Chas -- JAMA recent article on Kuntao

Greetings Chas,

Have you seen the recent article in JAMA? It is quite good, has some pictures of William Reeders and Liu Sheong as well. I seem to have a recollection of you debating with someone (Jims/Quark?) about the origin of the Okinawan Sai coming from indonesia. There is an interesting reference to that in the article:

'(also known as siku-siku, trisula; and tekpi, which is essntially a version of - and according to a number of authorities, the precursor to - the Okinawan sai)'. *

There is no reference for the statement given here (unsusual for JAMA, given the more academic posture) but I thought you might be interested.

His classifications are very enlightening....as a point of interest, where do you see the kuntao of your tradition? The three main groups were:

1) more or less unchanged from the Totok forms and practise

2) Somewhere in between 1 and 3

3) Wholly indonesianized (language, use of the kendang, indonesian weapons, etc) but retaining some of the form and function of the totok origins.

These are my words as I take the author's meaning. I'd be interested in Steve Gartin's opinion as well. I hope to see more articles on silat and related styles/issues in JAMA; makes for some very good reading!

Thanks!

* JAMA, Vol. 9 number 2 2000 What is Kuntao

Hey Ron-

No I haven't- but I would trust anything from Philip Davies to be articulate, well researched and authentic; he's a whizzer.

They also call it 'tjabang'- a 'branch'- that might give some interesting insights into what the original form was.

No idea whatsoever. Willem de Thouars claims some form of taiji, a 'formless' or 'primordial' pakua, Chuan Shu Ie Hsing-i, some Honan, some Shantung and a Praying Mantis form- I couldn't say which of those would be 'traditional' or which would be 'influenced'. As it stands right now, I see all of his work as heavily influenced by the silat- particularly the 'Family systems', but that might be as seen through the eyes of a primarily family system practitioner.

He's offline right now with some computer difficulties, so I doubt he'll see this. I'll let him know and publish his views if they are significantly differing from mine.

Chas http://members.xoom.com/kilap/Keepsafe.htm http://www.kuntaosilat.com/videos.html

There is an article about Kuntao in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)??

I know, I know...I am just being silly. What you really meant was the Japanese Automobile Manufacturers Association(JAMA)....

Hullo, Ron.

Thank you for the kind words, and glad you liked the article. Sorry about the cabang reference, that slipped past Mike de Marco and myself during the proof-reading stage. For what it's worth, the reference on the cabang claim would be to Draeger's Indonesian informants and to Bruce Haines' Dutch-Indonesian informants. The comment is phrased the way it is because on the whole neither the Chinese (who claim invention of the weapon as the Iron Ruler, titcher) nor the Okinawans particularly accept this claim.

As regards to fitting Willem de Thouars Kuntao-Silat de Thouars into the scheme, with deference and respect to Chas and other members of the de Thouars aliran, it doesn't fit the scheme in the article on two counts. First, because it isn't practiced in the 'Nusantara' (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore & Brunei +/-) and hence isn't subject to the integrationist/nationalist-integralist pressures that are particular to Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and to a lesser degree Brunei. The article strictly avoided reference to any of the aliran exported to the West by the Dutch-Indonesian 'Indos', mainly to avoid adding any extra variables to the analysis (in fact, the piece is designed to create an analytical 'baseline' for subsequent piece(s) that will deal with Indo systems). Second, Uncle Bill's system is a 'perguruan bahru', a new style. The Indo-Malay martial arts tradition is vastly more liberal about the ebb and flow of new systems being born and old systems dying off; legitimate traceable precedent is more important than verbatim duplication of an established school. What this means, however, is that Uncle Bill's personal system evolved recently in an American social context, so the analytical framework in my piece can't be applied on that count either.

That being said, structurally (rather than sociologically), Pak Willem's system conforms roughly to the category 2 type of Kuntao (what, in the article, I term 'peranakanised' hybrid systems) since it combines totok forms of Bagua, Taiji and Shaolin with several forms of silat. But, as I say, the model won't quite stretch this far because the normative context in which it is taught and trained is the contemporary United States and not the Nusantara.

I hope this seems a reasonable formulation; it isn't intended as a cop-out, just to say that the Indo systems need to be looked at separately from the Nusantara systems.

Regards,

Philip H.J. Davies

PS As a small matter of detail, the use of the Reeders pictures caught me somewhat by surprise. Mike had simply indicated that he intended to include pictures of kuntao practice in Indonesia, and I rather expected them to be contemporary, bangau putih or something like that. I think the other factor is that de Marco was originally a student in the Reeders linneage kuntao when he started MA way back when.

Obviously I don't speak for him <g> but I've been involved in his aliran for twenty-two years, so I do have an informed opinion- Bill de Thouars is very specific about his system being eclectic and of his own making. He speaks of a 'salad bowl' approach and often compares it to a rijstaffel table with many ingredients of Chinese, 'Arab', Indian and indigenous silat for the practitioner to partake of. The PPS Serak could also be viewed in the same way. Bapak Serak studied nine arts, feeling combat effective in three of them. He studied indigenous silat (4 systems), chinese art (3 systems) and indian art (2 systems) and derived his technic from them and as modified for his unusual physical structure of being one armed and club footed. His art was then modified for transmission by several senior students who had their own interpretations- our progenitor was Mas Djoet, but there seem to have been several seniors that started continuing lineages with vastly differing approaches. You can see some similarities, but they are by no means 'the same', even if called by the same name.

Bill presents his work as being Dutch Indonesian, Chinese and American in a syncretic combination- he credits a lot to boxing (european), to fencing and to things he's learned in the 40 years of being here in the US as well as his studies in the 'East'. Lineage is very important in DIndo stylings, but not in the same way as seems to be in the Chinese or Japanese traditions. It is important both that one has studied with 'masters' of the systems and that one has made those systems one's own. As Bill says: 'I don't sing my teacher's song, I sing my own song'- the art is not considered to be a 'mish-mosh' (George), it is comparable to taking the notes of the scale and writing a new music from it. Truly, I don't see how it could be any other way. Every student has his own body type, emphasis on particular technic- it depends on when in a teacher's own practice that the student is involved; a host of variables will affect the transmission of skills and interpretations. Bob Orlando has spoken to just that point in speaking of the quality of skills transmitted to earlier students and later ones in Bill's own group. He seems to feel that the later students got a more coherent transmission than the ones who practiced earlier in Bill's teaching career- of course that's my own interpretation of his commentary and a view not shared by all Congrats on a very positive publishing credential- hard work shows-

Chas http://members.xoom.com/kilap/Keepsafe.htm http://www.kuntaosilat.com/videos.html

Many thanks. I do hope that other folk in the various kuntao traditions find the piece a useful effort.

Best wishes,

test

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