KUALA LUMPUR: In the Orang Asli world, the forest is alive with magic – its winds and rivers make music, unseen spirits guard its trees and waters and ancestral stories emerge from blocks of wood.
For Semai flautist Raman Bahtuin, that enchantment can be heard in the rustle of leaves, the rush of waterfalls and the distant calls of gibbons and siamangs.
“All of it forms the music of nature. It is natural,” Raman, who lives in Cameron Highlands, said yesterday at the Citra Nusa: Magis Belantara 2026 programme at Muzium Negara.
He described the forest as both a sanctuary and a “hypermarket” that supplies the Orang Asli with food, medicinal herbs and the tranquillity needed to heal the body and mind.
“In the city, you need money to go to the supermarket. When we enter the forest, we do not need money,” he said.
Instead, Raman said, their currency was “skill, spirit and confidence”.
His flute-playing was inherited, with both his parents versed in the instrument.
He now teaches the skill freely to anyone willing to learn.
But the melody of that inheritance, he said, risks fading away as younger Orang Asli turn increasingly to mobile phones and social media.
“Programmes like this must continue because skills that have disappeared may return for a new generation,” he said.
“The traditions may seem lost, but they are still within us. With a platform like this, they can be brought out again.”
For traditional healer Sali Bah Bola, 54, the forest possesses a more mysterious power.
The Semai man from Kuala Lipis believes unseen beings dwell among its rocks, rivers and trees and that not every beautiful corner of the wilderness welcomes human footsteps.
“Among a thousand trees, there is one that must not be approached. Among the many pools in a river, there is one waterfall where, despite its beauty, you must not bathe,” he said.
Such beliefs, he said, remain entwined with traditional healing through incantations and herbal remedies, yet Sali fears the knowledge is slipping into obscurity.
“Honestly, it is already disappearing,” he said, estimating that perhaps only one in 1,000 people still possessed it.
Sali, who calls himself a living heir of the bunian, or supernatural beings, said his family stories included an ancestor who vanished into the sky and another who could transform into a tiger.
“Mystery and supernatural powers cannot be separated from village people,” he said.
While he continues to practise traditional healing, Sali stressed that it should complement rather than replace modern medicine.
The forest reveals yet another form of magic beneath the hands of Mah Meri woodcarver Samri Abdul Rahman, 50.
For him, magic is the transformation of the unseen into something tangible – an ancestral tale, dream or imagined spirit coaxed from a block of wood.
“Things that were unseen become visible. That is magic,” said Samri, from Kampung Orang Asli Sungai Bumbun on Pulau Carey, Selangor.
Taught by his late uncle, master woodcarver Piyun Anak Bumbung, Samri’s craft has taken him from his village to cultural events in Paris, London, China, Thailand and Japan.
“We want to broaden awareness and introduce our culture. Malaysia has Orang Asli crafts,” he said.
Samri said earlier generations had no books from which to draw their designs, relying instead on stories and vivid imaginations to create masks and sculptures.
He now encourages his children and son-in-law to keep carving.
“Make a sculpture, make a mask – just keep creating,” he said, so the figures within the forest may continue to find their way into the light.
