学位論文の要旨
A Methodological Construction of Analysis on Mak Yong’s論 文 題 目Mengadap Rebab Dance to Address the Discontinuance of Data
Using a Mixed-Method Approach
広島大学大学院総合科学研究科
総合科学専攻学生番号 D185441
氏

名 SYAFIQ FALIQ BIN ALFAN

論文の要旨
Mak Yong, a traditional Malay dance theatre is regarded as one of the intangible cultural
heritage by UNESCO since 2005. It combines ritual, music, dance and improvised acting to provide
entertainment to its crowd since days of old. Although no documentation was found on its origin
and historical narrative due to its oral tradition, Mak Yong was recorded and studied at least one
hundred years old. However, the different periods of its study since the early twentieth century has
led to one of the problematic issues that have yet to be criticized by its scholars, which is thediscontinuance of data. There seems to be a different description of what Mak Yong is through its
one hundred years of study. In addition, during the fieldwork in Southern Thailand and throughout
this study, fewer people could connect the early recorded form of Mak Yong early in the twentiethcentury with its current form. The situation calls for a different approach than what was done in thepast for the Mak Yong study. The limitation of the ethnographic study on Mak Yong was unable toaddress this issue of discontinuance or track any possible changes that happened in the period before
the study. Due to this issue, we decided to use pragmatism as the philosophical foundation of thisstudy as it caters to inquiry-oriented study. In addition, pragmatism philosophy allows applying amixed-method approach to answer its inquiries, therefore overcoming the issue of limitation in anethnographic study. We used the cultural evolution concept to connect these data with thesupplementary understanding of the connection between creativity, social action, tradition andenvironment through George Herbert Mead’s social behaviourism and Hans Joas’ Creativity inAction theory. Using motion capture technology, we will understand the connection betweenenvironment, social culture and choreography in Mak Yong’s cultural evolution. In short, we have
expanded the objective of this study into five main concerns, which are given below:

1. To understand the physical and dramatic movements of Mak Yong’s Mengadap Rebab
dance through its movement pattern data obtained using motion capture.

2. To interpret the data and connect to their cultural representation from the bodily expression
given in the current and previous ethnographic studies.
3. To examine the connection between the use of accessories and costumes in the dancechoreography of Mengadap Rebab.
4. To connect all past ethnographic data using motion capture data and cultural evolution
theory.
5. To examine the viability of using motion capture in the future studies of traditional
performing arts in Malaysia.
However, to test the universality of this approach, we will also use different traditional
performing art with no historical connection to Mak Yong as a comparison. If choreography in both
performing arts corresponds to the background information on their environment, we can accept theconnection between environment and other background information towards the dancechoreography. For this study, we will be using Japanese Noh theatre to compare as they do not havea historical connection based on our literary review. We used Noh’s Hagoromo Shimai as thecomparative subject to Mak Yong’s Mengadap Rebab. After the preliminary fieldwork, we decided
to imitate the acquisition of dance knowledge by each dance’s community member to provide valid
comparable motion capture data. Using MoCap MATLAB Toolbox created by Berger andToiviainen in 2013, we have chosen three elements for our studies. These elements are cumulative
distance by toe markers, standard deviation and velocity graph on several important markers. The
cumulative distance by toe markers on both dances shows the corresponding connection between
the distance travelled by toe markers with the performance space. The high value of cumulative
distance in Noh’s Hagoromo Shimai shows how it corresponds to the big performance spaceprovided in Noh theatre compared to the small one in Mak Yong. The standard deviation in
Mengadap Rebab and Hagoromo Shimai shows both Mak Yong and Noh have less preference invertical movement of the feet in their choreography. Finally, the velocity graph shows the importantpart of the body utilized for the dance choreography. In Mak Yong, the hands are the most importantelement in the dance, which corresponds to the accessories worn by the performers. Meanwhile, thefeet in Noh becomes an important tool in expressing the dramatic choreography. Therefore a proper
technique and socks need to be used to execute it as intended. From this experiment, we had
established the universality of our hypothesis for the connection between the environment and dancechoreography. It also implies that we can connect the past and present data on the Mak Yong dance.
We understand that both past and present Mak Yong shares similarity as they both regard the handas the attractive element of the performance. While in the past, they utilized Canggai or fakefingernails for their performance, particularly in Southern Thailand, today, Mak Yong in Kelantan
and Kuala Lumpur use bangles to enhance the aesthetic of the performance. The Canggai is also

the element that connects the Kelantan Mak Yong to its past in Southern Thailand and other formsof Mak Yong in Southeast Asia, particularly in Indonesia's Sumatran and Riau Islands.
During our fieldwork, we found that the Mak Yong community in Raman, SouthernThailand exhibits Lamarckian inheritance cultural evolution with a guided variation. Coined byAlex Mesoudi (2011: 43), it can be understood that the inherited traits were passed after changes in
the lifetime of their predecessors. Meanwhile, guided variation is the characteristic of a process thatcauses a change in cultural variation over time. It can be defined as a change made by individuals
on the information they received due to their own cognitive biases. Through interviews we madeduring our fieldwork, there is a tendency by the community members to modify their approach
towards the tradition, and this we believe will create cultural variation over time. The same
examples happen in Mak Yong's well-known personalities, such as Khatijah Awang. She, too, madeimprovements and adjustments to the Mak Yong tradition to keep it relevant to the contemporary
audience in Kuala Lumpur. This information, together with historical documentation on the banningof Mak Yong in the nineteenth century and during the 1990s, we have a reason to believe that thiscaused the distinct variation between Mak Yong in Kelantan, Sumatran and Riau islands. In the caseof Sumatran and Riau Islands, it was exported out of the Malay Peninsular more than one hundredyears ago, which is why their style is akin to the one recorded by Skeat in early 1900. Using theapproach of Mead and Joas, we could understand how these processes occur using available
information. The changes in Kelantan and Southern Thailand may cause by the need of thecommunity to protect the tradition through the ‘I’ in the individual’s self. As in the example ofKhatijah Awang, changes are much easier to occur in the community where the ‘Me’ within thecommunity is not as strong. Through this understanding, we can understand how she thrived in
Kuala Lumpur as the community was not familiar with Mak Yong tradition compared to Pattani –Kelantan. However, Han Joas’ approach enlightens us on why these changes could have resulted in
the discontinuance of data. In one of his tacit assumptions, he highlights that situationality is an
important element in discussing the creativity of social action's. Due to creativity in action that does
not necessarily fit within the means-end schema, human social action often finds themselves
reflecting and changing its course over time according to their current need. In the case of MakYong, due to its roots in oral tradition, there is no way of tracking progress on the changes made inthe tradition. Over time, each generation influences the tradition and consequently cause culturalvariations to occur.