I first met Saari when, in early\nFebruary 1975, I started research work for a proposed doctoral dissertation on\nMak Yong in Kelantan. I was in Kota Bharu, in the Jalan Bayam house of the late\nKhatijah binti Awang, and I was looking for a field assistant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Khatijah, the legendary Mak Yong\nartist of recent times, and her husband Zakaria Abdullah, recommended Saari\nAbdullah to me. He was, they said, well informed about Mak Yong. He knew most\nof the people in Kelantan who were connected, one way or the other, with this\nparticular form of theatre. He was also someone who had to be pushed, they\nsaid, for he was given to laziness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was a year of intense research, and the data we collected served far more than just the purposes of my dissertation. Much of what was gathered in 1975, and our subsequent follow-up research, has yet to be studied and published. For that demanding — but, all the same, highly relaxing — duration, Saari played many roles: guide, interpreter, transcriber.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Remembering those times, Saari often\nmentioned that I had opened his eyes to the manner in which research should be\ndone, and to the importance of documentation. I would like to believe that, in\nsome small measure, the experience we shared in Kelantan inspired him. He had\none constant regret throughout his life: that he was not ‘properly’ educated,\nin the formal sense. We often joked that, if he were better qualified, he could\nstudy for a diploma at the Academy Seni Kebangsaan, or even earn a degree at\none of our local universities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How ironic that he would later serve\nas an instructor in these institutions!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A Friend<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Our partnership during that year in\nKelantan was to develop into much more: it became a lasting friendship. Except\nfor occasional short gaps, Saari and I remained in touch with each other — we\nwould later work with each other in a variety of situations: in Kelantan, in\nKuala Lumpur, in Penang.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We trudged through Kelantanese\nvillages, looking for Mak Yong performances — but also those of Main Puteri,\nwayang kulit, and Menora. We documented them and interviewed the people\nconnected with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It became immediately clear that\nSaari had a passion for these art forms, a passion that he had undoubtedly\ninherited from his father, Abdullah Awang, better known in Mak Yong circles as\nDollah Supang, his stage name as the senior comedian (peran tua) in\nperformances. I learned later that Saari’s grand mother, Maimunah Bakar, and\nhis mother, Hamidah Yusof (known as Che Bedah Bunga Tanjung), were also\nwell-known Mak Yong performers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Saari played many roles in Kumpulan\nSri Temenggong, the troupe Khatijah Awang started in 1970; like his father, he\ninitially started off as a peran actor. It was his constant desire to improve\nMak Yong: to change it, if necessary — a desire that, at times, led to\nconflicts within the troupe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through his years Saari dreamt of\npresenting Mak Yong in a sophisticated way, with stage sets and other elements\nof modern theatre. He shared this interest with his brother, Zakaria, who once\ndreamt of developing a vast Mak Yong orchestra: one with fifty rebabs, the\nother instruments in proportionate numbers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His Contributions<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Neither Saari’s nor his brother’s\ndreams materialised, but my friend’s personal development as an artist could\nnot be stopped. He was to play many diverse roles — not only in Mak Yong, but\nin other arts and crafts as well. He began to play the rebab, then learned how\nto construct this instrument. He even began to sell rebabs of his own make.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Saari studied the art of Main\nPuteri. In recent years, he became Kelantan’s best-known selampit player,\nadopting the name Sa’ari Raja Gondang — and thus helped preserve this form of\nstorytelling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the state ban of wayang kulit\n— and its effect on the traditional wayang kulit Siam — Saari and I developed\na new form of shadow play, wayang kulit semangat baru, to offer new stories. He\neven went on to serve as a dalang for this new wayang, playing in Kuala Lumpur\nin 2004, at an important conference on the shadow play form, organised by the\nCentre of Civilisational Dialogue, University of Malaya.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His Stories<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In Mak Yong, Saari took over his\nfather’s role as a repository of stories. In the mid- to late-1970s, he\nassisted me in my work of writing down the actual performance texts for these\ntales — transcribed from field recordings or literally taken off the memories\nof the oldest living performers. Some, like Abdullah Awang and Zainab Tengku Temenggung,\nwere associated with attempts to develop Mak Yong in the pre-World War 2\nKelantan royal court, and it was a fortunate and timely decision, indeed, to\nrecord those texts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Later, after Khatijah Awang passed away, Saari was to write scripts based on some of these stories for productions at the National Arts Academy. We collaborated frequently, and my own collection of scripts came in handy where plots were no longer remembered — as in the case of Raja Tangkai Hati<\/em>, the first Mak Yong production at Istana Budaya.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is impossible to fully appreciate\nSaari’s contribution to the traditional arts of Kelantan. His efforts to keep\nMak Yong alive, in particular, were never easy: he faced constant battles.\nMajor conflicts with the local authorities erupted every once in a while — as\nwas the case when I arranged for a group of Sunway College students to spend a\nweek in Kelantan, mid-March 2006, so they could be immersed in the art of Mak\nYong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the shows planned on that\noccasion had to be called off, Saari’s agile mind quickly found alternative\nways of ensuring that performances went on. The ensuing contributions drew\npublic attention to the sad plight of Mak Yong in Kelantan, as well as positive\nreactions from the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Heritage. I am certain that,\nin some small measure, this particular crisis — and Saari’s solutions to it —\nbenefited Mak Yong, what with all the follow-up support in preserving this\nimportant genre of theatre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mak Yong is now recognized by\nUNESCO, as one of 43 cultural masterpieces part of the collective Oral and\nIntangible Heritage of Humanity — and Saari is, in a small way, responsible\nfor this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now that Saari Abdullah has so\nsuddenly left us — all too soon, the well known but unrecognised man — there\nis a gnawing gap in the traditional performing arts of Kelantan. The future of\nSaari’s own group, Kumpulan Sri Temenggung II, hangs in the balance. One can\nonly hope that his wife, Ruhani, has the strength and fortitude to assume his\nmantle, with the support of her daughters — and all others, wherever they may\nbe, devoted to the beautiful art of Mak Yong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n May his soul rest in peace. Al\nFatihah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ~~~ <\/p>\n\n\n\n Professor Ghulam-Sarwar Yousuf is the world’s foremost Mak Yong scholar and expert. <\/p>\n\n\n\n First Published:12.10.2006 on Kakiseni <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I first met Saari when, in early February 1975, I started research work for a proposed doctoral dissertation on Mak Yong in Kelantan. I was in Kota Bharu, in the Jalan Bayam house of the late Khatijah binti Awang, and I was looking for a field assistant. Khatijah, the legendary Mak Yong artist of recent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"iawp_total_views":3,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7758,7770,7777,7762,7766],"tags":[3992,496,4004,3998,501,4002,3993,3995,518,3991,960,3996,4008,3994,2887,485,3997,4006,484,4010,4012,4001,4009,961,4000,693,46,4011,956,1865,2760,4003,1344,4005,3990],"language":[7785],"writer":[7925],"class_list":["post-27554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artikel","category-budaya","category-obituari","category-teater","category-seni-visual","tag-abdullah-awang","tag-akademi-seni-kebangsaan","tag-centre-of-civilisational-dialogue","tag-che-bedah-bunga-tanjung","tag-culture","tag-dalang","tag-dollah-supang","tag-hamidah-yusof","tag-istana-budaya","tag-kelantan","tag-khatijah-awang","tag-kumpulan-sri-temenggong","tag-kumpulan-sri-temenggung-ii","tag-maimunah-bakar","tag-main-puteri","tag-mak-yong","tag-menora","tag-national-arts-academy","tag-obituary","tag-performing-arts","tag-raja-tangkai-hati","tag-rebab","tag-ruhani","tag-saari-abdullah","tag-selampit","tag-sunway-college","tag-theatre","tag-traditional","tag-unesco","tag-universiti-malaya","tag-wayang-kulit","tag-wayang-kulit-semangat-baru","tag-wayang-kulit-siam","tag-zainab-tengku-temenggung","tag-zakaria-abdullah","language-inggeris","writer-prof-ghulam-sarwar-yousof-ms"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27554"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39222,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27554\/revisions\/39222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27554"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=27554"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/writer?post=27554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}