In the shadows

As the years go by, the traditional art of wayang kulit has been increasingly left in the shadows.

I mean, who shadow puppets when you’ve got TV, the Internet, movies, 3D movies and god knows what else next?

In fact, almost all of us in the Star's youth journalist programme BRATs (Bright Roving Annoying Teens) in Kota Bharu, Kelantan were watching a wayang kulit performance for the first time when we went to the Galeri Wayang Kulit Melayu Tradisional Kelantan last week; and there were about ten of us who were locals!

But even though we’ve come to the point where wayang kulit is something we’ve only heard of or seen on TV, we were still excited to see the performance.

We had travelled to the gallery in Kampung Morak, about 10 minutes from Kota Bharu town, and it was around 9pm by the time we got there. The gallery is a small house converted into a wayang kulit stage and workshop, where the gambar (shadow puppets) are made and sold.

Once we got there and saw the screen light up from behind and with a few gambar casting their colourful shadows on it, we got pretty psyched to watch the show.

Even more excited however, was Muhammad Dain Othman, 59, the tok dalang, or puppeteer, who started by giving us an introduction to wayang kulit and the story he was about to perform for us.

Dain then took his place alongside the eight musicians behind the screen, and the gendang (drum) and serunai (flute) started playing an entrancing traditional song, signaling the start of the first scene.

A green figure appeared, which Dain later explained was the puppet representation of Raja Sri Rama, king of Tanah Jawa. Using the movement of the puppets, different songs and some dialogue, the story was told, beginning with that of a king addressing his ministers, telling them that he is leaving the kingdom to meditate.

We expected to be dazzled by the performance, but even then it was so much better than we had anticipated! We were enthralled by the beauty of the art, even though most of us couldn’t understand a single word uttered by Dain as the story was told in classical Kelantanese Malay.

It was a brilliant show of light and colours; the colours of the characters signifying their roles in the story. Red, for instance, represents aggressiveness, so the characters in red are usually villains or warriors.

Dain emerges at the end of the first scene, saying that his student would take over for the next scene, and being all mesmerised by the performance, many of us were now crowding around him trying to find out more about wayang kulit.

But then the second scene begins, with the introduction of Pedang Guna and Tanjang Guna, two brothers whose late father, Rawana, was killed by king Raja Sri Rama.

However, instead of allowing his sons to inherit the throne, Rawana’s brother Babu Sanem assumes power, and this creates a struggle for supremacy over the kingdom. Those were just two of many scenes from the Ramayana, the ancient epic.

Dain explained to us that all traditional Kelantanese wayang kulit performances tells stories from Ramayana, and that the art was brought over from Jawa, Indonesia. It started in the nearby village of Kampung Kebakat, and Dain sees the entire area as the birthplace of wayang kulit in Malaysia.

“There are two main types of wayang kulit – traditional, which you just saw, and modern. The main differences lie in four areas – the gambar, language, music and number of performers,” said Dain, while his student continued to perform the second scene, which continued even after we left the centre around 10:45pm, by which time several neighbours and passers-by had stopped by to watch the show.

Several young people had even stopped their motorcycles on the roadside to enjoy the show. It was almost like an outdoor drive-through movie theatre. The eight musicians kept them entertained alongside the tok dalang, playing perfectly in sync. “To produce a really good show, we could use up to 12 musicians!” said Dain. In modern wayang kulit however, as few as seven performers are needed.

The language used is Southern Thai Malay, and only gambars of major characters from the Ramayana like King Rama, Queen Sita and Hanuman are used.

Also, a standard set of 32 songs are used in traditional wayang kulit, each specific to a particular character. Only seven songs are used in the modern version.

The following morning, we returned to the centre to meet Wan Ismail, a puppet maker who showed us how gambar were made.

First, the characters are hand drawn on a piece of paper, which would be stuck on a piece of animal hide (goat hide for smaller ones, and cow hide for performance-sized ones). The hide is then carved according to the patterns on the paper, and coloured based on the character it is to represent.

It is an intricate process that involves over 20 tools, some of which Wan Ismail fashioned himself from scrap material such as umbrella frames, but he nevertheless says it is a skill that can be easily learned.

“If you are truly interested, you can learn the method of creating gambars in a month.” said Wan Ismail.

And that is what Dain hopes young people will do – learn.

His passion for wayang kulit had led him to start the training and performance centre, which cost him RM50,000 to set up; but it was borne of a genuine love for the traditional art.

“If I don’t recruit people, the art dies,” he said, when asked about the future of wayang kulit.

And just before the BRATs left, he said to us: “Please do come again, and do something to make wayang kulit alive again.”

Video: Wayang Kulit performance

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBkiil4aTKI&