Mediating the Tradition of Randai Theatre for a New Audience in Malaysia
MEDIATING THE TRADITION OF RANDAI THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE IN MALAYSIA
This is a practice-lead research, which the author have started since 2003 when he was teaching at the University of Science Malaysia, in Penang. One of the initial and significant steps taken was to embark on a research about Randai in its original form found in Padang, with the intention of creating a new transformed version in Malaysia, without discarding its salient features.
The author have visited Padang Sumatra (the birth-place of Randai) several times to do recordings and interviews with Randai teachers and practicioners, attended Randai performances, and a Randai Festival in 2012 , where more than twenty Randai troupes took part in the competition.
Randai is a traditional theatre and folk art of the Minangkabau ethnic group incorporating music, singing, storytelling, dancing, martial arts, and acting (Pauka 1998).
Randai is based on silat, the Malay martial arts, and incorporates music, singing, dancing, and acting. Randai is a folk theatre form of the Malay Minangkabaus in Padang, West Sumatra. Through migration in the early 20th. Century, this theatre form was brought to Negeri Sembilan in Malaysia. Presently this theatre form is loosing its appeal and seldom performed in its entirety.It is dying out especially when not appreciated by the new generation in Negeri Sembilan. It is presumed that a couple of Randai groups that are still surviving only perform the ‘Tari Gelombang’ (silat dance) that uses the silat moves, and singing of a few ‘dendang’ (songs). One of the important features of Randai ie. the acting out of a story, is missing.
This research traces the initiatives, efforts, and plans taken up by the Department of Culture and Heritage, the Academy of Arts and Heritage, the School of Arts, and the Cultural Centre of the University of Malaya (CCUM), to revive this art form. The above agencies, in their own separate ways are planning,mediating and transforming Randai to meet the local audience’s taste in Negeri Sembilan.
Due to several factors, the theatre of randai is not actively performed in Negeri Sembilan. As a matter of fact, it is a dying art. There are several groups performing the randai dance (the precursor form of the theatre), but not randai theatre itself. Beginning in the 1990s there were efforts to revive the randai theatre by the Ministry of Culture, individuals like Masdar Aziz (better known as Pak Pen) and myself. This endeavor has encountered some resistance from concerned parties.They comprise of the older generation of immigrants who are now above sixty years old (Generation zoomers); those who wants to have the best of both worlds, the old and the new; and the third party, consisting of the younger generation (Generation Y) that demands a ‘complete overhaul’ in order to identify themselves with randai.
Some express a concern that randai should be preserved in its original form, the one that is found in Padang, west Sumatra. Others argue that randai should be transformed to suit the local needs in Negeri Sembilan.
This on-going research is done, in preparation for a performance of Randai that is acceptable to its new audience in Negeri Sembilan, and later to the people of Malaysia. Before embarking on this creative project, the author would first like to look into how this art form in one locality of Southeast Asia (Padang), is diffused and transplanted to another place (Negeri Sembilan in this context) as a result of migration.
Randai on Global Stages
From the above discussion, it is apparent that changes and adaptations have been made in order for randai to be relevant to Malaysian audiences. This activity is not new for randai, because randai as performed in Honolulu (at the University of Hawaii) and in Brisbane, Australia. The productions have undergone some sorts of alteration to suit or satisfy the societies that they are playing for. The only difference is the amount of adaptations or changes that had to be done. Pauka, working in Hawaii, has tried to maintain the Minang Randai by following closely to how randai is done in West Sumatra. The main changes involved are intranslating the Minang dialogue to English and using the auditorium at Kennedy Theatre as the space of performance, instead of an open space.
In contrast, Indija Mahjoeddin has introduced randai to Australia as a hybrid form. Changes were undertaken eclectically in story, songs, movements, musical instruments.She incorporates western staging elements such as different spaces, lighting, sets, and costumes. Indija did not refer tokaba as a source for story. She staged instead Boldenblee and The Butterfly Seerusing hip-hop free style in delivering the dialogues to move towards Australian Neo-Randai (Mahjoeddin 2011), perhaps taking guidance from Harun (1992) that good randai dialogue must be different from daily speech. She has used three different approaches to music, commissioning original musical compositions rather than using the typical randai songs that are drawn from a canon of classic folk tunes.