Mandailing's Dance, Drumbeat to be Gazetted as Malaysia's National Heritage - Minister

SINGAPORE, June 19 (Bernama) -- The Mandailing community's Tor-tor dance and the Gordang Sambilan (nine great drumbeats) will be gazetted as national heritage amid brickbat from Indonesian media, said Information, Communications and Culture Minister Dr Rais Yatim. He said every community was entitled to freedom to adopt its culture of origin and the Tor-tor dance and 'gendang besar' (great drum) were not owned by anybody, according to the Geneva Convention. "The United Nations (UN) guarantees freedom to a community to adopt their original culture and way of life," he said when commenting on the Indonesian media protest over his proposal to gazette the Mandailing's dance and drumbeat as national heritage. Rais is in Singapore to attend the Ministerial Forum on ICT at the Marina Bay Sands. "The people of Malaysia, who inherited original cultures of the archipelago for decades and centuries, deserve to maintain their culture of origin like the Chinese and Indians," he added. Rais said it was normal for certain quarters to protest and stage demonstrations over such issue. "But in Malaysia, we have people of Minangkabau, Bugis, Javanese, Sunda, Kalimantan and Pontianak descents who have been maintaining their own culture," he said. Rais hoped such protest should not have occurred in the modern age. "This has already been debated before, but the same old story happened again. God willing, we will gazette the dance and drumbeat like we had done on zapin, dongdang sayang and kuda kepang. "Kuda kepang (horse trance dance), which is widely practised in Java, is also performed in Johor, the southern state of Malaysia," he added. -- BERNAMA