MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS

Suling The music of Sabah is intimately bound up with the daily lives and cultural traditions of the diverse ethnic cultures of Sabah. It can be found in many forms like ritual music (for birth, marriages, harvest festivals, deaths) love music, battle songs, story telling songs, among others. For example, the Kadasan Dusun Bobohizan or Bobolian (or high priestess) engages in ritual chanting to appease the spirit in times disaster like floods or droughts. Also, music and dancing are closely linked: the festive dances like the Limbai of the Bajaus and Sumazau of the Penampang Kadazans have distinctive wedding music. In fact, in most Sabahan ethnic groups, song, dance and the accompanying music are, in the main, inseperable as each element is a part of an organic whole, which permeates the lives of the natives. This is reflected in the music significance to festive and commemorative occasions and as a means of personal expression and entertainment. Experience, then, the intensifying power of the gong ensembles, the rhythmic tung, tung, tung harmonies of the togunggak, the healing musical balm of the suling. The following traditional musical instruments of the various Sabahan ethnic groups are divided according to the way in which they work: IDIOPHONES:   Instruments made with materials which produce sounds when scraped, rubbed, hit and without further intervention of other materials.

GONG ENSEMBLES



Gong

Are the most prevalent of Sabah indiophones, found throughout most parts of Sabah especially amongst the Kadazan Dusuns and muruts. The gongs are made of brass or bronze and were originally traded in from Brunei in earlier times. Usually they are thick with a broad rim. They produce a muffled sound of a deep tone.The sopogandangan from the enterior (of the Tambunan Kadazan Dusuns) accompanies the magarang, usually in commemoration of harvest festival and weddings though traditionally the magarang was associated with headhunting. The sopogandangan has more instruments (nine-eight gongs and one drum) than the sompogogungan (seven-six gongs and one drum) from coastal Penampang and used by the Kadazan Dusuns there.(This does not include the popular kulintangan).The sompogogungan accompanies the sumazau, a festive and ritual dance like the magarang but slower in tempo. The Kadazan Dusuns also play dunsai, a type of gong music, at funerals.

Kulintangan

Kulintangan

Is frequently included amongst coastal gong ensembles though it is also found amongst interior natives like the Labuk-Kinabatangan Kadazans and the Paitanic peoples (both from the eastern Sabah) who have come into contract with the coastal natives.

These idiophones produce predominantly ritual Music:
The Tatana Dusun of Kuala Penyu (Southwestern Sabah) employ kulintangan music, and sumayau dancing, as well as unaccompanied by ritual chanting in Moginum rites to welcome the spirits.

The Lotud-Dusun of Tuaran (west Coast of Sabah) use gong ensembles in the slow sedate mongigol dance for the seven-day Rumaha rites which honour the spirits of sacred skulls and the five-day Mangahau rites which honour possessed jars.

TOGUNGGAK (Interior Dusuns)
TOGUNGGU (Penampang Kadazan dusun) &
TAGUNGGAK (Muruts).

In older times before gongs were traded into Sabah, the togunggak was used to accompany dancing and in procession. It was and still is made of bamboo, which flourishes in most parts of Sabah. Bamboo is a great source of raw materials for Sabah musical instruments.

The togunggak consists of a series of hollowed out bamboo tubes of varying sizes of the gongs. The music produced is a hollow and rhythmic tung, tung, tung sound of different pitches in each of the different sizes. The togunggak is played by a troupe of a dozen or so people in lieu of the gong ensemble.