The class trip to Kelantan was awesome! Not only did i get to spend time with my friends, and lecturer, i got to explore malaysia's finest traditional art and culture. The first thing that comes into my head about Kelantan is just some people living in a rural area, but when i got there, it was more than that. Yes its alot of rural people but, the way of living is more exciting and some what wilder than KL.
The first night we watched a main putri performance. Main putri is a healing ritual, healing in terms of the spirit not health. Basically a a tok putri will do a stylized movement and chants to heal a patient. A patient may suffer from lots of things such as the lost of angin and semangat, or even a daily life probelms. A main putri is performed for 4 hours a night and it may go on for 3 nights.
The second night we watched a wayang kulit performance ( Shadow Puppetery) . It is perfomed by a dalang, a dalang is a person who encapsulates a a story from life and performs them using puppets. Amazingly, the dalang that performed for us played 7 different characters at once. This dalang has been doing shadow puppetry for 30 years, and started at the age of 16.
For me the main putri performance is more intense than the wayng kulit because there were certain parts that had fast paced movements and heavy music. The serunai gives the intensity of the mood. Wayang kulit however is more relaxing as is is perfomed behind a white sheet/cloth. Usually a wayang kulit story consist of tales like the ramayana, but that night, the story was a bit different as the dalang add in some comical element.
But this trip was too short and im really looking forward for the next one, if there is a next one. So far i find kelantan very interesting and its a good getaway place from the city. I urge all of you to visit kelantan for a change, get out of your comfort zone and be adventerous.
