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On Wings of Waxed Paper: Kite-Flying in Kelantan, Malaysia
| Article
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16531 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
11 / 1989 |
4,011 Words |
| Author
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Douglas Raybeck
Douglas Raybeck is an anthropologist who teaches at Hamilton
College in Clinton, New York. His research interests include
cognitive systems, psycholinguistics, and sociocultural
deviance. He has done extensive fieldwork in West Malaysia and
has written several articles on Kelantanese peasants. |
Above the rural Kelantanese village from dusk until dawn, the warm night air is permeated by a continuous humming drone that seems to emanate from the sky itself. Spreading out from the village and over the sunbaked, empty rice fields, the sound provides an aural backdrop to conversations, meals, and sleep. It comforts children and adults alike and serves to mark the season. The humming derives from the wind blowing across tautened rattan strips secured between the arms of bamboo bows, each mounted on a large and, by daylight, beautifully decorated kite. Beside their houses, several villagers have secured kites that may fly for several days and nights. It is the postharvest season, the hot season, the season of kites.
Although cultures are imperfectly integrated entities at best, they do possess a degree of coherence and persistence. It is one of the axioms of cultural anthropology that any trait, belief, or behavioral pattern can to some degree reflect and reinforce the cultural context of which it is a part and from which it derives meaning. Thus, in studying a particular aspect of a culture, one necessarily learns about its cultural environment. The kites of Kelantan might appear to be simply a rather frivolous, if lovely, postharvest phenomenon. In part, that is the case, but these colorful, airborne entities also have an important supernatural connection, and they can provide insight into some of the most deeply felt and strongly held of Kelantan village values.
Kelantan is a very traditional Malaysian state on the northeast coast of the Malay Peninsula in Southeast Asia. For hundreds of years, a rich set of cultural influences, both internal and external, has been at work throughout the peninsula. Internally, there are beliefs about supernatural agencies, human relations, and appropriate behavior which predate the arrival and influence of the great traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. Exposure to the latter stemmed from contacts with great powers such as China and India and with less powerful but closer neighbors such as Java, Thailand, and Cambodia. The resulting cross-cultural fertilization produced a highly complex and syncretic society, one whose parts tend to intermingle and thus create a culture of rich and varied flavor. In such a circumstance, a given cultural element, such as Kelantan's kites, may reflect several traditions and possess a plurality of meanings.
Kelantan Village Life
Kelantan is generally regarded as the most conservative and traditional of Malaysia's states. It is
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