Legends & Folklore
The Legend Behind the Uyat Piping
and Sambe Bali Dayong
Significance of uyat piping (puppet associated with sambe bali) in Long Moh
-as explained by Baun Bilong of Long Moh (August 2022)
According to traditional Kenyah customary norms, it was forbidden to make fun of animals. To do so would anger the spirits (bali) especially the evil bali baliw who would curse the offending person, and turn him or sometimes a whole village into stone. Before this happened, green frogs (sa’ee bileng )would come out and in great numbers , alerting the villagers that something terriblre would happen. If such an offence took place, in order to escape the wrath of the spirit, the dayong (shaman) carved the figurine (uyat piping) and animated/ manipulated it to perform a hilarious dance to the music of the sambe dayong. The puppet dance would make bali baliw laugh so much that his anger dissipated!
The Uyat piping is made of cork, from the stem of the snake skin fruit or buah salak (Salacca wallichiana)-lemujan in Kenyah) tree , a popular material for fishing rods.
This is an example of a delightful musical tradition which almost died out., with the passing of one of the few remaining (perhaps only remaining?) practitioner, the late Lian Langggand of Long Moh. Fortunately, musician Edmund Ngau Bilong, from the same longhouse as Lian, is trying to revive the tradition. He has succeeded in making the instrument in the same form (it is different from the contemporary sape, fashioning the puppet , and has mastered several of the tunes.
One of these tunes is the sambe manok ilang. This melody (according to Edmund Ngau and his sister Baun Bilong, March 2023) was named by the originator of the melody (another sambe bali practitioner) because , when he first played the tune, a magpie robin (manok ilang) alighted on the longhouse veranda and started hopping around as if dancing in appreciation of the tune.
[copyright Chong Pek Lin 2023]
Performing the roles of both musician and puppeteer, the late Lian Langgang plays the sambe bali while controlling the uyat piping (Photo taken by Darren Chin, January 2009)
Edmund Ngau Bilong performing for us in Long Moh , March 2023 with his own sambe bali and uyat
Tales of the Bali Sungai (Dragon)
(I started enquiring more deeply about legends/origins of beliefs/concepts about dragons in Kenyah culture after a fascinating discussion earlier this year with Dr. Monica Janowski who has been doing research on dragon beliefs among the various ethnic communities in Sarawak).
Tale 1 as told by Balan Sigau (18/3 /2023)- with assistance from Tua Kampong Ului Tingang
[Balan Sigau is a member of one of the few families still practicing Adet Bungan. He is the son of Sigau Apui.
Once there was a lovely maiden who turned down all the men in the village who tried to woo her. One day, a dragon (bali sungai/sprit of the water) transformed himself into a handsome young man and visited the maiden. She fell in love with him and agreed to marry him and follow him back to his home. Both of them transformed into dragons and slithered into the river where they dwelt happily, starting a family.
One day the villagers decided to farm fish by throwing chilli into the river water force the fish to rise to the surface. However, this stung the eyes of the bali sungai and his family. As their eyes were stinging intolerably, the female bali sungai (the transformed maiden) and her baby emerged above the water surface and were seen lying on a top of a rock.
As they did not wish to displease the bali sungai , from then on, the villagers did not use chilli anymore; instead later they used the Tuba root (derris elliptica, a poisonous substance, now banned) to farm the fish by stunning them.
At the end Balan added: The Kenyah believe they are the descendants of the dragon (bali sungai).
Tale 2 : As told by Edmund Ngau Bilong (Suok) 15/3 /2023
Once a man went fishing and got entangled underwater in his own net. He was mysteriously transported to another world where he met the bali sungai who told him that fortunately he had not eaten the fish that he had caught. If he had done so, the bali sungai would have sent his “soldiers” the selarang to attack him.
[Copyright Chong Pek Lin 2023]