[INFO] Cultures of Sabah

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Sea Nomads, Keepers Of Skulls, People Who Celebrate By Jumping On Trampolines

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Sabah is rich in traditional handicraft, from baskets over hats, to beaded necklaces, musical instruments, textiles and woven boxes. The local people still produce many of them, touching each piece with a bit of their culture, their traditions, their lives.

Baskets are still used by the natives in their everyday lives. Anything, from fruits to firewood and padi stalks is transported in the various baskets, strapped onto their backs, leaving their hands free to carry even more. Made from bamboo, rattan and bark, these baskets have now been adapted for a more commercial demand and model baskets make original souvenirs, pen and pencil holders, as well as vases for dried flowers.




The Rungus, the natives of the Kudat area, have long been known to produce beautiful  beaded necklaces; they wear long, broad multi-stranded pinakol (right in picture) crossed over their shoulders over their traditional black costumes interwoven with gold thread. Patterns on the strands tell of ancient fables, and human figures are picked out in bright hues in the beadwork. Ever-enterprising, the Rungus today produce bangles, earrings and even brooches to go with the necklaces.

       

The parang is still crafted in traditional ways by the Bajau from Kota Belud. The ones made by them these days are usually from scrap iron, which goes though a process of melting, pounding, shaping and finally polishing. The blades are straight and tapered, from a sharp tip widening up towards the hilt. Some may have patterns etched into the metal along the topside. The hilt and sheath are carved from of wood, and occasionally one can come across an antique parang with a wonderfully carved hilt of horn. In days gone by, the parang was used as a weapon as well as a work tool, but these days it is mainly a decorative item for display.  




Tudung Duang is the local name for a food cover: in the tropics, like in Sabah, food on the table has to be protected from insects and dust. One is instantly attracted to them because of their bright colours, especially when they are laid out on pandan (screw pine leaf) mats in high piles, like at the Kota Belud Tamu grounds on the weekly Sunday Market (tamu).



By the shape of a  native hat, and its patterns, one can immediately identify the wearer to which ethnic entity he or she belongs. Most hats here are steeply conical and have nature-derived designs on them. Murut hats woven from the strips of  sombituon bamboo are hexagonal in shape with a three-bands patterned weaving. Hats from Penampang and Tuaran have wider, circular bases with geometrical designs. All these hats are crafted from bamboo and rattan strips, and the red and black colours used to be natural dyes - red from the mengkudu root, or 慸ragon抯 blood

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The music of Sabah is intimately bound up with the daily lives and cultural traditions of the diverse ethnic cultures of Sabah. It can be found in many forms like ritual music (for birth, marriages, harvest festivals, deaths) love music, battle songs, story telling songs, among others.

For example, the Kadasan Dusun Bobohizan or Bobolian (or high priestess) engages in ritual chanting to appease the spirit in times disaster like floods or droughts. Also, music and dancing are closely linked: the festive dances like the Limbai of the Bajaus and Sumazau of the Penampang Kadazans have distinctive wedding music. In fact, in most Sabahan ethnic groups, song, dance and the accompanying music are, in the main, inseperable as each element is a part of an organic whole, which permeates the lives of the natives.

This is reflected in the music抯 significance to festive and commemorative occasions and as a means of personal expression and entertainment. Experience, then, the intensifying power of the gong ensembles, the rhythmic tung, tung, tung harmonies of the togunggak, the healing musical balm of the suling.

The following traditional musical instruments of the various Sabahan ethnic groups are divided according to the way in which they work:

  

IDIOPHONES:  Instruments made with materials which produce sounds when scraped, rubbed, hit and without further intervention of other materials.




GONG ENSEMBLES

Are the most prevalent of Sabah抯 indiophones, found throughout most parts of Sabah especially amongst the Kadazan Dusuns and muruts.


The gongs are made of brass or bronze and were originally traded in from Brunei in earlier times. Usually they are thick with a broad rim. They produce a muffled sound of a deep tone.

The sopogandangan from the enterior (of the Tambunan Kadazan Dusuns) accompanies the magarang, usually in commemoration of harvest festival and weddings though traditionally the magarang was associated with headhunting.

The sopogandangan has more instruments (nine-eight gongs and one drum) than the sompogogungan (seven-six gongs and one drum) from coastal Penampang and used by the Kadazan Dusuns there.(This does not include the popular kulintangan).

The sompogogungan accompanies the sumazau, a festive and ritual dance like the magarang but slower in tempo. The Kadazan Dusuns also play dunsai, a type of gong music, at funerals.


KULINTANGAN




Is frequently included amongst coastal gong ensembles though it is also found amongst interior natives like the Labuk-Kinabatangan Kadazans and the Paitanic peoples (both from the eastern Sabah) who have come into contract with the coastal natives.

These idiophones produce predominantly ritual Music:
The Tatana Dusun of Kuala Penyu (Southwestern Sabah) employ kulintangan music, and sumayau dancing, as well as unaccompanied by ritual chanting in Moginum rites to welcome the spirits.


The Lotud-Dusun of Tuaran (west Coast of Sabah) use gong ensembles in the slow sedate mongigol dance for the seven-day Rumaha rites which honour the spirits of sacred skulls and the five-day Mangahau rites which honour possessed jars.



TOGUNGGAK (Interior Dusuns)
TOGUNGGU (Penampang Kadazan dusun) &
TAGUNGGAK (Muruts).

In older times before gongs were traded into Sabah, the togunggak was used to accompany dancing and in procession. It was and still is made of bamboo, which flourishes in most parts of Sabah. Bamboo is a great source of raw materials for Sabah抯 musical instruments.

The togunggak consists of a series of hollowed out bamboo tubes of varying sizes of the gongs. The music produced is a hollow and rhythmic tung, tung, tung sound of different pitches in each of the different sizes. The togunggak is played by a troupe of a dozen or so people in lieu of the gong ensemble.





MEMBRANOPHONES:  Instruments where a membrane is stretched across a hallow body (the 憆esonator

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If Sabah has thirty-two different ethnic races, fifty-five different languages and about one hundred dialects, what about her music and dances?  Each group has their own cultures, traditions and custom. They each have their own way of expressing and interpreting their lives though music and dance. The result is a rich multi culture diversity of rituals, song and exhibition. Some of these dances are similar in movements, other have similar music. Some emerge from life styles, others from religions. Some are rituals, others performed for entertainment. All in all a hundred and thirty culture dances have been officially recorded.


               

DANSA

Dansa is the dance of the Cocos Islanders from the Lahad Datu district on the east coast of Sabah.  This dance is usually performed by three couples during weddings and often-festive occasions. There is much feet stomping, making it a very lively dance. Music is provided by a couple of violins called biola.   The tops of the costumes for boat the male and female dancers resemble the Scottish Highlanders with their frilled shirts and scarves. The women wear these over batik sarongs. Then men a songkok and also sarong batik putih with heavy shoes to produce the lively beat of the dance.

KUDA PASU

A dance originally performed by skilled horsemen, Kuda Pasu is a Bajau dance now performed by male and female dancers to welcome or accompany the entourage of a bridegroom to the bride抯 residence. They dance to the beat of the bertitik music called tigad-tigad.  The male dancers are met by the female dancers who hold a red handkerchief tied to their fingers. This symbolizes the welcoming of the bridegroom and his party.

       

LIMBAI




Limbai is the dance of the Bajau people of the Kota Belud area on the west coast of Sabah. Three to four couples or more dressed in the traditional Bajau costumes with the women wearing the gold ornate sarimpak headpiece, circle about each other with the women coming to rest in a seated position with the men standing behind them. This dance is characterized by the graceful rotating wrist movements of the dancers.  The music accompanying the Limbai is called bertitik. The instruments usually consist of a kulintangan which is a set of nine small kettle gongs and three hanging gongs and two double-headed drums called gandang. Limbai is performed during weddings and other social occasions.

LILIPUT

Liliput is a Bisaya dance from the district of Beaufort. Liliput means `go-round`. It is mainly danced to cast away the evil spirit from a 憄ossessed` person and then to 憆eturn

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The peoples of Sabah are blessed with an abundance of seafood, their rivers providing freshwater fish and prawn, with deer, wild board and other game, plus innumerable wild plants, herbs and luscious fruits there for the taking in the forest.  The traditional foods of Sabah抯 more than thirty ethnic groups vary, and depend on available resources. Naturally, the diet of coastal peoples was- and still is- dominated by all types of seafood, while those living far inland relied on freshwater fish and wild game. Although both hill rice and padi ( rice planted in irrigated fields ) have been grown in Sabah for generations, this is not always the staple food, and in the far north, corn and cassava ( tapioca ) are often eaten.  In many swampy areas, the wild sago palm flourishes. Just how long ago man discovered that it was possible to extract starch from the grated interior of the sago tree is unknown, but the pre- western name for all of Borneo, Kalimantan, comes from the word 憀amanta

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With more than 32 indigenous groups in Sabah, one can expect to see tribal dresses of various styles. Most of these have retained much of their original design and colour, unchanged over the ages.

Many of Sabah抯 traditional dresses are made of black fabric, and one of the reasons for using such a sombre colour is that in the past, the people could only rely on a few types of vegetables and plants from which to extract dyes to colour the cloth.

They added colour to their dresses with silver and other accessories, beaded embroideries, elaborate needle stitch work, and gold trimmings, amongst others.

Traditional costumes very often include antique bead-necklaces and heavy belts, hand-embossed silver jewellery, and belts of old silver coins. Most of these accessories have been handed down from generation to generation, and they are not only valuable, but they represent priceless heirloom to the local families.

The best time to admire the colourful costumes of the many tribes of Sabah is in May, during the Pesta Ka抋matan, the Harvest Festival. In their every day lives, the people of Sabah nowadays don ordinary western costumes, and besides in the Kudat area it has become increasingly rare to find traditionally outfitted people.



Penampang Kadazan

The Penampang Kadazan traditional costume, with its gold trimmings (siling) on black velvet, is simple yet elegant. The ladies wear a sleeveless blouse (sinuangga) and a long sarong (tapi). The men wear a jacket and long trousers, equally from black velvet and with gold trimmings. While the costume of the Penampang men remains quite simple and with without too many accessories beside the skilfully folded sigal

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Since the dawn of time, the Kadazandusun and Murut people have been celebrating an elaborate Harvest Festival, the Pesta Ka'amatan in their own unique way to pay homage to the Bambazon, the rice spirit, to mark their gratitude for ar bountiful harvest.



Merry-making takes place in virtually all villages and districts throughout Sabah which host their own celebrations during the month of May. The climax of the celebrations is the two-day state holiday and the ensuing festivals held at annually chosen places such as the Hongkod Koisaan in Penampang on the 30th and 31st of May.





MAGAVAU

One of the highlights of the Pesta Ka'amatan is the Magavau Ceremony, a traditional thanksgiving rite performed by the ritual specialists of Sabah, the Bobohizan.



Traditional beliefs have it that Bambazon can be threatened by pests, natural disasters, or even by the carelessness of the farmers themselves. To restore and appease Bambazon the Magavau Ceremony has to be performed. "Magavau" in the Kadazan language means "to recover what has been lost, by whatever means".



Lead by a senior ritual specialist, sometimes also referred to as the "high priestess", the Bobohizan and her assistants perform the ritual which symbolises the search for the lost and stray parts of Bambazon, and take them safely 'home'.



Moving in a single file, close to one another, the Bobohizan and her assistants enter the spirit world in search of Bambazon. Every time a lost part of Bambazon is met and recovered the leader of the ceremony shouts out in a piercing scream, the pangkis, expressing joy at the recovery and urging the others to keep on looking.



After paying homage to rice spirit, a merry feast ensues.  Those present are traditionally served chicken porridge, eggs and meat only, for it is believed that green vegetables connote disrespect to the guests of Bambazon. Only the best tapai, or rice wine, is served. The Ka'amatan Celebrations are filled with rituals, music, songs and dances which are pure expression of Sabah's cultural joy and merriment.




UNDUK NGADAU




Unduk Ngadau literally means the 'Noon Sun'. Legend has it that Kinoingan, the Creator, sacrificed his only daughter Huminodun so that all his people would have seeds to grow the food they needed.  



Her head gave rise to the coconut, her flesh became padi, her blood red rice, her fingers ginger, her teeth maize, her knees yam, and so on. When it was time to ascend to the heavens, Kinoingan and his wife Suminundu held a big feast as desired by their daughter, so that the people would not forget the sacrifice. But during the feast Kinoingan was overcome with grief for his daughter. He played a special tune on his bamboo flute and called out her name. Miraculously, she appeared from a big jar which was used to hold the remains of the threshed padi. Her return to life added much joy to the festivities. To honour the sacrifice made by Huminodun for the people, the search for Unduk Ngadau - or the Harvest Beauty Queen Pageant - the ideal Kadazandusun maiden resembling Huminodun in terms of total beauty of the heart, mind and body is the highlight of to-day's Ka'amatan Festivals!

[ Last edited by BeeBuzz on 12-9-2004 at 12:05 AM ]

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