Mak Yong: World Heritage Theatre by Ghulam-Sarwar Yousof, and: Mak Yong through the Ages: Kelantan's Traditional Dance Theatre by Ghulam-Sawar Yousof (review)

Ghulam-Sawar Yousof ends Mak Yong: World Heritage Theatre hoping the book "will contribute to the revival of authentic Mak Yong and bring national and global attention to this world heritage theatre" (p. 111). For Ghulam "authentic" means the village-based performances of the early-mid twentieth century. Since 1969, when Ghulam first saw the genre performed at a conference in Kuala Lumpur, he has been a scholar of and an advocate for this important and endangered Kelantanese dance drama form which combines dance, music, storytelling, and ritual/healing. Both books draw on his still unpublished University of Hawaii 1976 dissertation as well his subsequent articles/chapters on the topic (see http://gsyousof.com/?page_id=7, accessed 23 June 2020). His major fieldwork was in the mid-l970s when urban popularization of the form was part of a postcolonial Southeast Asian shift away from western performance models and toward a more indigenous theatre of roots, which led to mak yong's incorporation in national discourse and representation. Since then the form has been curtailed due to changing political circumstances, including an exclusivist pro-Malay culture policy of the Malaysian government since the early 1970s and the rise of conservative political Islam since 1979. This includes a 1991–2018 ban on public performances of mak yong for religious reasons in its home state where PAS, a Malay Islamic party rules.

In both books, there are many photos and discussions of the sembah guru (graduation ceremony, "honoring the teacher") focusing on the initiation of one of Ghulam's main informants, Khatijah binti Awang (1941–2000)—a ceremony that Ghulam helped fund during dissertation research. Ghulam subsequently hired Khatijah to teach at Universiti Sains Malaysia, initiating mak yong training in Malaysian tertiary education. By the 1990s, Ghulam brought Khatijah to what is now ASWARA (Akademi Seni Budaya dan Warisan Kebangsaan, National Academy of Arts Culture and Heritage), the country's prime arts training program. By 1999 Khatijah, still banned from performing in Kelantan, was named a national artist—something, which Ghulam as pivotal cultural figure/scholar helped facilitate. In the early 2000s, Ghulam assembled the dossier for mak yong's recognition as a UNESCO Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (2005, since 2008 Intangible Cultural Heritage [ICH]) (see Hardwick 2020). As part of that UNESCO process, Ghulam wrote a plan for the form's preservation. That these plans for state-supported preservation were approved and forwarded to UNESCO by cultural officers but never actually funded or prioritized by these official poses his ongoing frustration.

Hence, these significant texts represent a half a century of research on and struggle for an endangered art. As a case study, mak yong's fate can provide comparison with other heritage forms in a changing world. Issues of how political borders impact pertain (mak yong is also found in Southern Thailand and the Riau archipelago of Indonesia, which causes some to see it as not Malaysian enough); how the politics of ethnicity play out is also significant (pure Malay arts and ethnically Malay scholars have been favored in the nation's cultural system since the 1970s, which may explain in part why an Indian-Malaysian like Ghulam has difficulties in gaining assistance for archival and preservation work); and impacts of the Islamic revival are also at work (the rise of Wahabi style Islam with increasing diffusion in late twentieth century Southeast Asia is overtaking earlier Muslim praxis with new strictures of veiling, limiting female performers, and denouncing transgender impersonation).

Mak Yong: World Heritage Theatre is a concise, straightforward introduction to the form with many pictures. It begins with the accessible narrative of the author's entry into the world of mak yong during his PhD work and serves as...