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ABSTRACT
The biola (violin) is an emblematic musical instrument of the Cocos Malay community, who have been based on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands – part of Australia’s Indian Ocean Territories – since 1826. In Cocos Malay culture, the biola accompanies local dance genres and occasional performances of bangsawan theatre. Malay melodies constitute the bulk of the repertoire; there are also melodies exhibiting Scottish characteristics. The latter are often attributed to the influence of the Clunies-Ross family, who maintained a commanding presence on the islands from 1827 to 1978. Since the mid-twentieth century, biola playing has been the preserve of two families on the islands and in Western Australia. The practice has declined over the past two decades, owing to a decrease in players; however, a revitalisation programme was initiated in 2014. This article explores aspects of the practice and cultural functions of the biola on Cocos and documents the history of the instrument on the islands, drawing on data from ethnographic and archival research.
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by Australian Research Council Discovery Project DP150103204, ‘Malay Music and Dance from the Cocos (Keeling) Islands’, based at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, the University of Melbourne, 2015–2019. The final results of this study were written up at the Institució Milà i Fontanals de Recerca en Humanitats–CSIC, Barcelona, in 2019, following my move here as an ICREA (Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats) Research Professor. Thanks must go to all people from the communities on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands and in Katanning who participated in this study or supported it in other ways, especially Nek Bail (Alpan bin Puria), Nek Mazlan (Colin bin Puria), Nek Yusri (Zainal bin Wallie), Haji Adam (Rabuhu bin Anthony), Nek Sumilla (Dennis bin Mokta), Nek Tiara (Woren bin Dedian), Ray Denholm, Pak Azi (Ozzy bin Macrae), Nek Su (Ramnie bin Mokta), Ayesha (Jeannette Young), John (Johnny) George Clunies-Ross, and two anonymous informants. I would especially like to thank Jenny McCallum for her collaboration in the field and her indispensable work in translating from Cocos Malay to English, as well as for her participation in the Discovery Project as a whole. I am grateful to John Hunt, Nicholas Herriman, Monika Winarnita, Alastair Welsh, Michael Laffan, Margaret Kartomi, Brigitta Scarfe, Henry Stobart, Julia Byl, and Jim Sykes for their insights, advice, and input over the course of this study, to the two anonymous readers of this article for their detailed comments and suggestions, to Henry Stobart, Shzr Ee Tan, and Shelley Barry for overseeing the editorial and production process, to Hannah Spracklan-Holl for kindly typesetting the musical transcriptions, and to Joanne Byrne for permission to use her map. I would also like to thank Gary McPherson, Jane Davidson, and Barry Conyngham for their support of this project.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
David R. M. Irving is an ICREA Research Professor in Musicology at the Institució Milà i Fontanals de Recerca en Humanitats–CSIC, Barcelona, a Corresponding Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and an Honorary Senior Fellow at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, the University of Melbourne. He undertook his doctoral studies at the University of Cambridge and has taught at the University of Nottingham, the Australian National University, and the University of Melbourne. He is the author of Colonial Counterpoint: Music in Early Modern Manila (Oxford University Press, 2010), co-editor of the journal Eighteenth-Century Music, and co-general editor of the forthcoming Cultural History of Music series from Bloomsbury (2021). His awards include the Jerome Roche Prize from the Royal Musical Association and the McCredie Musicological Award from the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He is active as a violinist in the field of historical performance and has played with numerous ensembles in Australia and Europe.
Correction Statement
This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1 However, the closest cognate term in Portuguese – viola – referred generically to a broad range of string instruments from the mid-fifteenth to late eighteenth centuries. These included the viola da gamba and, most frequently, the guitar (see Budasz Citation2001: 11).
2 The parenthetical qualification ‘Keeling’ is used to distinguish these islands from other islands called ‘Cocos’ in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and in the Caribbean.
3 The relevant clause, dating from 1955, states: ‘The institutions, customs and usages of the Malay residents of the Territory shall, subject to any law in force in the Territory from time to time, be permitted to continue in existence’ (Australian Government Citation2018, section 18).
4 Meanwhile, the earliest written account of Malay music and dance on the islands, without indications of European influence, was made by none other than Charles Darwin, during his Beagle voyage (Citation1839: 546). See Irving (Citationforthcoming).
5 While its name is indicative of its foreign origins, the same can be observed of other instruments, such as the Malay serunai (shawm) whose name and form is similar to the surnay of Iran and zurna of Turkey (Matusky and Tan Citation2004: 24). The assumed ‘Europeanness’ of the violin arguably does not minimise its importance in Malay and South Asian music cultures (besides others) for almost five centuries. Paradoxically, European organologists have tended since the nineteenth century to emphasise that bowed instruments have their origins in Asia (e.g. Fétis Citation1856; Bachmann Citation1969; Montagu Citation2007: 161).
6 Some of the most prominent scholarship is by Pauline Bunce (Citation1988, Citation2012), John Hunt (Citation1989), and Alastair Welsh (Citation2015), who were present on the islands respectively as a schoolteacher, a public servant, and a government interpreter.
7 Although the Cocos (Keeling) Islands were not the subject of research in ethnomusicology and music history until recently, music and dance had been present as part of the cultural backdrop for studies by historians, linguists, and anthropologists. Current research projects on topics related to Cocos Malay culture and history are being carried out by anthropologists Monika Winarnita and Nicholas Herriman, ethnomusicologist Jenny McCallum, linguists Alastair Welsh and Craig D. Soderberg, historian Michael Laffan, and me. There are also studies of music and dance within the Cocos Malay community of Sabah, Malaysia, now under way; see, for instance, Kamaruddin and Ab Aziz (Citation2018).
8 Jenny McCallum, an ethnomusicologist specialising in musics of the Malay world, worked as a Research Associate 2015–2017 on this Australian Research Council Discovery Project. She speaks Malay fluently and adapted quickly to Cocos Malay usage; I depended on her expertise in translating the stories we heard, and am grateful for her insights into many of the finer points of Cocos Malay culture.
9 A planned period of fieldwork among the Cocos Malay community in Sabah, Borneo, had to be cancelled for reasons of logistics and health; instead, we undertook an additional research trip to Cocos.
10 The terms rebana and kompang are sometimes used interchangeably, but strictly speaking the rebana is larger and has jingles. It is analogous to the tar drum used in Malaysia (Matusky and Tan Citation2004: 261).
11 The only archival evidence of bagpipes on Cocos is from 1945: on 10 May, 400 Cocos Malays travelled to West Island for celebrations of the Allied victory in Europe, and they heard a Punjabi regiment play these instruments on West Island. According to a report located in British military records, the Cocos Malay observers were ‘particularly impressed’. (J. A. Harvey, ‘Report for the month of May 1945’, 1, in ‘Cocos Islands: Emergency Organisation’, National Archives of the United Kingdom, CO 273/673/9).
12 Anonymous A (interview). However, we do not know whether this informant has taken up the biola.
13 Cocos Malay is predominantly an oral language, and orthography is still being standardised in its written form. The genres mentioned in this quotation are often expressed as melenggok, selong, and dansa.
14 Members of the Cocos Malay community have two names: their birth name ([given name], son/daughter of [father’s name]), and the name that they take at the birth of their first child (teknonym). The teknonym changes again at the birth of their first grandchild. The prefix ‘Pak’ (for father) and ‘Mak’ for mother is used for parents, and ‘Nek’ (for both genders) used for grandparent. See Herriman (Citation2014).
15 These performances were videorecorded by David Irving and Jenny McCallum on 13 July 2016. Videos are available at online Video 1 and online Video 2. I have chosen to use staff notation to transcribe these examples, with full acknowledgment and awareness of its representational limitations; the rhythmic notation in the second example, for instance, is inadequate to indicate the passage of pitches in the melody and can only hint at the relationship between tones of longer and shorter duration. I must also stress that the staff is by no means intended to indicate any kind of equal temperament, but simply a broad demonstration of relationship between scale degrees. (The tuning of the note transcribed as a D, for example, was between a conventional D flat and D natural.) The arbitrary modern pitch standard of a′ = 440 Hz (which, it must be remembered, became an international ‘standard’ only in 1953, when it was ratified by the ISO) is used as an approximate reference point, to indicate that the Cocos biola was – in this performance – tuned almost a fifth below the standardised pitch of a conventional violin in the ‘modern’ ‘Western art music’ tradition. When both these pieces were recorded a second time a few weeks later, the tuning was around a tone lower, demonstrating the mutable nature of pitch centres.
16 Thanks to Jenny McCallum for this observation.
17 This recording highlights the need for further research to be undertaken to examine biola practice among the Cocos Malay communities in Sabah.
18 The number of tourists on the islands is usually quite low – probably around twenty a week if averaged out through the year, although there are high and low seasons – and most accommodation is on West Island, from where tourists can make a day trip to Home Island by ferry across the lagoon.
19 Undated document from Home Island School, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, kindly provided by principal Ray Denholm.
20 Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development (Australian Government), ‘IOT Community Development Grants Programme Delivered’, Media Release JB050/2014, 6 June 2014, Internet: <https://minister.infrastructure.gov.au/jb/releases/2014/June/jb050_2014.aspx> (accessed 2 July 2018).
21 ‘Projects funded under IOT Community Development Grants Programme Round One’, Internet: <https://regional.gov.au/territories/indian_ocean/files/OIT-DGP-Round1.pdf>, accessed 2 July 2018.
22 The string quartet Bond, which plays on electric instruments, was known to at least one of the islanders, and I was asked if I knew of this group.
23 See, for instance, Hunt (Citation1989) and Hobson (Citation2008). Various archival holdings of recorded oral histories exist: for instance, the Cocos (Keeling) Island Indian Ocean Oral History Project is a series of interviews with Cocos Malays made by Ade I. Taiwo in 1985, on 32 sound reel tapes (around 558 min) held at the National Library of Australia (ORAL TRC 1922).
24 John (Johnny) George Clunies-Ross, who lives on West Island and is the son of the last proprietor of Cocos, gave an account in line with this narrative; he speculated that ‘the first mate on the Clunies-Ross vessel was European and was allocated enough space that he could probably have a violin’ (interview, 27 July Citation2015).
25 Thanks to Jenny McCallum for the observations in the last two sentences.
26 Her husband Robert J. Linford was the Australian government administrator of the islands, with a base on West Island; his role put him in an adversarial political position vis-à-vis the traditional rule of John Cecil Clunies-Ross. The Linfords actively articulated the Australian government’s support for the Cocos Malay community during a politically turbulent time for the islands, and were instrumental in assisting Cocos Malays to migrate to the mainland.
27 In this account, it is unclear precisely what Linford meant by ‘double-bowing’; presumably she did not mean double-stopping (playing on two strings simultaneously), since this is an integral part of Cocos biola technique, and all players (as seen live and on video) are capable of it.
28 Hunt writes: ‘Their [the Clunies-Rosses’] rule provided food, clothing, shelter and protection for all, under a system of total political and economic dominance by the family’ (Citation1989: 1). The political structure in Cocos has been noted to resemble, albeit on a smaller scale, the Brooke family’s regime in Sarawak, Borneo, which existed from 1841 to 1946 (Dutt Citation1981: 477). A major difference on Cocos was that members of the Clunies-Ross family married Malay spouses in the late nineteenth century, and occupied a liminal cultural space between colonial rulers and colonised populations, to the extent that in the 1890s British colonial authorities even questioned their level of ‘civilization’ and their ‘authority’ to rule over the local population (Papers Relating to the Cocos-Keeling and Christmas Islands Citation189 Citation7: 50). In subsequent generations, the heads of the family gravitated away from a Cocos Malay cultural identity, but still used the symbolic trappings of Malay royalty, such as yellow sails on their boats (Hunt Citation1989: 137).
29 Papers of the Anti-Slavery Society: Cocos Islands (1937–1941), MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 22 / G360, Bodleian Library, Oxford.
30 There were 229 votes for integration, 21 for free association, nine for independence, and two informal votes (Mowbray Citation1997: 391).
31 For example, a request for supplies dated 22 January 1922 sent from Cocos to Singapore asks for ‘6 Sets of Violin Strings (E.A.D.G.)’, as well as 18 Korans and ‘12 Books – “Zekir Maulud” (Written in the Arabic)’; the latter refers to books of zikir (dhikr) texts for Maulud Nabi (Accounts and correspondence, Caldbeck MacGregor and Company with J S Clunies Ross, 1921–1933’, National Archives of Australia, A9752/116, Part B). In 1926, sheep’s hide ‘for tambourine’ (rebana) was ordered besides ‘12 complete sets Violin strings’ (‘Invoices from Caldbeck MacGregor to J. S. Clunies Ross’, National Archives of Australia, A9752/1 / 115, Part C). In 1928–1932, several sets of mandoline strings were obtained, multiple violin strings, as well as Malay and English gramophone records (including many instances of ‘Malay Dance Records’), boxes of gramophone needles, rebanas, a Robinson Piano Company accordion, Korans, and books of Zikir Maulud (‘Invoices from Caldbeck MacGregor to J. S. Clunies Ross’, National Archives of Australia, A9752/1 / 115, Part A). An order for supplies sent from Cocos to Singapore on 1 August 1938 included ‘3 cheap violin bows’, three dozen violin strings, and ‘12 blocks cheap violin resin [sic]’, while an order from 20 November 1938 included ‘1 cheap violin bow’ (‘Caldbeck MacGregor – Accounts and indents and correspondence’, National Archives of Australia, A9752 / 119).
32 ‘Caldbeck MacGregor – Accounts and indents and correspondence’, National Archives of Australia, A9752 / 119.
33 ‘Supplies required’ (1946–47), National Archives of Australia, A9752 / 138.
34 Ridley recounts:
There was very little sickness of any kind on the island. As we were walking about one very old man stopped us and asked for the doctor who was with us and also enquired what ailed him. The old fellow who was living on the island in Hare’s time (i.e. for two generations) complained that he could not see a ship at a long distance as he could when he was a boy. The doctor told him that few people over eighty could do so and an arrangement was made to get him some spectacles.
35 Ibid. In 1885, a British colonial official cited the ‘social contract’ of 1834, and noted that two of the signatories were still alive: ‘Pa Bessar (Basîr) and Pa Rah’ (Birch Citation1885: 17). A photograph taken during that visit (in the copy of the report held at King's College London, Foyle Special Collections Library) has a caption that indicates that one of the people in the group was the oldest man in the settlement, named ‘Neh [Nek] Basir’ (Birch Citation1885: appendix XIV, photograph no. 12). It seems that the system of Cocos Malay teknonymy was not understood here and that the names Pak Basir and Nek Basir refer to the same person. Nek Basir, who was born in Melaka in 1805, came to Cocos with Alexander Hare in 1826, and had papers from 1820 proving his identity (Birch Citation1885: 16). It is possible that Ridley’s informant in 1890 was one of the two men described in 1885.
36 Several members of the Clunies-Ross family married Cocos Malay spouses. George Clunies Ross (who governed the islands from 1871 to 1910) and five of his brothers married Cocos Malay women (Hunt Citation1989: 9); the parents of these men, in turn, were John George Clunies Ross (who ruled Cocos 1854–71) and his Javanese wife S’pia Dupong (Gibson-Hill Citation1952: 84). The wife of the ruler had considerable social influence on the islands: for instance, Inin (1850–89) – the first wife of George Clunies Ross – was described as a matriarch of the community who ‘stood as law for the women, and ruled them by her example’ (Wood-Jones Citation1912: 35).
37 Even in the closest community that speaks another variety of Malay, on Christmas Island, the same shell is known as siput mata lembu (cow’s eye shell), as the snail’s trapdoor evokes a bovine resemblance. Thanks to Nek Su (Ramnie bin Mokta) for this insight.
38 Virginia Orr Maes writes: ‘Abundant in cracks and on sides of reef-rock blocks near the fore part of the seaward reefs, passes, and rocky parts of the northern lagoon, it was used as food by the local people’ (Citation1967: 106). Today kepala biola is boiled for three hours with onion, garlic and oil, then cooked with vegetables including beans, broccoli, capsicum (pepper), and chillies. Prior to the widespread availability of fresh vegetables on Cocos, people cooked a soup-like stew with kepala biola and rice. Ayesha (Jeannette Young), personal communication, 10 May 2019.
39 The earliest biological description of the species, without mention of the local name, is Deshayes Citation1839 (as cited by Maes Citation1967: 106). There are several species that are close in appearance. R. Tucker Abbott attributes the native name ‘Kĕpala Viola’ to the species Turbo (Marmorostoma) argyrostomus (Citation1950: 70); however, Virginia Orr Maes (Citation1967: 106) states that this scholar erroneously recorded young examples of T. lajonkairii. Alistair Welsh (personal communication, 5 December 2018) stated that he remembered some decades previously, when he was working on the islands as a government interpreter, being taken to collect kepala biola near Horsburgh Island. Over a dozen boats went on this trip. There were two species that were almost indistinguishable but he was told that one of them was not kepala biola, and gradually he began to see the difference.
There are other examples of local names being bestowed on shells in Cocos. Frederic Wood-Jones noted in the early twentieth century that the second Clunies Ross to rule the islands, John George Clunies Ross (1823–1871), was passionate about natural history; for his amateur medical knowledge ‘and for his patient researches into the natural history of the islands, he received the native title of Tuan-pandai, or “the learned one,” and to this day a cowry shell, in whose finding he took special delight, is called siput tuan (the master’s shell) by the natives’ (Wood-Jones Citation1912: 30).
40 Although this is a longstanding traditional name for the fern, there is little documentation of the history of its use. See the poem ‘Fiddlehead Fern’ by Dudley Laufman which muses on this question, beginning ‘Which came first, / the fern or the fiddle?’ (Laufman and Laufman Citation2009: 28).
41 However, they sometimes demonstrated antipathy, as can be seen in an account from an official annual visit for the Colonial Report of 1898. R. J. Farrer, a civil servant from the Straits Settlements, wrote of a dance performance (which may have included biola, even though it is not mentioned) that
the music is of the same abominable character as that of the Straits, but the drum parts, in deference either to the feelings of Europeans or to the age of the instruments (which is more probable) are not played with such lamentable energy. (Cocos-Keeling and Christmas Islands Citation1899: 16)
42 A Norwegian scholar commented to me at a conference in 2017 that one of the Cocos dances appeared similar to a Norwegian folk dance.
43 This report was also cited by Rosemary Brockman (Citation1981: 95); she attributes its authorship to Nigel Abercrombe. However, an earlier source, quoted here, indicates that the author was M. J. Ross.
44 British Movietone, ‘Royal Tour. Queen at Cocos Islands and Ceylon’, 22 April 1954, available at: <https://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/ab97b21b8f8c4f35a81cd7b2a23e83ed> (accessed 3 April 2020).
45 British Pathé, ‘Queen in Coco’s Isles [sic]’, available at: <https://www.britishpathe.com/video/queen-in-cocos-isles/> (accessed 3 April 2020).
46 Two days prior to her visit, the Adelaide periodical The Mail Digest had pondered about the kinds of performances that would greet the Queen, remarking on a mix of Malay and Scottish cultural traditions on Cocos, and stating: ‘When the local orchestra goes into action, Malay dirges are lightened with snatches from “Cock o’ the North” or “A Hundred Pipers.” During wild island dances Malay kronchongs often give way to foursome reels which go on for hours’ (‘Queen to Meet a Brown Mr. McTavish’ Citation1954: 51).
47 There are also numerous photographs and video recordings made by Cocos Malays and held in their private collections. We were privileged that some of these were shown to us and shared with us.
48 In the next photo McVeigh takes the biola of Nek Mazlan into his own hands and appears to be examining it. Thanks to Nek Su (Ramnie bin Mokta) and Ayesha (Jeannette Young) for their assistance in identifying the players.