By Wilfred Pilo
KUCHING, May 13: Did you know that a Dutchman wrote and sang a Gawai Dayak song with over 200,000 views and 500 comments on YouTube?
Titled ‘Nyamai-Nyamai’, it was uploaded to the Global Gibbon Youtube channel, and the responses exceeded 33-year-old Nick Jansen’s expectations.
He said that the music video, which is over five minutes, is a fun merry-making festival song about family and friends celebrating Gawai Dayak.
“The song’s lyrics are mostly in Iban with a little bit of English,” he said to DayakDaily when met at his cafe at Ewe Hai Street.
Jansen, who had been living in Sarawak for 13 years, said that the inspiration for the song came from an old German song from the 1950s sung during Oktoberfest.
“The song has been translated into a few languages like Dutch and Spanish, so why not compose an Iban version?” he said.
Jansen said it took him about five months to come up with the lyrics accompanied by the ‘engkarumong’ and sape, which he hoped would add more to the merriment of Gawai Dayak.
He explained that he was interested in writing such a song after a successful Gawai Dayak music video entitled ‘Anang Malu’ that was uploaded last year and received 2.3 million views.
“Writing a song in English and Iban is a little tricky, but with help from friends and musicians, we were able to accomplish that,” he said.
The music video, which features his office, cafe, Carpenter Street, Damai Central, and Ewe Hai Street, took two and half days to film, and he hoped it would make people smile.
“It is part of the festivity culture that I inherited from marrying a Sarawakian woman of mixed heritage—European, Iban, Bidayuh, and Chinese,” he said.
Jansen said it was rewarding making songs and videos, apart from operating his cafe and being able to speak Iban, which he picked up while working for a local tour agency and as lodge manager at Nanga Sumpa Lubok Antu.
“I have full respect for the Iban language and culture and other Dayaks and races in Sarawak as a whole,” he said. — DayakDaily
