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KATHAK: A CLASSICAL DANCE OF NORTH INDIA
Storytelling through Dance
Friday, 7th September
On Friday 7 September, MCG members were invited by the
Indian High Commission to see and hear veteran Kathak danseuse,
Shobha Koser. Making her stage debut at 9, she is
now the acknowledged master of interpreting India, and its
traditions, through the Kathak dance form. Kathak,
a major classical dance form began as a storytelling technique
in northern India. In ancient times, the temple was
the center of village life and people gathered there to
hear stories from mythology told by traveling bards known
as Kathaks. A kathak would
sing songs and use hand gestures and dance movements to
make the story more interesting.
As Mughal culture spread across India, Kathak began to
be performed in the royal courts. Artistes employed
in the courts worked hard at refining their art to the highest
standard, paying much attention to rhythm. Three major
schools or gharana were born;
Lucknow, Banaras and Jaipur. Madame Koser belongs to the
Jaipur gharana which became renowned for highly intricate
and complex footwork, and fast, sharp, and accurate dancing.
The structure of a conventional Kathak performance tends
to follow a progression in tempo from slow to fast, ending
with a dramatic climax.
A short danced composition is known as a tukra,
a longer one as a tora. There
are also compositions consisting solely of footwork. Often
the performer will engage in rhythmic play with the time-cycle,
splitting it into triplets or quintuplets for example, which
will be marked out on the footwork, so that it is in counterpoint
to the rhythm on the percussion. Madame Shobha gaves us
examples of this, first explaining what she would be doing
and them performing the movements, so that it was very easy
for all to understand. All compositions are performed so
that the final step and beat of the composition lands on
the 'sam' or first beat of the time-cycle.
Most compositions also have 'bols' (rhythmic
words) which serve both as mnemonics to the composition
and whose recitation also forms an integral part of the
performance. Some compositions are aurally very interesting
when presented this way. The bols can be borrowed from
tabla (e.g. dha, ge, na, tirakiTa)
or can be a dance variety (ta, thei,
tat, ta ta, tigda, digdig
and so on).
There was great interplay between the tabla player and
Madame Shobha which made the performance really interesting.
It was a most enjoyable morning and we thank the Indian
High Commission and Aparna Nanavati for organizing this
very special treat!
Cindy Zeier
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Explorers A and B:
Visit a Palm Oil Plantation
Monday, 10th September
In September, Explorers Groups A and B joined to find out how palm oil gets from the tree to your table.
We traveled to Carey Island, part of the delta of the Klang and Langat Rivers. Our guide, Nafiz Zainal Abidin, Public Affairs Executive, took us to the Golden Hope Plantations where we stopped to see a hardhat-clad worker harvest from a tree conveniently located next to the road. With a blade on a long pole; first he cut the leaf frond, then the fruit bunch—and thud! the 20 kilo fruit fell to the ground.
There are about 400 harvesters, 80% of whom are Indonesians. The fruit must be harvested at the proper ripeness; it takes 10-15 days between harvestings on a single tree. Harvesting starts when a tree is 3 1/2 years old, and harvests can continue for 25 years.
There was a display showing the male and female flowers, and the fruit at varying stages of ripeness. Each fruit is the size of a colossal olive; when sliced open you can see the oily orange flesh surrounding a small white kernel with a thin brown skin. The palm kernel oil is used for cosmetics.
The plantation roads were nicely landscaped with flowering shrubs and vines and we learned that the flowers provide a home for beneficial insects that prey on the harmful insects. Rats can inflict significant damage to the fruit; to control the rat population, the company imported barn owls from Africa. There are owl houses—wooden boxes on poles—throughout the plantation, and there was one where we had our demonstration. The harvester donned a pair of gloves, reached into the box and brought out a sleepy owl.
We then drove across the plantation to the West Oil Mill. We were told about the milling process and there was also a display of products and byproducts. Then we put on hardhats and went to the mill, although rain earlier in the day had delayed the delivery of fruit and the mill was quiet.
The fresh fruit bunches have to be milled within 10 days of harvesting to produce premium quality oil. The fruit bunches are dumped into tram cars, with curved sides and open at the top. They run on four parallel sets of rails that go from the loading area into sterilizing chambers. These are large steel tubes. When the doors are shut, the fruit is subjected to 90 minutes of steam pressure; this softens it, stops further ripening, and loosens the fruit from the woody stalks. Next overhead cranes lift the tram cars and deliver the fruit into thresher chambers. There, in a rotating drum, the bunches are separated—the woody mass is then burned and the ash spread on the fields as fertilizer, and the fruit then goes to the digester, where it is pressed to produce crude oil.
The crude oil then goes to a refinery; the sludge that is left is centrifuged for further oil recovery and the remaining fibrous material is used to power the boilers. All the byproducts are used.
We then went to the heritage section of the plantation. Golden Hope is the successor to Harrison and Crosfield, a company established in 1844. We passed the golf course (free for employees and open to the public for a small fee) and clubhouse, and some 1920’s vintage bungalows for senior staff.
We stopped at the bungalow now used for visiting VIPs; it was a gracious building with carved woodwork and deep verandahs. A special feature of the buildings is their water collection system; under each bungalow is a water tank, supplied by rainwater collected through gutters on the roof—originally there was no other water supply to the island. Surrounding the island is a bund; parts of the island are below sea level. The bund was topped with casuarina trees, swaying in the breeze off the Straits of Malacca.
Our day culminated with a lunch in the Academy. Golden Hope, in cooperation with two universities, operates a school that offers degrees and diplomas in mechanical engineering and agriculture. At the management dining facility near the student hostels, we were served a lavish lunch. We enjoyed Golden Hope’s wonderful hospitality and learned a bit more about one of Malaysia’s important products.
Minna Schwarz –Seim |
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THE PERANAKAN CULTURE
Who are the Baba & Nyonya's
Wednesday, 12th September
On Wednesday, 12 September at the Badan Warisan, Cedric Tan spoke about the Babas and Nyonyas and the Peranakan Culture. Backed with some slides and an array of heirloom pieces, he took us back to the era of the Straits-born Chinese.
As normally expected, in the origins of culture and tradition, where no recorded proof is evident except handed-down traits; one can leave the talk pondering on several hypotheses of the origins of the Baba Nyonya Culture, but I thoroughly enjoyed his point-form presentation, which was analytical and educational. It is true that this culture has no proof of connection to the Malacca Sultanate, Hang Li Po, nor the immigrants during the Dutch rule. The origin of the word ‘Baba’ is unknown. The imposition of terms such as peranakan, baba and nyonya typifies them as unchanging while they have in fact moved on to assume other identities and religious believes such as Ancestral worship, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and Keramat. What is unique about them is their claim of originating within Malaya, while other Chinese may trace their origins to some place in mainland China. This disloyalty to mainland China, adopting a mixture of the malay/hokkien language and their non-chinese culturalization earned them the term ‘OCBC’ (“Orang China Bukan China” translated ‘Chinese, yet not Chinese’). Yet some theory explained that this came about when they were stranded due to the change in policies during the Ming and Qing dynasties, which forbade them to travel overseas which was punished by death.
The Malacca Peranakan Chinese settlement is the oldest and they refer themselves as Baba Chinese. The word ‘Baba’ refers to a male whereas the female a ‘Nyonya’. They spoke Baba Malay (the Malay language influenced by Hokkien, a language associated to the Fujian Province in South-east China) and was the language of trade and commerce between the Chinese and the Malays. Babas retained their traditional Chinese costume, the “teng sa”, which was a long coat. They wore a silk skull-cap, shaved their forehead, and plaited their hair into a pigtail whereas the women wore the kebaya, a Malay blouse held together by brooches (kerongsong). The Nyonyas wore sarongs of bright, unmatching colored prints. Both men and women chewed betel nut like the local Malays and their food was a fusion of spiced Malay food with traditional Hokkien fare, though there was a difference in Malacca (tamarind base) and Penang (pickle base). They also ate with their hands like the local Malays. Their children played local games like top-spinning and congkak.
Like all Peranakan Chinese, these Malacca Baba Chinese played an intermediary role between local producers and visiting Chinese Traders, the Portuguese, and later the Dutch. Their business aspirations and culture played a key role in determining how they responded both to the Malay environment and to the new Western influence. That may be the case as they were the first to study English.
Their homes were built in the style of long houses (length-wise) with Chinese courtyards but the width was narrow like the Dutch houses, as imposition of taxes were based on the width of the homes.
Their cultural pinnacle reached its height when they became economically affluent due to their distinctive produces, for eg. the Baba Nyonya ware, their furniture (engraved and decorated with mother of pearls), for eg. the Malacca chair, the Venetian mirrors and of course distinctive decorative pieces of cloth that were either multi-coloured for occasions or blue & white for ancestral worship.
What is unique about them is their claim of originating within Malaya, while other Chinese may trace their origins to some place in mainland China. This disloyalty to mainland China, adopting a mixture of the malay/hokkien language and their non-chinese culturalization earned them the term ‘OCBC’ (“Orang China Bukan China” translated ‘Chinese, yet not Chinese’). Yet some theory explained that this came about when they were stranded due to the change in policies during the Ming and Qing dynasties, which forbade them to travel overseas which was punished by death.
The Malacca Peranakan Chinese settlement is the oldest and they refer themselves as Baba Chinese. The word ‘Baba’ refers to a male whereas the female a ‘Nyonya’. They spoke Baba Malay (the Malay language influenced by Hokkien, a language associated to the Fujian Province in South-east China) and was the language of trade and commerce between the Chinese and the Malays. Babas retained their traditional Chinese costume, the “teng sa”, which was a long coat.
They wore a silk skull-cap, shaved their forehead, and plaited their hair into a pigtail whereas the women wore the kebaya, a Malay blouse held together by brooches (kerongsong).
The Nyonyas wore sarongs of bright, unmatching colored prints. Both men and women chewed betel nut like the local Malays and their food was a fusion of spiced Malay food with traditional Hokkien fare, though there was a difference in Malacca (tamarind base) and Penang (pickle base). They also ate with their hands like the local Malays. Their children played local games like top-spinning and congkak.
Like all Peranakan Chinese, these Malacca Baba Chinese played an intermediary role between local producers and visiting Chinese Traders, the Portuguese, and later the Dutch. Their business aspirations and culture played a key role in determining how they responded both to the Malay environment and to the new Western influence. That may be the case as they were the first to study English.
Their homes were built in the style of long houses (length-wise) with Chinese courtyards but the width was narrow like the Dutch houses, as imposition of taxes were based on the width of the homes.
Their cultural pinnacle reached its height when they became economically affluent due to their distinctive produces, for eg. the Baba Nyonya ware, their furniture (engraved and decorated with mother of pearls), for eg. the Malacca chair, the Venetian mirrors and of course distinctive decorative pieces of cloth that were either multi-coloured for occasions or blue & white for ancestral worship.
Regina Stanislaus |
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SHREE LAKSHMI NARAYAN TEMPLE
A Kuala Lumpur Landmark
Thursday, 20th September
In September a group of MCG members visited an area of KL in which the early northern Indian immigrants some generations ago built their homes and communities. Since then, the north Indian community has spread and moved around KL, but the Shree Lakshmi Narayan Temple continues to be a strong draw-card, bringing families together for spiritual, community and cultural enrichment. By far the majority of immigrants to Malaysia in the late 19th Century were from South India, and whilst it could be said both the north and south are Hindus, there are many significant differences in their practice, temple design and languages..
The current temple was built 25 years ago and stands near the site of the original temple which was constructed over 80 years ago. The alter is adorned with beautiful marble and silk images of the Hindu pantheon. At the foot of each sits smaller versions cast from metal which were the original deities brought over from India. Since then, the community has grown and now the temple is a magnificent structure, quite unlike the Southern Indian style we are more accustomed to seeing around KL.
The morning was led by a number of women who have been involved in the temple for many years, including having had their own weddings and other significant ceremonies celebrated. They encouraged us to continually question Hindu practices and beliefs by asking “Why?” to all aspects of Hindu custom and belief. To lead us through this journey, the priest led us through the temple from the experience of entering through the large doors and the meanings of this step to talking through the scenes depicted in marble behind the main alter.
We were encouraged to look at the symbolism of Hinduism and not to read at face-value the depictions of deities and the temple. What this revealed were an incredibly rich and complex but accessible series of stories that combined tell the story of Hinduism. .
We were given a number of books written by Poonam Kukreja, a devoted member of the community. I am sure you will find a copies of these in our library and I urge you to peruse these as they explain in clear terms the symbolism of the many representations of Om, including Ganesh, Brahma, Shiva, Lakshmi and so forth.
We finished the morning with a simple and delicious lunch prepared for us. This was taken in the area beneath the temple where around 500 families come and meet every Sunday. I could imagine the chatter, sharing, and sense of belonging of friends and family attending the temple for their spiritual and emotional nourishment.
Sunita Varlamos
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WE NEED YOUR HELP!
Dear MCG Members,
Over 1 ½ years ago, we introduced a very successful event called
'Travel Tips & Experiences'. It is a Relaxed morning where a member
shares his/her experiences with others. In the past, we have covered
aspects of Tibet, trekking in Nepal, art in Java, travels in Laos,
living in Bhutan, and much more.
We now would like to ask your help; in order to continue this series,
we need more members who are willing to tell others about their
travels. Remember this isn't meant to be a morning filled with
'expert' advice, but rather a personal point of view. The talks are
held in someone's home, so think of it as a coffee morning with
friends, rather than a lecture. It would be a shame if we had to
discontinue these talks, so if you are willing to tell others about
your travels or want more information, please contact me at
mcgevents@yahoo.com or call 012-231-0817.
I look forward to hearing from you!
Cindy Zeier
Events Planning Convenor
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ANNUAL NEWCOMERS' COFFEE MORNING
Wednesday, 3rd October
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Register
By: |
28th September
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Time: |
10:00am for 10:30am start
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Location: |
23 Jalan Teruntong, Damansara Hights
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Cost: |
No Charge
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Email Registration:
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Register
for this Event - Click Here
NOTE: YOU MUST REGISTER
FOR EACH EVENT INDIVIDUALLY! Please include your hand phone number
For further information, please refer to
the Booking Policy at the bottom of this page
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The Board of the Malaysian Culture Group would like to invite all MCG
newcomers to a coffee morning at the home of our Vice President, Lynn
Davies. This will be a great opportunity for you to meet the Board,
other MCG members and find out more about our group. You can talk to
our Events Planning Team and our Explorers Group Convener, find out
about past events, suggest ideas for future events; hear more about
our monthly Lecture Series, our two Book Groups and Explorers teams.
Maybe even join one of these fascinating groups within the MCG.
What does the MCG offer – an environment in which we can all learn
more about the culture of the people, country and region we all
currently call home.
CULTURE • (noun) 1 the arts and other manifestations of human
intellectual achievement regarded collectively. 2 a refined
understanding or appreciation of this. 3 the customs, institutions,
and achievements of a particular nation, people, or group.
A particular state or stage of civilisation, as in the case of a
certain nation or period – eg Greek Culture.
Social: the sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human
beings, which is transmitted from one generation to another.
Our Librarian, Minna Schwarz-Seim will be available to show you the
more than 600 books collected by the MCG over the past 20+ years and
explain how you can take advantage of the resource material Library.
The Library is currently housed at this location.
So if you are interested in getting more involved in KL and perhaps
MCG life and you are keen to learn more about the place we all
currently call home, we encourage you to join us! The MCG is always
seeking new members, so this is a perfect chance for you to see and
hear exactly what is involved. We look forward to seeing you there.
What is happening in KL?
The Events Team tries to give you a wide variety when planning events
but you will see that there is something happening in KL from morning
to night. These are a few sites where you can get information about a
myriad of events. Please let me know if you have any websites that
would interest our members. Have Fun!
Info on entire arts scene www.kakiseni.com.my
Central Market and Annexe www.centralmarket-kl.com.my
Heritage Society Malaysia www.badanwarisan.org.my
National Museum www.museum.gov.my
Klue Magazine
www.klue.com.my
Expat Magazine
www.expat.com.my
Actors Studio Theatre
www.theactorsstudio.com.my
Japan Foundation
www.jfkl.org.my
Indian dance, music and art
www.sutradancetheatre.com.my
National Art Gallery
www.artgallery.org.my
Islamic Art Museum
www.iamm.org.my
Craft Complex KL
www.kraftangan.gov.my
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BOOKING POLICY FOR EVENTS
Reservations
When making email reservations for events, please send your full name
(as it appears on your membership registration) to mcgevents@yahoo.com.
Send a separate email for each event and place the event title on the
subject line. Telephone reservations can be made Monday to Friday, however
you will need to consult your paper newsletter to obtain the number of
the committee member taking bookings for that particular event.
Wait List
Events Planning follows a policy of booking places for events on a first
come first served basis. If an event becomes full then a wait list is
created and participants will be informed as soon as possible if a place
becomes available.
Payments
For most events monies are collected on the morning of the event itself,
unless otherwise stated.
It is thus important that you come with correct change on hand. For
clarifications please call or email a member of the Events Planning team.
MCG is not responsible for reservations and/or payments sent to any
person other than the Events Planning member identified as the contact
person for the event.
Cancellations
If for some reason you cannot attend a programme when you have reserved
a place please let the Events Planning Team know as soon as you can. Cancellations
received within less than 48 hours are only eligible for a refund if the
vacancy can be filled from the wait list or if the person can find another
member to take their place.
Refunds
Refunds can only be given if EP has 48 hours notice of a cancellation.
Please note that some events have a cancellation time of longer than 48
hours, which will be indicated in the description of the event.
Eligibility
Please note that all events, apart from the monthly lecture are for members
only, unless otherwise stated.
Event Participation
Members are kindly requested to arrive promptly for events. Please turn
off your cellular phones and refrain from talking during lectures and
presentations.
Eligibility
Please note that all events, apart from the lecture, are for members only,
unless otherwise stated.
Your co-operation with the Booking Policy would be much appreciated
by the Events Planning Team.
PLEASE NOTE that the
information in this website has been gathered informally within the
group and reproduced privately for members' enjoyment only. There may
be inaccuracies and these publications are not designed for commercial
use. Anyone intending to make formal or outside use of MCG material
is requested to contact the President
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