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- A surprise ... Pusaka is not preserving aborigine tribal music, but actually all about preserving Malay traditional music etc from dying out cos of increased religious conservatism frowns on old rituals.
- Far from being a liberal Eddin Koo is a Indian/Chinese who converted into Islam and then became an expert in the dying out traditional practices.
- The music today was Dabus : ritual chanting music similar to Sufi. Normally there would be dancing and then eventually people going into trance and performing pain defying body piercing like Thaipusam. Unfortunately these days the political situation is not such that an authentic performance can be performed in a government building it would be picked upon as damaging to Islam. So all we got was the chanting not even dancing and so as a spectacle it wasn't up to much .. I guess the thing is any form of performance helps keep the knowledge alive.
- Eddin next time you are in Kota Baru from Mydin go 500m South along the same road to the place where people bring their caged birds there is a squatter camp of Malays from Thailand. One lane further up I stayed at Zeks Homestay at night I often heard musicians playing together on a platform on the same lane , locals seemed to dislike this old music calling it unislamic. So maybe interesting to you.
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