TAQSIM

by Dr. Raja Zulkarnain From 9th September to 30th September, the Maybank Foundation will host a Cultural Art Showcase & Bazaar 2024 (CASB) at the Maybank Art Gallery, Menara Maybank, with Rumah Gambus being one of the five main exhibitors. This unique event promises to captivate lovers of gambus cultural heritage and music with its rare and meticulously curated artifacts, all from my personal collection , which I have been assembling since 2001. One of the exhibition's standout highlights is the black eagle quill  risya  (gambus pick) from Jordan, making its debut appearance in Malaysia. This  risya  is no ordinary gambus pick; it’s crafted from the quill of a black eagle, a bird revered in Jordan for its strength and majestic presence. The process of creating such a pick is a delicate and painstaking art, passed down through generations of master artisans. The quill is carefully shaped and treated to achieve the perfect balance and flexibility required to bring ...

The term "gambus" in Malay culture refers to a stringed instrument widely recognized for its historical and cultural significance in Southeast Asia. However, the term "gambus" is often used interchangeably with the " oud ," a distinctively different stringed instrument originating from the Arab world. This phenomenon raises questions about the linguistic and cultural reasons behind this conflation. This article seeks to explore possible reasons for this interchangeable use, analyzing historical, cultural, and linguistic factors. Furthermore, it proposes a new hypothesis to explain this phenomenon. The Arabic  oud  and the Yemeni’s gambus share common ancestry as lutes, but they differ in construction, tuning, and playing techniques. The  oud , with its pear-shaped body and fretless neck, is a central instrument in Arab music, while the Yemeni’s gambus in the Malay world, particularly in Sabah, has evolved with variations in size, shape, and use. The gambus...