Rasa not- Sayange
The past few days some friends contacted me and asked my opinion regarding the use of the song ‘Rasa Sayange’ for Malaysia “Truly Asia” tourism campaign. Indonesians claim the song belongs to them. Rasa Sayange is believed to have originated in Maluku where it has been sung for generations by people to express their love for the environment. Malaysia, on the other hands, claims the song has been heard for many years, therefore it is not exclusively owned by Indonesia. Within Indonesians communities, this issue creates a turbulence and diverse reactions, from shocked to I –don’t-care reaction.
Why this situation matters?
This is neither the first nor the second time Malaysia “steal” Indonesian assets. A few examples were the Sipadang-Lingitan islands, and Ambalat case. Not to mention batik cases, many Indonesians do not know that Batik, the Indonesian national costume motif, has been copyrighted by Malaysia.. Surprised? Well don’t be! In fact, when I was in Kuala Lumpur for a conference last August, I saw a huge poster in one of Malaysian biggest malls using Petruk (a character in wayang(leather puppet) as background. So I understand why Indonesian communities are so upset over Rasa Sayange case. It is accumulation of stressed feeling.
Although the song is claimed by two countries, linguistically there is a clue that the song is originally from Maluku. The /e/ in the end of saying. This is Maluku’s dialect which means “most”.
Despite the idea of suing Malyasia for the song has been widely sparked, I am not sure that Indonesia will win. The song is a folksong and there is no clue who the author was, in addition, as a folksong, it is passed by generation to generation through oral tradition. I learned to sing this song when I was in elementary school a long time ago and in the song book the author of this song along with hundreds of folksongs only marked by NN (no name/ anonymous). So how we can declare that this song is Indonesian song if we do not know who the author…is?? Now let me give you another example. When Malaysia was asked when they invented batik, they can come up with certain date. In Indonesia, I am sure no one is able to mention certain date because it is passed from generation to generation… not even my grandma who is a batik maker. We just feel happy when people from other countries say it’s beautiful without taking necessary steps to protect it.
What we can do then…
I think what we learned from our history is that we never learned from it. After Sipadang-Lingitan, Ambalat, Batik… what we have done so far? Nothing, we as Indonesians are always upset when someone else takes over our heritage.. But have we done something to protect our heritage e.g copyright our cultural heritage? Or should we wait until the same incident occurs again…Being patriotic means we take good care of our national heritage. We appreciate, preserve, and protect them. Ignoring what we have and got all upset only after some other countries claim ownerships over them is not being patriotic. It’s being careless and stupid. If we cannot force our government to protect our own national treasure, then it is not just the government who is stupid. It’s us because we elected them. We only have ourselves to blame. I think it is time we change our reactive attitude to a more proactive, otherwise more and more our cultural and natural assets will be disappeared soon. Now do your homework, identify your local heritage assets and report them to the government.
Malaysian version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eu-nfKFDSB8
Indonesian version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZabgpWuy-Zg
The song in Duch movie portrayed
Indonesia in 1937-1940:
Have a magical day everyone
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