ABSTRACT
The music and dance tradition has evolved from an Arab-derived tradition into a Johor Malay performing art indigenous to the Alam Melayu. The convergence of musical rhythm and movement/gestural rhythm between main lagu and allows the musicians and the play-performers to explore structured or improvised dance movements within the musical phrasing and timing. The choreomusicological relationships of main lagu and main zapin have intrinsic and extrinsic qualities. Intrinsic relationships are derived from structures and elements embedded in music and movement, while extrinsic relationships are driven by contextual cues and prior knowledge of the performance traditions. Musicians gaze at their musicking as the play-performers fill the gap of in-betweeness, sandwiching the mute melodic, rhythmic musical sounds with the display of improvised corporeal skills of main zapin through the execution of langkah-step motifs. During main lagu the gambus provides a heterophonic melodic line with the vocal part.
