ABSTRACT
Many different kinds of music ensembles are played for entertainment during celebrations such as weddings, and for formal and informal social gatherings among all ethnic groups in both the rural and urban areas of Malaysia. This chapter describes the music of the dikir barat, the Chinese orchestra and the ensembles that play the syncretic tunes of the asli, inang, joget, dondang sayang, ghazal, keroncong and Portuguese musical genres. The ronggeng is a type of social dance involving sung pantun in repartee with the accompaniment of the violin, accordion, rebana and gong. A tradition existing in Penang long before the second World War, the dondang sayang is sung during the Chap Goh Meh celebrations by the Baba and Nyonya. The keroncong melodies were sung in the komedi stambul theater which appeared in Surabaya in 1891. Ghazal poetry is believed to have originated in the urban centers of Mecca and Medina and in the cities of Iraq in the eighth century CE.
