Culture

Culture in the country of Malaysia pretty much consists of Malay, Chinese, Indian and other small indigenous groups. The Malay people are Malaysia’s largest ethnic group, they take over half of the population and the official language of Malaysia is Malay. According to the Malaysian Constitution Malay’s are Muslims. Even today you can find some traditional culture in the village. Though Malays are in different parts of the country and they speak their own language, a Malayan from another part of the country may not recognize the dialect of which they are speaking.
The oldest group of people to live in Malaysia is the indigenous tribe or Orang Asli. They make up a very small five percent of the population but they do have a great majority in East Malaysia of Sabah and Sarawak. In the town of Sabah, they have the largest official ethnic group in Kadazan. In Sarawak, the main tribal group is the Dayak who mainly live in Iban or Bidayuh.
In Malaysia the first people to settle in the Straits Settlements were the Chinese, mainly in the city of Malacca. Slowly they became integrated and Malaysian Culture as well. The Chinese have been coming to Malaysia for years; they formed an ethnic group called babas (men) and nyonyas (women). It wasn’t until the 19th century that the most amounts of Chinese had settled here because of the popularity of trading and tin mining. The Chinese usually worked the tough jobs like mining, railroad workers and tin mining.
In later years they were the ones to start the large companies and contribute to the economy of Malaysia. Most Chinese are Tao Buddhist and they still have very strong ties to China as well as Malaysia. Indians have been coming to Malaysia for visits fro many centuries but it really wasn’t until the 19th century that they began to settle here. The most common reason for coming here was to leave a country that had a poor economy or even because in the 19th century, the British had control over India they had begun using organized emigration. The British would send over to Malaysia some of India’s people.
Don’t think that these are the only people who reside in Malaysia, there are people from, Europe/Asia, Cambodians, Vietnamese, Portuguese and Malay, Filipino and Spanish descendants also occupy the country. Music is a big part of the culture in Malaysia.
The traditional Malaysian music was and still is influenced by the Chinese and Islamic forms of it. The music usually consists of the gendang which is a drum and percussions that are made from shells, the rebab, a string instruments, flutes and even some trumpets. There are many traditional dances that go along with the traditional music. There are some Thai, Indian and Portuguese origin dances that are among favorites. Culture in any country you go to is very important. That is one of the things that you should really pay attention to when you travel to a different country, you may not totally understand it all but it is very informative and interesting to take in.

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