our nation-states became independent. The realities of the colonial era were that the region of Southeast Asia — which historically has been one of the most fluid, cosmopolitan and diverse in the world — was cut up and divided according to the logic of colonies and then nation-states. As a result of this, our postcolonial histories tend to be narrow and inward-looking, and fail to note the cultural continuity and overlap that has existed in the region for hundreds and thousands of years.

As an academic who moves between Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, I am struck by how little the citizens of all three countries know about each other. Do Indonesians realise that all over Malaysia there are Malaysian communities who still speak Javanese? Why is this so? Because all over Malaysia there are millions of descendants of Javanese, Sumatran, Madurese, Bugis migrants who have settled there over the centuries, such as my own family, which were first categorised as ‘Jawi Peranakan‘ (Hybrid/Mixed Javanese) in the 19th century.

So when some Malaysians speak Javanese at home, is this a case of Malaysians ‘stealing‘ the Javanese language? Surely not: if anything it points to the continuities of identities over time and space, which is a factor that enriches the region as a whole.

On the issue of Batik and other art and cultural forms, it should also be noted that Batik was worn by many of the communities of the region, and not just the Javanese. Batik was the lingua franca of the plastic arts for Javanese, Sumatrans, Balinese, Bugis, Malays, Peranakan Chinese, Indians, Arabs and Eurasians for more than a century; and in my collection of photos of Batik as it was worn between the 19th to the 20th century we see how Batik was adapted, used, popularised and produced by practically all the communities of maritime Southeast Asia.

While I understand and sympathise with the complaint that some Indonesian Batik may have been bought and then re-sold as ‘Malaysian‘, let us not go overboard by claiming that Batik was produced by only one community in the region. Batik production was predominantly centred in Java and parts of Sumatra, but it was also produced in parts of Malaysia and worn all across the region. Indeed, Batik production extends as far as Africa and even Europe, where European artists tried their hand at the Batik technique to produce Batik pieces that were inspired by the school of l‘art nouveau and art deco. That is the factor that makes batik the rich cultural heritage of all, and not the parochial totem of a few.

Second, in the process of re-claiming our history, let us not be provincial, or worse still, neglectful of the complexities of history. The popular art forms of Indonesia such as the wayang kulit puppet theatre is not unique to Indonesia alone, for it exists all across Southeast Asia (in Malaysia, Southern Thailand, parts of Cambodia and Southern Vietnam) and can be found in places as far apart as China to the East and India and Turkey to the West. Furthermore the repertoire of stories that are told and enacted include the Ramayana and Mahabharata, both of which certainly did not come from Indonesia or any country in Southeast Asia, but India — the wellspring of so much classical Asian art, culture and religion from the time of the Gupta dynasty.

Thus if any country has the right to claim copyright to the wayang genre and the stories that make up the popular lore of Asia, it would be India. So how would the countries of ASEAN react if India were to lay claim to our arts and culture, our architecture, our religions (Hinduism and Buddhism come from South Asia, after all) and even our languages (the Thai, Khmer, Lao, Burmese, Malay and Indonesian languages all borrow heavily from Sanskrit and other South Asian tongues). What then?

As stated above, in the process of rediscovering our past and our culture, let us not be narrow-minded in our approach. Southeast Asia is a rich patchwork of diverse communities and cultures, and we are all the richer because we share this common legacy together. One understands the need for commercial regulation of goods and products, and in such cases theft and misrepresentation of labels is simply a case of criminal fraud that can be dealt with in the courts.

But culture cannot and should not be cut up, demarcated and commodified as some may want it to be. By all means, sue and penalise unscrupulous businessmen who sell fake goods, but let us understand and accept that the cultural wellspring that inspires the production of so much of our arts and crafts belongs to us, together.

__________

Dr Farish A Noor is a Senior Fellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; and one of the founders of the www.othermalaysia.org research site

Source: http://www.dailytimes.com.pk

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Of Different Malays: The Problem Of Boundaries

By Merlyna Lim

The recent furor caused by the Discovery Channel`s mistaken insertion of the Balinese Pendet dance into a TV spot for Malaysia has reopened an old wound of Indonesians, who believe Malaysian has repeatedly stolen Indonesian cultural heritage, including the song "Rasa Sayange", the angklung, and the Reog Ponorogo dance, among others.

For most Indonesians, that the Malaysian government can claim these things is bewildering. Regular Indonesians would undoubtedly associate these three intangible cultural items with three different origins: "Rasa Sayange" is Ambonese/Maluku, the angklung is Sundanese, and the Reog Ponorogo is Javanese.

Most Malaysians, including the government of Malaysia, however, fail to see these as being of different cultural lineage. They lump them as belonging to Malay (Melayu) culture.

Malay culture is considered by Indonesians in reference to the dances of Lilin, Randai and Serampang Dua Belas, and has no direct connection to the Javanese gamelan, the Reog or the angklung. It is directly associated with the traditions and customs of the ethnic group within the boundary of the Malay peninsula. Malaysians seem to see a different boundary for Malay culture. Why is this?

Knowledge and narratives of local culture in Indonesia are developed in association with ethnic-based regional boundaries. They are endorsed by the state and they are part of nation building.

From elementary school, Indonesian kids learn about national heritage by memorizing the names of dances, folk songs and visual representations of traditional costumes.

The practice of documenting and selecting material artifacts of local cultures is part of the larger political process of inclusion that stresses nationalism and the national unity of Indonesia. Selective preservation of regional and/or local art forms, in constructing the national culture, is therefore part of the politics of exclusion.

Recognizing this pitfall, however, the ways in which local culture is framed in Indonesia are much less crude than in Malaysia. It is still assigned and identified with a certain cultural context/geographical (of origin). While being partial and reductionist, multifarious contexts and diverse locales still have some space in the narrative of Indonesian national culture.

Malaysia adopts a different route in approaching its national and local cultures. The modern nation-state of Malaysia frames national culture by clustering cultural artifacts into the Malay, Chinese, Indian and indigenous tribe (orang asli) cultures. The term Malay here differs from that of Indonesia, and refers to and is influenced by several concepts.

First, as enacted in the term "Malay is Muslim, Muslim is Malay", it is a form of ethno-religion. It is entwined with the concept of ethnic nationalism that has become today`s Malaysia`s dominant state-religion relations in which the state is fused to a particular ethnic group and religion functions as a signifier of ethnic identity.

Any Javanese, Acehnese or other Indonesian who migrated to Malaysia will be classified as Malay and are expected to be Muslim. Chinese-Indonesians, though, can box themselves as Chinese, thus do not have to be Muslim.

Second, it is used in association with the Malay race (bangsa Melayu) instead of the Malay ethnicity (suku Melayu).

This concept originated in Blumenbach`s racial classification system, which divides the world`s races into the Caucasian/white race, the Mongolian/yellow race, the Malayan/brown race, the American/red race and the Negroid/black race. His skull-based concept has been rejected by many anthropologists who recognize the enormous complexity of classifying races.

He considered the inhabitants of Southeast Asia, including the Marianas, the Philippines, the Malukus, Sundas and Pacific Islands as Malayan. Blumenbach wrote, "Malay variety. Tawny-colored; hair black, soft, curly, thick and plentiful; head moderately narrowed; forehead slightly swelling; nose full..."

The concept of the Malay race is also a historical heritage of colonialism. European planters and British officials in Malaysia were keen to obtain laborers from the Dutch East Indies because they were regarded as being better suited to the climate and would assimilate more easily with the local Malays.

Indonesian migrants were viewed as originating from the same racial stock as the Malays, regardless of ethnicity. In early colonial Malaysia, the Straits Settlements censuses of 1871 and 1881 both listed "Malay, Achinese, Andamanese, Boyanese, Bugis and Javanese" separately.

In the 1891 census, however, there were major structural changes in the classification of ethnicities. The 48 different ethnicities were sorted under the major (hierarchical) classifications of "European and American, Eurasian, Chinese, Malays and other Natives of the Archipelago, Tamils and other Natives of India, and Other Races".

The creation of the category "Malay and other Natives of the Archipelago" and the inclusions of the various ethnicities in it contributed toward formalizing the boundaries of Malay-ness. The modern nation-state Malaysia cultivates this heavily politicized classification by clustering Malaysians into Malays, Chinese, Indians and indigenous tribes.

Tracing the origin of the term Malay as used in Malaysian context, we thus can understand that the Malaysian version of Malay is more a product of political reconstruction (of colonialism and a modern ethnic nationalism) and is rooted in the politics of race and identity rather than the geographical boundary of origin.

As people move around globally, cultures flow in all directions. Tracing the histories and origins of culture is thus always a complicated task. Lumping together various artifacts into one Malay culture whose boundary is heavily politicized is certainly not the most plausible method to complete the task. It fails to recognize the complexity of the cultures of the archipelago, thus removing them from their multifarious contexts and locales and uprooting these cultures from the people who shape and are reshaped by them.

As for Indonesia, it is time to recognize and appreciate local cultures not by treating them as symbols to justify unity and diversity, but by supporting and caring for the people who work tirelessly in preserving and maintaining these cultures.

__________

The writer is an Indonesian professor at Arizona State University, Tempe, US.

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com

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Heritage And Paradox

By Sarah Anais Andrieu

As often happens in West Java during November, rain had been falling all day, so Bandung`s central public space, known as the Gasibu, was half-flooded. A large temporary stage had been erected, in front of which stood a large tent sheltering about two hundred chairs. Forty chairs were prepared with white covers for use by government officials, but only about ten were present. Only a few spectators sat behind them. TV and radio crews busied themselves trying to protect their equipment from the rain.

A performance of wayang golek, the traditional rod puppet theatre from West Java, was scheduled to take place for the entire night. The troupe was already on stage waiting patiently behind their gamelan instruments. The show should have already started, and a crowd should have already gathered around the stage as customarily happens, but very few people had dared to brave the rain and the cold on this night. The improvised market that always appears besides wayang golek performances was barely visible, with only a few sellers offering food and snacks from the shelter of huge umbrellas.

At last, the show started at around half past nine with speeches reminding the audience of the purpose of the performance, namely the protection of the national cultural heritage, of which wayang golek is officially a part. After the audience was reminded too that the event had been sponsored by the National Department of Culture and Tourism and its provincial subdivision in West Java, the committee finally gave a sign to the puppeteer, or dalang, that he could start performing the story entitled Cepot`s Twin (Cepot Kembar).

But soon after the first scene, the dalang stopped and introduced three famous Sundanese comedians who launched into an interactive dialogue with the audience. Spectators asked questions via SMS, which were relayed by the comedians to specialists from cultural and governmental institutions to be answered. After an hour of jokes and questions, the humourists retired from the stage and the wayang performance continued. The dalang recommenced his task of guiding the well-known characters through diverse intrigues and adventures. The rain had stopped, but there were still only a few spectators. Even fewer stayed until the performance ended at three o`clock in the morning.

What happened that night raises many questions about contemporary wayang golek. Government officials left the performance – if they came at all – long before its end. Much more seriously, the structure of the performance, something usually subject to quite strict convention, was upset by the intervention of humourists just after the story commenced. Such a thing could not happen in performances sponsored by rural communities or households. Moreover, the radio and TV broadcasts stopped after the comedians had withdrawn from the stage, even though the wayang performance would continue for a further three hours. For the broadcasters, the entire performance was too long and convoluted.

Local heritage, global value

There is some irony in the rather shabby treatment granted to the performers on this occasion, for it was not long ago that wayang was given its own space on the world`s cultural stage. In 2003, UNESCO proclaimed `Wayang Indonesia` as a `Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity`. Indonesia`s cultural bureaucrats responded to this recognition: the performers at the Gasibu were advised by the organisers that the performance was being held to honour Indonesia`s commitment to the preservation of humanity`s cultural heritage. But the events of the evening indicated that wayang golek, despite its global value, was encountering difficulties negotiating its status in contemporary West Java and Indonesia.

Wayang golek is still considered an essential social and political media, as well as a mark of Sundanese identity within the national context. It also forms the basis for proud family heritages, as artists typically learn their puppetry skills directly from individual teachers who are often their own fathers. The UNESCO proclamation gave these performers hope of a worldwide audience, and since then, they have tried to have some say in the destiny of wayang golek.

However, they feel it loses out on a national stage dominated by the culture of Central Java. The government, on the other hand, sees wayang golek as not only a distinctive regional genre, but also as something shared by the national Indonesian community. Since Indonesian independence in 1945, national cultural policy has attempted to gather the most important, aesthetic and spectacular traditions of each region as part of a unifying Indonesian culture. These icons are then disseminated throughout the country by the mass media and educational institutions as distinctive hallmarks of the regions – a practice that freezes regional culture and contributes to its standardisation. The UNESCO Proclamation enhances this process: after it was made, the government proposed a national action plan that included the creation of wayang schools, which would dispense standard teaching about wayang with adjustments for each regional `variant`.

Only bait

The Bandung performance illustrates an important paradox. On one hand, the government`s emphasis on heritage legitimises and supports the continued practice of wayang golek. But, on the other hand, it turns the puppet performances into a (profitable) museum exhibit, standardising them and preventing them from evolving.

On that November night, the wayang were simply bait, used to attract the audience`s interest, then all too quickly relegated to the background as ethnic scenery for the transmission of other messages. In the process, this event intended to support and safeguard traditional cultural heritage was turned into a demonstration of the government`s lack of confidence in wayang golek.

__________

Sarah Anais Andrieu (sarahanais@gmail.com) is a PhD Candidate in Social Anthropology and Ethnology at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris where she is writing her doctoral dissertation about the political anthropology of the Sundanese wayang golek and its process of patrimonialisation.

Source: http://insideindonesia.org

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Memories Of A Ramon Magsaysay Woman-Artist Awardee

By Cecile Guidote-Alvarez

We congratulate the 2009 Ramon Magsaysay Awardees: Krisana Kraisintu, Thailand; Deep Joshi, India; Yu Xiaogang, China; Antonio Oposa Jr., Philippines; Ma Jun, China; and Ka Hsaw Wa, Burma. The recognition of their exceptional work in honor of our former President Ramon Magsaysay has been dubbed the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in Asia.

Watching the RM Ceremonies last August 31, I had a lump in my throat applauding heartily the 2009 awardees whose outstanding services to their countries were vividly presented. Supreme Court Chief Justice Reynato Puno and Board of Trustee Chairman Jaime Augusto Ayala gave their medals. My mind wandered down the memory lane 39 years ago when I stood on stage at a different space—Phil-Am Life auditorium. The time frame and situation were totally different. We were living under Martial law. A day before the ceremony, a top defence official warned me about my then fiancé: “Tell Alvarez to surrender or he‘ll be shot on sight!”

Tension, anxiety, even fear was now mixed with jubilation. Even Doroy Valencia in an appeal to Malacanan to give me a travel permit to serve as a UNESCO consultant of the International Theater Institute‘s US Center to evaluate ethnic programs fell on deaf ears. The reason, ‘Cecile dared to join Ninoy Aquino‘s protest against Imelda Marcos‘ plan of putting up a Cultural Center instead of making operative the law on Commission on Culture signed by President Diosdado Macapagal.‘

At the Senate hearing in 1972, this was my explanation: $67 million of war damage educational fund should not be used for a building by the bay. It should be spent for development and training to evolve and apply nationwide the integration of a relevant arts education curriculum from kindergarten to high school. If construction is the purpose, the fund should be equitably distributed $1 million each to 67 provinces to animate their own architectural design of their respective centers of culture and unleash the creative power of their local community in all artistic disciplines to build skills and confidence, as well as appreciate our history, habitat and heritage to unearth the wealth of cultural diversity, in our country. This approach will help forge our national identity to achieve peace and sustainable development.

After being cited “for leadership of the renaissance in the performing arts giving a new cultural content to popular life,” Belen Abreu, then Magsaysay Foundation director, called me to deliver my response. As expected, under the regime of the conjugal dictatorship where press freedom was absent if not curtailed, my response was neither broadcast nor was it printed.

I was determined with God‘s grace to fulfill my assignment with La Mama Theatre as a base of operation to link our country into the global arena. In spite of the travel ban, I staged a dramatic escape at the airport. For doing so, I was alternately accused as a “CIA agent” and branded a “subversive.” I was reunited with Sonny to whom I was married Matrimonia Consciencia style before he escaped to direct a democratic opposition overseas. In assisting the struggle to restore freedom on the cultural front and providing cultural care-giving services to Filipinos overseas, I was inscribed in the list of “Steak Commandos” in exile. The current vilification campaign undertaken against me is therefore not a new experience but a recycled strategy of character assassination. It is understandable that the Marcos children would protest the executive prerogative of President Gloria Arroyo in proclaiming national artists. Twenty-eight years ago, offered as a sweetener for my husband to stop his opposition to the regime and cut our alignment with Ninoy and Tita Cory was for him to return home and run a ministry with me honored as a national artist and running the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP). We did not bite the bait.

In her column, Imee Marcos has berated me as an overrated artist, and in an interview castigated me as desecrating the legacy of her parents. This is a classy deception as they cast into oblivion the amendment of the Marcos Proclamation with Executive Order 236 rationalizing an Honors Code and E.O. 435 stating that CCP with NCCA serves in an advisory and not mandatory capacity. The best response to help clarify the disinformation drive mounted vigorously in the media where there is hardly equity of reply is a speech delivered almost four decades ago at the Magsaysay Awards ceremony in March 1973. My commitment stands as articulated: to democratize the right to culture.

“My father died before I was born. He joined the guerrilla movement and dismissed the fears, tears and anxieties of my mother with the urgent explanation of fighting to give us the gift of freedom. I often wondered about him. My father left me a shining legacy of giving, loving and fighting for one‘s convictions. He was medal-less, but he is my hero. Even as a child, as his daughter, I was resolved to define and seek my own service to our people.

At the age of 16, working at the Orthopedic Hospital, I was deeply impressed how a frail, shy girl on crutches, whose hands were sweaty, whose eyes were downcast, who could speak inaudibly only through trembling lips, found herself. She blossomed into a beautiful character on stage, acknowledging the cheers of the other patients who were a most enthusiastic audience. The wonder-therapy for her incredible personality development and social adjustment was drama.

A further realization of theater as a formidable means of influencing thought came into focus while I was working with teenagers as a constructive reaction against the rise of juvenile delinquency. It was noticeable that participants‘ sensitivity, flexibility, imagination, creative facilities and expression were being cultivated as we continuously developed weekly original TV dramas. These dramas functioned not merely as a platform for entertainment, but also as an arena for social action where youth‘s present problems and future goals were discussed to provide consciousness expansion.

Surely, if the scope was broadened, if we had a national theater movement truthfully articulating our people‘s thoughts, feelings, values and aspirations, if we could develop and encourage theater artists to draw from the wealth of indigenous folklore, legends and ethno epics—to understand them, to teach from them and to improve upon them in order to provide a knowledge and understanding of the region‘s temper, tradition, figures of speech, and historical trends yet striving to reflect the time in which we live—then we should also be a nation.

This is where I found meaning to serve, to care and to be involved. My goal became to initiate and develop a network of theater arts programs for enriching curriculum and educational techniques for community development of creative human resources. Such programs could enhance the rehabilitation of workers, farmers and prisoners and provide specialized workshops for out-of-school youth, adult illiterates, the mentally retarded and the physically handicapped. They could also contribute to the integration of our ethnic cultural communities.

My associates and I aspired to provide the necessary high caliber program to encourage, train, promote, disseminate and coordinate professional excellence, artistic skills, research, meaningful expression and experiments within the context of the indigenous Philippine cultural heritage and the richly varied Asian theater traditions. Our movement aimed to build bridges of goodwill to the rest of the world, particularly in the absence of diplomatic arrangements or where political negotiations remained unsuccessful.

In the face of such great objectives and so little finances, a superior type of manpower rose to the challenge as artists were inspired to work for a newer, more vibrant Philippine theater.

It‘s most heart-warming for us that the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation has manifested faith in and now gives testimony to the enormous power of theater arts for the public good in our country.

The joy of this Award is shared by all who unselfishly gave their time, talent and energies, and lent encouraging support to the concerted struggle to establish a theater, not for the coterie and the elite, but for the masses— drawing meaning and power from the lives of Filipinos, speaking in the language of our people. The honor belongs to all in Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) who joined in the determination to displace the false attitudes attached to theater arts as personal exhibitionism and social frivolity by projecting theater arts as public service, effectively applying it as a creative force in evolving and strengthening nationhood and advancing our national development, complementarily utilizing it as a dynamic vehicle for promoting regional friendship and cooperation, as well as international understanding and peace.

Avenues have been opened and directions set with efforts for a Central Institute of Theater Arts in Southeast Asia and a responsible position in the Third World Project of the International Theater Institute. But the search for and creation of a vital theater that meets the needs of our people is a continuing lifetime process. To this vision we are pledged. It is an art that relies upon the work of many collaborators, united and disciplined but free in order to thrive.

We can only express our deep appreciation to the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for its interest, concern and attention through a strengthening of our commitment. Please know that the Award has given us more courage and greater impatience to tap and guide the vast potentials of our people so that, eventually, the curtains will rise everywhere in the country on theater at its best—”a factory of thought, a prompter of conscience, an elucidator of conduct, an armory against despair, dullness and repression, a temple of the ascent of man.”

In August 1972, Cecile Guidote at 28 became the youngest Filipina to receive the Ramon Magsaysay Outstanding Asian Award for Public Service in the Arts. It was five years after she founded the Philippine Educational Theatre Association and organized the 1st Third World Theatre Festival and Conference for the Unesco International Theatre Institute. She was also bestowed with the Earthsavers DREAMS Ensemble the Unesco Artists for Peace Award and the UN Human Rights Day Award for Theatrical Innovation by the International Fund for Free Expression.

Source: http://www.manilatimes.net

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Whose Is It Anyway?

By Dzulkifli Abdul Razak

The recent spat over the cultural claims by Indonesia offers another dimension on the understanding of the 1Malaysia concept.

First and above all, it boils down to our weakness, if not failure, to articulate what precisely is Malaysian culture, which now assumes a rather amorphous dimension given the multicultural dimensions of the Malaysian cultural horizon.

If it is to be "Truly Asia", then which Asia? Including Indonesia? Not any more it seems.

Previously, a Malaysian of a Javanese descent, for example, is deemed to make up part of the Malaysian culture, but now this can be challenged by our neighbours, just as in the case of a Balinese dancer who appeared in the fateful Enigmatic Malaysia programme on the Discovery channel.

The fact that apologies have been extended for such a "mistake" reaffirms that the cultural heritage of Indonesian descendants in Malaysia -- from the Minangkabau to the Javanese and more -- are anything but Malaysian, at least culturally speaking.

And by extension they are identified as Malaysian Javanese, and so on, rather than Javanese Malaysian, or anything similar to that of African Americans.

Meaning to say, they are Americans first, and the African bit is a mere variation of the dominant American culture; and therefore, they have nothing to apologise for.

On the contrary, following our apologies over the Balinese dance incident, the implications are the opposite, suggesting a tremendous consequent to the dominant Malaysian culture itself: if there is such a thing.

To some Indonesians, Malaysians have no indigenous culture; everything is borrowed, now deemed as "stolen".

Otherwise, under the context of 1Malaysia`s "unity in diversity" this is just it, namely Malaysian culture is the sum of the potpourri of many cultures belonging to each descendant it represents.

They are not in any way "stolen" or "borrowed" rather they are just Malaysian given the diversity of its population. Just like there can be a Javanese Malaysian, so too the culture.

With the recent vehement Indonesian protests, resulting in apologies being tendered, they strongly signalled that this is no longer possible. Indonesian culture in all its shades, in fact belongs to Indonesia.

It then brings us back to the basic question: what is Malaysian culture? Incidentally, "Melayu" is just one of the many ethnicities that makes up Indonesia.

We need to be careful in assuming the role of the Malay culture as such as the dominant culture for Malaysia, lest we run the same risk again.

The Nusantara slant somehow does not apply here, amidst the oft-repeated claims of being "serumpun".

In a similar vein, should China and India, for example, adopt the same attitude as Indonesia (which is not inconceivable), then the Malaysian culture will be really in a state of flux.

Even though it might not happen at all, the principle is the same. After all, we still prefer to identify ourselves as Chinese Malaysians and Indian Malaysians, and by the same logic, it is the cultures of the Chinese (read: China) and of the Indians (read: India, perhaps Tamil Nadu).

What part of it, therefore, makes up the Malaysian culture remains to be answered.

That the performers are citizens of Malaysia do not necessarily make their culture a Malaysian one. More likely it remains a Chinese or Indian culture performed by a Malaysian, who could be a Kadazan.

In other words, the "unity in diversity" 1Malaysia idea needs to be revisited, as the "potpourri" model of culture which is made up of a blended "scent" is no longer a tenable argument, at least for now.

Of course, it is not confined just to dances, but includes songs as well (remember late 2007, Malaysia was to be sued for using traditional Indonesian songs), though the latter case is more straightforward.

An Indonesian song sung by others would still belong to Indonesia, whether or not the lyrics are translated. And so, too, the other facets of the cultures.

The Indonesian culture and tourism minister made this clear when he wrote a protest note last week to Malaysia citing the violation of the 2007 agreement to honour each other`s cultural heritage.

Better late than never, the sensible thing to do is to begin delineating in earnest our national culture that we have taken for granted for too long. In the wake of all this, the Indonesians are doing the same, too.

Of late, the effort to declare what are the Malaysian kuih is a step in the right direction, though we have barely started the process.

We need to do more so that others do not claim (if not steal) our local flowers and fruits as theirs to be exported, let alone the songs and dances.

So far we have been civil but clearly this not the way forward in the realm of culture, ironically.

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The writer is vice-chancellor of Universiti Sains Malaysia. He can be contacted at vc@usm.my

Source: http://www.nst.com.my

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