My father, the Balinese, has several nonsense rhymes that he learned from his childhood days which he has kept reciting forever. He would do one out of the blue:<\/p>\n
Kaki, Kakiang,
\nDadong, Dadongkang.<\/i><\/p>\n
And he would do another one to follow his yawnings:<\/p>\n
Ha, ha, hem
\nMeli tuak ji nenem
\nMen sing telah bang D\u00e8lem
\nKutang pedalem
\nNuangin masem.<\/i><\/p>\n
Both are sung with only two tones, one low and the other one higher, with a diatonic interval of a bit more than a major second, and more emphasis (tenuto<\/i>-like) on the higher tone. <\/p>\n
If I would try to notate them (with the rhythm and tone), the first one would be somewhat like this:<\/p>\n
2\/4<\/p>\n
.1<\/u> | 2 12<\/u> | 1
\n.1<\/u> | 2 12<\/u> | 1 ||<\/p>\n
And the second one:<\/p>\n
4\/4<\/p>\n
2 2 1’1<\/u> 11<\/u> | 2 22<\/u> 1’1<\/u> 11<\/u> |
\n2 22<\/u> 1 .1<\/u> | 2 22<\/u> 1 11<\/u>
\n2 2 1 . ||<\/p>\n
The first one is just simply a funny word game:<\/p>\n
Kaki<\/i> means Grandfather<\/i>; Dadong<\/i> means Grandmother<\/i>. Kakiang<\/i> is a general term for all old people; while Dadongkang<\/i> doesn’t mean anything. Dongkang<\/i>, however, is some kind of a frog that’s really big. <\/p>\n
Ha, ha, hem<\/i> in the second one is somewhat onomatopoeic. My father would yawn and already start the rhyme – so Ha, ha, hem<\/i> would be the sound of his yawn and the rhyme would extend out from it.<\/p>\n
Meli tuak ji nenem<\/i> – bought coconut-wine of six (bottles)
\nMen sing telah bang D\u00e8lem<\/i> – if not (\/can’t) finish (them just) give (to) D\u00e8lem<\/i>
\nKutang pedalem<\/i> – throwing (them is) a pity
\nNuangin masem.<\/i> – keeping (them only turns them) sour.<\/p>\n
D\u00e8lem<\/i> is the fat, meek one of the two fools in a popular traditional form of puppet theatre. D\u00e8lem<\/i>‘s skinny companion is Sangut<\/i> who’s more opportunist. In the Javanese version of the same characters, D\u00e8lem<\/i> is Gar\u00e8ng<\/i>, and Sangut<\/i> is Petruk<\/i>.<\/p>\n
My father doesn’t know where exactly he learned these from. Just from around, he said, from the Balinese people. <\/p>\n
Another one that he likes to recite out of the blue is:<\/p>\n
34<\/u> | 5 32<\/u> 1 34<\/u> | 55<\/u> 32<\/u> 1
\nDuni – a, duni a, duni – a ha, duni a<\/i><\/p>\n
Dunia<\/i> simply means the World(ly)<\/i>. He said he started reciting this only after he reached adulthood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My father, the Balinese, has several nonsense rhymes that he learned from his childhood days which he has kept reciting forever. He would do one out of the blue: Kaki, Kakiang, Dadong, Dadongkang. And he would do another one to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tintinwulia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tintinwulia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tintinwulia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tintinwulia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tintinwulia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tintinwulia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tintinwulia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tintinwulia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tintinwulia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}