Bangsawan

Abstract

Unprecedented economic growth and technological innovations immensely intensified flows of people moving around the world in search of a better life during the 19th century. Itinerant theatre troupes joined in these flows of migration touring cosmopolitan centres of Europe and the colonial empires, where they spawned new theatrical forms performed by growing numbers of local people or other migrants. In the Malay world this surge in theatrical forms created new types of commercial entertainment advertised through local newspapers as spectacular, new and modern. One these new types of drama, bangsawan, met with enormous popularity in the urban centres of colonial, insular Southeast Asia during the first half of the 20th century, and is still known and cherished as a ‘traditional’ drama form in present-day Malaysia. Based on English newspaper reports from the first decades of the 20th century, this article will discuss the popularity of bangsawan by following two prominent troupes, its existence alongside and competition with other popular forms, and its gradual integration into a ‘national’ reconfiguration of Malay cultural practices. It is argued that the ‘wild’, eclectic form of the colonial frontier was tamed into a morally sound and culturally stable form which ethnic Malays could identify with.

Keywords:

• cosmopolitanism
• colonialism
• commercial drama
• bangsawan
• Singapore

Notes

¹As it predominantly discusses the developments of bangsawan theatre in Singapore in the first decades of the 20th century, this article is mainly based on information drawn from the early 20th-century, English-language popular press made available and searchable by the National Library of Singapore <newspapers.nl.sg>. Leo Camoens collected much information about bangsawan from the Malay-language press for the last decades of the 19th century, but these Malay newspapers folded at the start of the 20th century only to reappear during the 1920s onwards (see Putten 2010).

²Although Peninsular Malaya was a popular migration destination for people from South and East Asia since early days, from the mid 19th century the flow of migrants steadily increased and influenced the composition of the population. For 1931 it is reported that more than 50% of the total population was of foreign extraction, the majority of whom was first-generation settler born in China, India or the Dutch East Indies (see Saw 1988).

³The history of theatre in Singapore has yet to be written. The information in this section was gathered from the Singapore English-language newspapers (<newspapers.nl.sg>). For the theatre hall at Jalan Besar, see Daily Advertiser, 21 November 1891, p. 3; Mid-day Herald, 17 August 1895, p. 2, and 10 June 1896, p. 3. For information about the Theatre Royal, see Straits Times, 15 June 1908, p. 8: ‘New theatre opened – Wayang Kassim's first night at the Royal’.

⁴See Cohen (2002: 111). According to Edrus (1960: 55) the company was set up in in 1902, after initially starting out under the name Sri Pelipur Lara.

⁵See Straits Times, 18 May 1909, p. 8, which contains some of the names of the troupe members who came to honour Shaik Kassim at his home, such as the artist family Klimanoff and the well-known painter of theatrical scenery Bartholomeusz (see also Tan 1993: 43).

⁶See also Cohen (2002: 112), where he argues that any significant difference between the bangsawan and stamboel traditions was minimised by the activities of Kassim in Peninsular Malaya and the Dutch Indies.

⁷See advertisements in Straits Times, 3 July 1903, and 30 May 1903. The medal presented by the Europeans was heart-shaped and made by Mr Da Silva in High Street (Straits Times, 16 June 1903, p. 5). The play staged at the Town Hall was Ginufifah (‘Genevieve of Brabant’), and later it was reported that the Governor had watched Rosina twice on other occasions (Straits Times, 12 December 1903, p. 1).

⁸In February 1912 the proprietor of The Star Opera troupe, Cheong Koon Seng, and its manager, Y.L. Tan, ensured that the criticism raised against moral standards of a performance at the Theatre Royal had nothing to do with their bangsawan company. In letters to the editor they emphasised that it had been an Egyptian troupe that had performed the alleged indecent songs and lewd dances. The moral standards within their company and towards the audience were always carefully guarded (Straits Times, 17 February 1912, p. 10).

⁹This epithet seems a direct derivation of the one Bai Kassim adopted in early 1907, The Dutch and Malay Variety Company of Singapore, after he had returned from another tour in the Dutch East Indies.

Additional information

Author biography

Jan van der Putten is Professor Austronesistik in the Department of Southeast Asia (Asien-Afrika-Institut) at the University of Hamburg where he teaches Southeast Asian literatures and cultures. One of his main research areas is on Traditional Malay writings but he is also interested in other types and periods of Malay traditions. His research explores the meaning of traditional and popular Malay texts and how these texts are disseminated among peoples and exchanged between cultures.