Kenyah Kendau Kancet Choral Singing of Indonesian and Malaysian Borneo: Reflections on a Triptych

Excerpts from a kendau kancet performance in conjunction with the celebration of a village-wide child-naming ritual (ngalang anak) in the predominantly Kenyah Lepo’ Tau village of Long Moh, Ulu Baram, Sarawak, Malaysia, on June 7, 1992. The performance takes place on the veranda of one of the longhouses in the village

An Anomalous Tradition

Kendau kancet are usually sung in first-person plural (“we”) and typically address the occasion for performance—in this case, a dance event. The formulaic rhymes of the songs¹¹ often metaphorically allude to possible romantic relations between the young men and women in the crowd, as exemplified by reference to “keeping” (as one would a pet) the “green pigeon” in the second gray verse of the text transcription of the kendau kancet “Liléng” below. (The second and third verses correspond to the performance heard in audio 2. Another version of the song is heard in the first minute of video 2.)

While other types of recreational Kenyah songs are textually similar to kendau kancet in that they draw from the same pool of formulaic rhymes, a notable difference is that non-kendau kancet are sung predominantly in first-person singular (“I”). Moreover, the songs are often clearly directed toward a specific individual, who remains unnamed but whose identity is clear from the context of the performance as well as from the content of the lyrics. All of these elements are present in the following excerpt from the suket, a type of rice-wine song.

The second line of the suket excerpt contains the same formulaic rhyme as the last verse in the transcription of “Liléng.” In lines six through eight, the soloist refers to himself in first person, and in lines three through five, he refers to the reason for, or context of, the performance: my own coming to study and record Kenyah songs.

Textual matters aside, kendau kancet are stylistically distinct from other traditional Kenyah vocal repertoires. The first and most salient difference lies in the character of the choral component. Like the bulk of Kenyah songs, kendau kancet consist of alternating solo and choral passages. Recalling the descriptions from the opening triptych, the soloist in kendau kancet, in most cases a woman, begins a verse, then is joined by the chorus to complete the verse and sing the refrain. The chorus sings mostly in unison with the soloist, but often it also breaks into parts, usually at the third or fifth verse, depending on the contour of the main melody. In other traditional Kenyah vocal performance traditions, however, the chorus operates in quite a different capacity. It is non-melodic, a monotone that essentially acts as an intermittent drone—an anchor for the melody of the soloist.

Also extraordinary in kendau kancet is the extent to which the chorus overlaps with the soloist. In most other Kenyah songs, the chorus joins the soloist only on the final one or two words of each line of rhyme, whereas in kendau kancet, the chorus usually joins the leader for at least half of an entire verse, and it also sings the refrain. Ultimately, the effect of kendau kancet is one of a choral performance guided by a soloist, in contrast to most other traditional Kenyah songs, which are solo performances punctuated by a chorus.

My use of the word “verse” in the context of discussing kendau kancet is quite intentional here, because unlike other Kenyah songs forms, kendau kancet are fundamentally strophic. The words and length of a given verse are fixed, with no room for spontaneous repetition, elaboration, or other creative adjustment. Moreover, kendau kancet are more clearly metric and evenly pulsed than other Kenyah forms, perhaps in part because they are performed while circle dancing. In summary, kendau kancet are more regular in every respect than their counterparts in other Kenyah traditional repertoires.

Last, but by no means least, most kendau kancet melodies use an anhemitonic-pentatonic scale of the M2-M2-m3-M2-m3 (e.g., c-d-e-g-a-c) type. Use of hemitones is rare. In other types of Kenyah singing, by contrast, hemitones and even smaller intervals are common.

Divine Inspiration?

What might have led to the emergence of a new style of Kenyah vocal music in the mid-twentieth century? The inspiration, I speculate, was Christian congregational singing. No Kenyah with whom I spoke, however, ever suggested the connection, and when I asked, only some acknowledged that it could even be a possibility. For most Kenyah, church singing is in a completely different conceptual category than traditional Kenyah singing, which is where kendau kancet is placed. Consequently, any connection between the two practices, if perceived at all, would not be viewed as significant and would in no way jeopardize the status of kendau kancetas traditional Kenyah vocal repertoire.

The growth and spread of Christianity among the Kalimantan Kenyah was concurrent with the birth of kendau kancet. Indeed, the Kenyah were among the primary foci of the Protestant, US-based Christian and Missionary Alliance (CMA), and the Pujungan River was the first Kenyah area proselytized by the group in the early 1930s (Rudes 1965:35). By 1936 the entire village of Long Sa’an (Kenyah Uma’ Lung) had converted, and others soon followed. Indeed, the Kenyah Lepo’ Nggau grandfather from Sarawak who traveled to the Pujungan River in the mid-1940s recalled that those villages where he heard kendau kancet were already “praying” (i.e., had converted to Christianity). The CMA did not limit its activity to the Pujungan River. The organization simultaneously proselytized in the surrounding areas. By 1940 a substantial Protestant population had also been established in Long Nawang (Conley 1976:301).

Music played a central role in the ministry of the CMA. As described by CMA missionary William Conley,

Hymn singing is a more important aspect of Kenyah worship than would be true for most Alliance churches in the United States. . . . They [the Kenyah] are, I should add, quite talented musically and can be trained to sing in excellent four-part harmony (Conley 1976:333).

When I asked various villagers whether they perceived the style of kendau kancet to be related to church singing, the thought had not occurred to most of them. After all, these songs had not been learned in church, nor were they performed as part of religious activities. In typical Kenyah fashion, these songs had been learned from other Kenyah in the context of recreational interaction.

Some Thoughts on the Notion of Authenticity
Like most others working in the fields of art, music, and literature, I think of the term authenticity as denoting a value, or “a species of the genus credibility . . . that comes from having the appropriate relationship to an original source” (Rudinow 1994:129). The “original source,” as David Lowenthal has emphasized, can embrace the notions of “original objects and materials . . . original contexts, or . . . original aims” (Lowenthal 1992:186). I would add to this list “original processes” of production or acquisition. These various elements of the original source are prioritized differently by different people—either as a group or as individuals—when it comes to assessing an object’s authenticity. What happens, for instance, when musical materials (e.g., a repertoire or style of performance) are recontextualized to a different end in contemporary society, perhaps because the original performance context no longer exists? Conversely, what if the context and aim of the music remain essentially the same, but the sonic and structural elements of the music have taken on a new character? What if the music is learned from notation or from a recording, when it was previously transmitted through oral tradition? In any of these cases, can the tradition still be considered authentic, or have the changes ruptured the appropriate connection to the original source? Of course, it depends on whom you ask and how that person—or community—prioritizes the various components of the source.

Theoretically, the truly authentic is an unmarked category, in that it never raises a concern over authenticity. It is inherently credible in the minds of those who know or practice the tradition. There is no perceived disconnection from the source. The authentic is what is—what is real, what has been internalized, naturalized, to the point that its credibility is unquestioned. Only when a change is perceived to have broken the appropriate connection to the source does authenticity become an issue. A flight then ensues from what is, and a quest is undertaken to restore that connection. Once it is understood to have been restored, the resulting product or practice is consciously marked as authentic, in contrast to the unmarked product or practice that prompted the flight in the first place.

Yet if we think of the authentic as the unmarked category, would not such a quest for authenticity be futile? Wouldn’t any label of “authentic” prompt the question, “If this needs to be marked as ‘authentic,’ then what else is going on?” The concept of authenticity is necessarily paradoxical in that it simultaneously embraces an escape from and a perceived return to what is inherent and unquestionable credibility. As expressed by philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, we only become aware of authenticity when “we flee it,” and as further distilled by Jacob Golomb, “the presence of authenticity is discerned in its absence” (Golomb 1995:7) This idea of flight returns as we venture behind the scenes of the kendau kancet triptych.

The Triptych from the Back Side: Three Angles on Authenticity

Act I: The Village

In upriver Kenyah villages, both in Indonesian and Malaysian Borneo, the credibility of kendau kancet was never questioned, at least by those who performed this repertoire. The songs were, again, simply a continuation of the practice of “the great ones of the past.” No significant rupture was perceived with the original source, thus the repertoire was unmarked. It was authentic.

Behind the scenes, however, a notable portion of the village population, especially in Malaysia, did not perform kendau kancet. For them, the legitimacy and value of the repertoire were indeed matters of concern. For the most part, older members of the community, typically men, found these songs to be unworthy representatives of Kenyah tradition, and by extension, of themselves as Kenyah. Kendau kancet were not “real songs” (Sarawak Kenyah Lepo’ Tau: belian lan) because the “appropriate relationship to an original source” had been violated. In this instance, the critical elements of the “original source” lay in the linguistic character of the songs, the target of the performances, and the gender of the principal performers. The age of the repertoire, context of performance, style and structure of the musics, and process of transmission were non-issues.

Kendau kancet draws its verses primarily from the pool of formulaic rhyme (ipet) that forms the foundation of most major Kenyah vocal repertoires and is the wellspring of Kenyah lyrical creativity. Detractors of the kendau kancet tradition, however, perceived the songs’ language to be lacking in breadth, depth, and direction. In part this was due to the choral performance of the verses, which, as noted earlier, precluded any displays of individual linguistic virtuosity. Moreover, because the songs targeted the group, rather than the story or circumstance of a particular individual, kendau kancet were frequently labeled as “aimless songs” (Sarawak Kenyah Lepo’ Tau: belian bareng). Finally, a subset of the critics further held that any songs that were sung by or associated primarily with women, as were kendau kancet, were categorically “aimless,” and that made all the more reason to “flee” the repertoire.

Act II: The Diaspora

From the etymology of the word alone, it is clear that the concept of authenticity is thoroughly intertwined with the concept of self, and as philosophers, literary theorists, and ethnomusicologists, among others, have emphasized, authenticity is invoked as a means by which to identify that self. The centrality of music in this process of identification—most strikingly in the context of urban migrant or other diasporic communities—has been the focus of an increasing volume of scholarship since the late twentieth century. The cultivation of kendau kancet within mixed populations of Dayak peoples in downriver cities of Borneo offers yet another example of the leverage of music in the construction and assertion of identity.

As mentioned earlier, the group of practitioners of kendau kancet in Act II of the triptych was the women’s section of the Orang Ulu National Association, a multiethnic collection of women who trace their origins to various communities in the remote upriver regions of Sarawak. Established in 1966, the OUNA is a voluntary cultural association that “aims to promote, advance, and preserve the cultures of the Orang Ulu,” or Upriver People of Sarawak (Langub and Seling 1989:29). The women’s section of the organization, in particular, has been especially active in the promotion of Orang Ulu culture and traditions through their performances of song and dance, not only within Sarawak but also in peninsular Malaysia.

It is important to recognize here that the OUNA is essentially an organization of Upriver People who are no longer upriver. Branches of the association have been established in most of the major cities and towns of Sarawak, but not in those remote rural areas—the geographic “sources”—with which its members identify. The OUNA, like many such ethnic organizations, is founded on a diasporic population. In this diasporic climate, the members of the OUNA “flee” the homogenizing cultural forces of the majority populations of the downriver regions. The use of kendau kancet in the self-conscious expression of origin—of connection to the “source,” of authenticity—is interesting in that within the context of the OUNA, these Kenyah songs are no longer associated specifically with the Kenyah people. Rather, they serve as their own sort of homogenizing force in that they have become representative of a kind of pan-Orang Ulu identity.¹² For example, at the close of a series of performances for the guests at the 2001 OUNA celebratory dinner in Miri, Sarawak, an invitation was issued to all members of the audience to join the line dance on stage and participate in the performance of the well-known “Léléng” (video 2).¹³

How is it that the OUNA selected Kenyah kendau kancet to represent authentic Orang Ulu tradition? Considering the diversity of the OUNA, many other musical traditions could have served the same purpose, as they, too, shared an “appropriate connection” to an upriver source. What made the kendau kancet connection more “appropriate” than the others? First, it is probably not insignificant that the founding fathers of the OUNA were themselves Kenyah and that the Kenyah are numerically the dominant Orang Ulu group in Sarawak, just ahead of the Kayan. Moreover, those Upriver People who had moved downriver since the mid-twentieth century generally came from the younger generation and likely already recognized the kendau kancet tradition as part of their musical heritage, whether or not they considered themselves Kenyah. On a practical level, the strophic structure of kendau kancet made the songs more accessible to a diverse assortment of Orang Ulu groups, just as “Frère Jacques,” for instance, has long been accessible to a diverse array of American students. In other words, kendau kancet were easy to learn, compared to other upriver repertoires (such as those cherished by the detractors of kendau kancet). Furthermore, the repertoire’s association with women likely made it more comfortable for the “culture bearers” of the OUNA—the women’s section—to perform. Finally, that kendau kancet were oriented toward the group rather than the individual made them all the more suitable for uniting a diverse diasporic community and defining a common Orang Ulu self.

Act III: The Academic Literature

Despite its prevalence in both upriver and downriver communities of Kenyah and related peoples in Borneo, kendau kancet song tradition has received remarkably little attention from the academic community since the early accounts of Galvin and Wan Ulok in the mid-twentieth century (Galvin and Wan Ulok 1955; Galvin 1962). In the early 1970s American poet Carol Rubenstein produced a monumental two-volume compendium of text transcriptions, translations, and brief descriptions of the songs and chants of various peoples of Sarawak (Rubenstein 1973). In that work, she described an unnamed song type that was stylistically and functionally suggestive of kendau kancet. Unfortunately, Rubenstein did not go beyond the short description: not a single example of that type of song appears among the thirty-one items included in the Kenyah section of the volume. Joan Seeler provided a brief description of the songs as well as a valuable account of villages in Sarawak in which such songs were encountered (Seeler 1975). Her work, however, focused primarily on the dance component of the tradition.

In the late 1970s the Indonesian Department of Education and Culture (Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan, DEPDIKBUD) issued an Ensiklopedi Musik dan Tari Daerah (Encyclopedia of Regional Music and Dance) for each of almost all of the country’s provinces at the time. In the volume devoted to East Kalimantan (Proyek Penelitian dan Pencatatan Kebudayaan Daerah 1978), most entries on Kenyah songs indeed address songs of the kendau kancet type, which is a further testament to the prevalence and prominence of the tradition. Each of the songs, however, is treated in isolation, in the absence of any discussion of their relationship as representatives of a particular genre.¹⁴ Kendau kancet continued to be overlooked through the 1980s, although they received very brief mention (under the label badi) in Patricia Matusky’s 1986 survey of the Upper Rejang River (lower Balui River region) in Sarawak (Matusky 1986). The songs were excluded, however, from Allen Maxwell’s otherwise extensive 1989 survey of Sarawakian oral traditions (Maxwell 1989).

Not until the 1990s did kendau kancet begin to receive any notable treatment in the academic literature. In a second survey of the music traditions of the Upper Rejang River, Matusky described songs performed in the context of the Kenyah Badeng (Kenyah-Badang) lekupa line dance that match kendau kancet in style and structure (Matusky 1990).¹⁵ In the mid-1990s I included an example of kendau kancet on the annotated CD The Kenyah of Kalimantan (Indonesia) (Gorlinski 1994), and I also dedicated a small section of my dissertation to the genre (Gorlinski 1995). Philip Yampolsky later released a recording of kendau kancet (called lan ‘i’ here) on the CD Kalimantan Dayak Ritual and Festival Music (Yampolsky 1998), and he provided several paragraphs of description and analysis in the liner notes. Although very short, the inclusion of a description of the Kenyah Badeng lekupa dance songs, with text and music transcription, in the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Vol. 4, Southeast Asia (1998), was especially significant because it gave the genre exposure in a major music reference work. The first substantial publication to focus to any significant degree on kendau kancet, however, was Malaysian music educator Chong Pek Lin’s Folk Songs of Sarawak: Songs from the Kenyah Community (Chong 1998). More than half of the nearly two dozen songs in her collection are kendau kancet—or belian dadu’, as Chong refers to the repertoire in her work. For each of the songs, she provides text transcription and translation, music notation, and notes on unique elements of the song’s structure or style, as well as teaching points for classroom use.

It is interesting that no specific mention is made of songs of the kendau kancet type in Patricia Matusky and Tan Sooi Beng’s landmark work The Music of Malaysia (Matusky and Beng 2004), even though the repertoire shows a unity of melodic structure, texture, language (in large measure), and performance practice across diverse communities of the interior of Sarawak to a degree unparalleled by the vocal genres that are highlighted as representative of the region. Despite its wave of recognition in the academic literature in the mid-to-late 1990s, it seems that the kendau kancet tradition may again be slipping below the academic radar. There are, of course, many reasons for this, perhaps the most significant of which is the ongoing shortage of music research in—and on—Borneo as a whole. Another possibility may be that those who have conducted research in the area have focused primarily on the traditions of the senior segment of the community, a group that may not even acknowledge kendau kancet as a legitimate part of the vocal music corpus. If that has indeed been the case, kendau kancet would not likely find a place of prominence in those researchers’ work. I can’t but wonder, however, if, aside from Chong (Chong 1998), there has also been a general tendency among academics not to take this repertoire seriously. Just like some senior Kenyah, the academic community may be disregarding the repertoire, albeit for different reasons. This leads me back to the notion of authenticity.

While the oldest members of the community discredited kendau kancet on the basis of a perceived detachment from the “original source” in terms of linguistic character, target audience, and the gender of the performer, outside researchers, I speculate, have hesitated to acknowledge the repertoire merely on account of the structure and style of the musical product. The verse-refrain format of kendau kancet, and especially the periodic breaking of the chorus into parts, can be perceived as being a little too suggestive of hymn singing, and with no stylistic precedent elsewhere in the vocal-music corpus, kendau kancet seem to be disconnected from the original source. With the “inauthenticity” alarm thus sounded, researchers have fled the repertoire, as the familiarity of its sound ultimately posed a challenge to their own musical identity, integrity, and sense of self.

The Closing Curtain

Using the opening triptych as a springboard, my intention in this essay has been, first, to call attention to kendau kancet, an important but yet insufficiently recognized musical genre born in North Kalimantan, Indonesia, and raised in both Indonesian and Malaysian Borneo. Second, I have used this opportunity to contemplate the different ways in which the kendau kancet tradition has been viewed and used to different ends by different communities. Specifically, I have focused—and speculated—on the role of notions of authenticity in the valuation of the repertoire in various settings, ultimately as this valuation has related to perception of self.

At the outset of the essay, I accepted the definition of “authenticity” as exhibiting an “appropriate connection” to the “original source.” As analysis of the back side of the triptych has revealed, we must explore from all angles what constitutes not only the “appropriate connection” but also the “original source.” Which elements of the perceived source have the capacity to validate or invalidate the authenticity of a music tradition for a given community? The form or structure of the musical product? The geographical source of the tradition? The context, function, aim, or target of the performance? The personal characteristics of the performer? The process of creation or acquisition? As illustrated by the kendau kancet case, neither the critical elements nor the concept of the “original source” itself are stable from one setting to the next. Indeed, they shift as we move from the village, to multiethnic downriver diaspora, to the international academic literature.

As we continue our research on kendau kancet, a tradition now at least in its second generation of practice, we must similarly continue to question our sources, in every sense of the term, and strive to account for the variety that we inevitably will encounter. Moreover, whenever the flag of authenticity is waved, we must explore what is being fled, and what is the image of self that is projected through that flight. It is only through such a multiangled approach that we will be able to gain a full perspective on the past, present, and future of the kendau kancet tradition.