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ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 6, Number 1
of the natural world. The flow of winds
determines your character and
personality and through them your
interaction with the community. So if
any one of these winds is wayward, it
will prove very disruptive to you as an
individual and hence to the community
as a whole. The term ‘amok’ in the
American vernacular is a specifically
Malay term. ‘To run amok’ is based on
the idea of suppressed winds that
eventually explode into a madness in
which the individual has no sense of
his self. And ‘amok’ often occurs when a
teenager or a young man suffering from
great depression suddenly goes berserk
and kills members of his own family. In
order to pre-empt or treat such
behaviour the performance space
becomes very important.
In Kelantan we have five major
performance traditions:
w The Wayang Kulit Siam, an exalted
form
w The Mak yong, an all-female ritual
drama, also rooted in ritual and
therapy, where all roles are performed
by women including the male roles, but
female comic roles are performed by
effeminate men, often transvestites,
who are often encouraged to come to
the stage and lend their fortune to the
space because transvestites are believed
to have healing qualities
w The Main Puteri, the play of the
princess, rooted in the memory and
notion of the self, where you are able to
restore yourself the moment you are
able to remember your lineage and
where you came from
w Menora, a Thai-Malay dance
drama rooted in the Jataka tales and
performed in the southern Thai state of
Pattani (it’s interesting how
Malay Muslim traditions and Thai
Buddhist traditions coalesce and
confluence)
w The musical tradition Dikir Barat,
the only tradition that is predominantly
male, where sixty-odd youths gather
around in circles and enter a musical
duel in an attempt to release Angin
Within these ritualistic traditions,
known as earthly traditions, the
Wayang Kulit, because of its
association with Rama and Ravana, is
known as a celestial form. The
Ramayana in a Muslim context
obviously cannot be regarded as a
sacred text, so it is regarded as a
celestial one. One of the reasons that
dalang Abdullah gave for the existence
of a celestial realm was that this was
the space in which pre-Islamic
Kelantan society could negotiate its
past and present.
A performance may be occasioned