Calling Back the Spirit: Music, Dance, and Cultural Politics in Lowland South Sulawesi

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Calling Back the Spirit

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CALLING BACK THE SPIRIT Music, "Dance, and Cultural Politics in Lowland South Sulawesi

R. Anderson Sutton

OXFORD

UNIVERSITY PRESS 2002

OXFORD

UNIVERSITY PRESS

Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Sao Paulo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto

and an associated company in Berlin Copyright © 2002 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Chapter 3 appeared in an earlier form as "From Ritual Enactment to Stage Entertainment: Andi Nurhani Sapada and the Aestheticization of South Sulawesi's Music and Dance, 1940s-1970s," Asian Music 29, no. 2 (Spring/Summer 1998): 1-30, and is used by permission. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sutton, Richard Anderson. Calling back the spirit: music, dance, and cultural politics in lowland South Sulawesi / R. Anderson Sutton. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-511236-9 1. Makasar (Indonesian people)—Rites and ceremonies. 2. Makasar (Indonesian people)—Music. 3. Makasar (Indonesian people)—Folklore. 4. Folk dancing, Indonesian—Indonesia—Sulawesi Selatan. 5. Folklore—Performance— Indonesia—Sulawesi Selatan. 6. Sulawesi Selatan (Indonesia)— Social life and customs. I. Title. DS632.M25 S87 2002 394.269598'4—dc21 2001036392

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

For Peggy, Maya, and Tony and for Pak Halil and Daeng Mile


Preface

In 1993 I made my first visit to South Sulawesi with intentions of broadening the scope of my own knowledge of Indonesia and contributing to the scholarly discourse on the performing arts away from the center. After more than twenty years of deep involvement in Javanese music and performing arts, I was convinced of the need to learn about the performing arts of those whose cultural position within the nation was more problematic than that of the majority Javanese or the much-celebrated Balinese. The combined effects of extant scholarship, available recordings, Indonesian touring groups, and international tourist promotion have been to represent Indonesian culture to the world largely as an Indian-derived Javo-Bali court culture, romanticized as timeless arts with deep Asian roots. The rest has not been denied outright, but it has been relegated to folk status—interesting and quaint, but not to enjoy the same respect and attention as the court arts. The Festival of Indonesia, held in the United States from fall 1990 through early 1992, started out with intentions of breaking down this narrow and essentialized notion. Much was made of the "Nusantara concept"—the idea of Indonesian culture really consisting of elements from throughout the entire archipelago (Ind. nusantara). But in the end, although groups from Sumatra, Kalimantan, and South Sulawesi took part, Java and Bali still dominated. It was during the time of this festival, for which I served on a small working committee that helped determine which performing groups would be presented and where, that I decided to initiate research elsewhere in Indonesia, to work against the narrow and distorting view of Indonesia that prevails in the performing arts literature. Many regions of Indonesia have yet to be given any attention by scholars of performing arts, even after the wide-reaching recording project spearheaded

viii

Preface

by Philip Yampolsky in the 1990s, resulting in a set of twenty compact discs (Smithsonian Folkways, Music of Indonesia Series). For my project, I chose an area that was both remote from the national center (Jakarta/Java) and yet of sufficient presence within the national self-image that the lack of scholarly attention there was conspicuous: South Sulawesi, an area with more than 7 million inhabitants, a long recorded history, an indigenous writing system, and an international reputation for shipbuilding and seafaring. Other than the work of a small group of anthropologists whose research on the upland-dwelling Torajans has yielded some important coverage of music and dance, the performing arts of South Sulawesi have scarcely drawn any attention by scholars, Indonesian or otherwise. (On Toraja and nearby upland areas, see especially Rappoport 2000; George 1996; Adams 1988; Crystal and Yamashita 1987; Volkman 1985; Van der Veen 1966,1979.) After my initial six-week visit in 1993,1 was fortunate to return for periods ranging from two weeks to three months in 1994,1995, 1996, 1998, and 1999. This kind of fieldwork had its advantages and disadvantages. I did my best to criss-cross the music and dance world of lowland South Sulawesi, concentrating on the predominantly Makassarese areas of the south, including the provincial capital city. My days of research were rich and varied in experience. I interviewed scores of musicians and dancers, radio and television officials, and local intellectuals; I attended ritual ceremonies, concerts, festivals, and tourist performances, documenting all in writing and some by photograph, video, and audiotape. I took regular lessons in Makassarese language and ganrang drumming during each stay beginning in 1994. And from 1995 onward, I spent time with popular musicians, recording-studio personnel, and cassette store owners. I could not stay for a protracted period owing to family and professional obligations in the United States, but friendships and bonds grew even during the months I was away from South Sulawesi. And these periods away from South Sulawesi gave me time to read, write, transcribe, and formulate questions—a process we all became accustomed to. The result is not a conventional ethnography but an attempt to convey something of the dynamic world in which musicians and dancers perform and maneuvre in South Sulawesi—working with received local tradition, appropriating and localizing national and international expressive forms and ideas, and negotiating recognition, respect, and power for local performance.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The research for this book has only been possible owing to the patience, generosity, talent, and trust that has been shown to me by more individuals and institutions than I can mention here. The initial idea for a major research project in South Sulawesi began to take shape in Alan Feinstein's living room in Jakarta as he and I chatted in the summer of 1991. Once I arrived in Ujung Pandang, I was kindly received by Mukhlis Paeni and soon after by Halilintar Lathief, the only two residents for whom I had telephone numbers for initial contact.

Preface

ix

For much of that first visit, and over the course of the next six years, Halilintar, whose knowledge of local artistic practice is nothing short of extraordinary, took me under his wing as best as his busy schedule would allow. To him I owe the deepest thanks, for he provided me countless opportunities to learn what I have learned, escorted me to remote village performances, arranged for my apprenticeship as a drum student, and discussed an extraordinary range of issues with me, ranging from the finger positions in a dance to the mystical power of heirloom flags. Thanks also are due to his talented and knowledgable wife, Niniek Sumiani, and his core group of artistic collaborators Is Hakim, Amrullah Syam, Agus Riyadi, and Mochtar. I am also very deeply indebted to my drum teacher, Abdul Muis Daeng Mile, whose talent dazzled me from the moment I first heard him, and whose infectious love of his music and his patience as a teacher gave me inspiriation throughout my research. My thanks also go to the senior dancers whom I was fortunate to interview at length—Ida Joesoef Madjid, Munasiah Nadjamuddin, and especially the grande dame of South Sulawesi dance, Andi Nurhani Sapada. I was fortunate to talk with, and often to record, accomplished musicians in Ujung Pandang and villages to the south. Among these, I wish to acknowledge master performer of sinrilik, Mappaselleng Daeng Maggau, and kacaping virtuosi Serang and Tojeng of Sungguminasa and Jamang Daeng Pasang of Bontonompo. I also express great thanks to the dazzling drum virtuoso Daeng Serang Dakko, musical director of Mahligai, a group I heard rehearse almost every Sunday on every visit to South Sulawesi. Teachers at SMKI and at IKIP gave generously of their time, knowledge, and opinion. At SMKI, I enjoyed extended conversations with Elis Patasik, Manda, Nurhadi, Ram Prapanca, Syamsul Qamar, Sangkala, Darius Jemparut, and Tomy Simson, and must especially thank Sirajuddin Daeng Bantang, who discussed local performance at great length, arranged and participated in recording sessions, and answered many questions. At IKIP I would like to thank Padalia, Sukasman, Solihin, Bagus Susetya, Hapsa J. Nur, and especially Zainuddin Taha, who served as my local sponsor during my lengthy stay in 1995. And in local offices of the Department of Education and Culture, I wish to thank Karsin Kati for lively chats on late afternoons, interspersed with kroncong music. Helping with the language work essential for my research, from conversational Makassarese to transcription of lyrics from old 78s and translation of song texts, I am deeply indebted to Djirong Basang Daeng Ngewa and Abdul Rajab Johari. It was at the home of Rajab and his family that I lived during most of my visits. Their kind hospitality kept me safe, comfortable, and well-fed on 1,001 delicious varieties of fish. In the world of local broadcast, I thank Murtini Suharto, Eddy Thamrin (a.k.a. Yudistira Sukatanya), Rustam Basir, and M. A. Arifin of RRI; Abdul Hamid and Gamajaya Daeng Liwang at Radio Gamasi; Andi Sumange Alam at TVRI. I was kindly received by singers of local pop music, including the late Hamsan Marliat, Arwinny Puspita, Rahmansyah, and especially the ever popular Iwan Tompo, whose supple singing voice took me the moment I first heard

x

Preface

it on recordings. In the world of commercial recording, I learned much from interviews and hours in the studio with Edwin Jansen (Jansen Record), Riady Panorama and Ronny (Libel Record), and on countless occasions, Tjiang (Special Record). I gained important historical perspective from conversations with senior local scholars Mattulada, Hamzah Daeng Mangemba, and Darmawan Mas'ud Rahman; I thank Umar Kayam for urging me to seek them out for interviews. At the KITLV at Leiden I wish to thank Roger Tol and Sirtjo Koolhof for fruitful discussion on a range of issues, and for responding rapidly and thoroughly to my periodic e-mail questions on Bugis terms. I wish also to acknowledge the generosity of the following for supporting my research: the National Geographic Society (1993), the American Philosophical Society (1994), the Asian Cultural Council (1996), the Vilas Fellowships program of the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1993-1995) and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Graduate School (which contributed to this project each year from 1994 to 1999). A generous fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1995 provided me with a semester of leave to begin writing the book. My thanks to the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Indonesia) for sponsoring my three-month period of research in South Sulawesi in 1995. I thank Tjiang for permission to include items from commercial cassettes released by Special Record, and Riady Panorama and Iwan Tompo for permission to include three songs from commercial cassettes on Libel Record. Thanks also to those who helped in production: Maribeth Payne, Ellen Welch, and others at Oxford who handled the manuscript at various stages; and James Stuht, audio technician University of Wisconsin-Madison, who mastered the CD. And without the patience and encouragement of my wife, Peggy, and my children, Maya and Tony, I could not even have made a beginning on this project. I hope the months away from Madison and the hours secluded with my computer at home have borne a product worthy of their sacrifice.

Contents

List of Illustrations, xiii Contents of Compact Disk, xvii Orthography, Abbreviations, and Conventions, xxi 1

Introduction, 3

2 South Sulawesi on Parade: Representations of the Local in the Culture Week Festival, 28 3 From Ritual Enactment to Stage Entertainment: Andi Nurhani Sapada and the Aestheticization of South Sulawesi's Music and Dance, 1940s-1970s, 48 4 From Entertainment to Art and Back to Ritual: The Struggle for Legitimacy and Artistic Power, 1970s-1990s, 69 5

Patriotism and Performance: One Holiday, Two Forts, Three Events, 89

6 Sinrilik and Kacaping: Persistence and Adaptation of Two Makassarese Musical Genres, 104 7

Sound and Power: Makassarese Ganrang Drumming, 134

Contents

xii

8

Institutionalizing Performance: Schools, Sanggars, and the Government, 164

9 Voices on the Margins: Mass Media and Local Music in South Sulawesi, 196 10 Conclusion, 229 Notes, 237 Bibliography, 251 Index, 265

Illustrations

FIGURES AND TABLES Figure 1.1 Figure 1.2 Figure 1.3 Figure 1.4 Figure 6.1 Figure 6.2 Figure 6.3 Figure 6.4 Figure 7.1 Figure 7.2 Figure 7.3 Figure 7.4 Figure 7.5 Table 7.1

Indonesia, 4 The island of Sulawesi, 5 South Sulawesi, 7 Districts (kabupaten) of South Sulawesi, 8 Excerpt from Sinrilik "Kappalak Tallumbatua" performed by Mappaselleng Daeng Maggau (ca. mid-1980s), 111 Excerpt from Sinrilik "I Datu Museng" performed by Sirajuddin Daeng Bantang, 117 Excerpt from Tokko "Remba-rembaya" performed by Serang, 124 Excerpt from Tokko "Deng Riak," performed by Jamang Daeng Pasang, 129 Makassarese ganrang drum strokes, 143 Tunrung pakanjarak: Makassarese drum pattern, version 1, 145 Tunrung pakanjarak: Makassarese drum pattern, version 2, 146 Opening section of Tunrung pakballe for Anak KaraenglKaraeng: Makassarese drum pattern, 147 Tumbuk rua, followed by short example of tumbuk ikkik: Makassarese drum patterns, 149 Sequence of musical events in Pakarena "Samboritta," 154 xiii

xiv

Illustrations

Table 7.2 Table 8.1

Sequence of musical events in "Tari Pakarena," 155 Course offerings for students in music at SMKI, first semester, academic year 1995-1996, 176 Table 8.2 Number of students by class level, concentration (major), and sex, at SMKI Ujung Pandang, as of August 1995, 178 Table 9.1 Radio shows with music on RRI Ujung Pandang Programa I (village), 1993, 201 Table 9.2 Radio shows with music on RRI Ujung Pandang Programa II, 1993, 202 Table 9.3 "Entertainment/music" shows produced and broadcast by TVRI Ujung Pandang, 1993-1994, 206 Table 9.4 "Culture/drama" shows produced and broadcast by TVRI Ujung Pandang, 1993-1994, 208

PHOTOGRAPHS The Kajang Rumah Adat at Taman Miniatuur Sulawesi, 31 Makassarese musicians on parade at the opening ceremony of the fourth Culture Week festival, 32 White heron and soldier in Makassarese slapstick drama Kondo Buleng, with rebana players, 1930s, 34 Ny. H. Andi Nurhani Sapada ("Bu Nani") at her home in Ujung Pandang/ Makassar, 51 Pakarena dance in the style pioneered by Bu Nani, performed at a variety show in Mamajang, Ujung Pandang, 54 Halilintar Lathief and Niniek Sumiani, 74 Transvestite priests (bissu) from Segeri, Pangkep district, stabbing themselves with daggers while in trance, 77 Fire Dance (ton pepepepe) performed by Sanggar Ilologading, 95 Dancers and musicians participating in the Dance of Gold (Tari Emas), in front of the tomb of Sultan Hasanuddin, 101 Mappaselleng Daeng Maggau, playing kesok-kesok and singing sinrilik at his home in Ujung Pandang, 106 Sirajuddin Daeng Bantang, playing rebab and singing sinrilik at his home in Katangka, Sungguminasa, 115

Illustrations

vx

Serang and Tojeng, playing kacaping at a wedding in Lanra-Lanra, Gowa district, 123 Daeng Mile, leading a group of drummers in an atraksi ganrang, 135 Daeng Mile and local religious officiant in prayer at kakdok minyak (rice and oil) ceremony to bless his two ganrang, 140 Makassarese female dance, pakarena, accompanied by puik-puik and two ganrang, 151 Darius Jemparut, from Flores, teaching ganrang and kecapi at SMKI, 173 A qasidah study group at SMKI, 175 SMKI students in a pickup rock group, practicing at SMKI, 177 Students and faculty from SMKI accompanying mass dance at Arafura Youth Games, Mattoangin stadium, Ujung Pandang, 181 Members of Yayasan Anging Mammiri' (YAMA) perform new dance based on Torajan and Mamasa traditions, 189 Serang Dakko, Issang, and members of Sanggar Mahligai, rehearsing at the main hall (baruga), Taman Miniatuur Sulawesi, 191 Label on Hoo Eng Djie's recording of "Four Wedding Songs" ("Appa Lagu Bunting"), Canary Records, 211 Orkes Turiolo (Orkes Rambang-rambang) Ilologading, performing at IKIP Ujung Pandang, 217 Iwan Tompo, top-selling singer, composer, and arranger of Makassarese pop songs, at Libel Studio, 222


Contents of Compact Disc

1

Sinrilik: "Kappalak Tallumbatua," excerpt, performed by Mappaselleng Daeng Maggau, from commercial cassette Sinrilik: Kappalak Tallumbatua, I. Special Record (mid-1980s?). Used by permission. 1'33"

2 Sinrilik: "Lima Puluh Tahun Indonesia Merdeka," excerpt, composed and performed by Mappaselleng Daeng Maggau. Recorded by the author, at the home of the performer in Ujung Pandang (26 August 1995). 1'32" 3

Sinrilik: "I Datu Museng," excerpt, performed by Sirajuddin Daeng Bantang. Recorded by the author at the home of the performer in Katangka, Sungguminasa (29 August 1995). 1'25"

4

Kacaping: Tokko Remba-Rembaya, excerpt, performed by Serang (voice and kacaping). Recorded by the author at the home of Sirajuddin Daeng Bantang in Katangka, Sungguminasa (27 July 1994). 1'08"

5

Kacaping: Tokko Sinrilik, excerpt, performed by Serang (voice and kacaping). Recorded by the author, at the home of Sirajuddin Daeng Bantang, in Katanga, Sungguminasa (27 July 1994). 1'43" xvii

x xviii

Contents of Compact Disc

6

Kacaping: Tokko Deng Riak, excerpt, performed by Jamang Daeng Pasang (voice and kacaping). Recorded by the author in Bontonompo, Gowa (12 August 1994).

7

Ganrang: Tunning Pakballe (Sumangak), excerpt, performed by Abdul Muin Daeng Mile (ganrang appalari), Bombong (ganrang appattanang), Nanring (puik-puik). Recorded by the author at the home of Daeng Mile, Kala Serena, Gowa (31 August 1995). 9'23"

8-12

Ganrang: Tunrung Pakarena, excerpts, performed by Daeng Mile (ganrang appalari), Bombong (ganrang appattanang), Nanring (puik-puik). Recorded by the author at the home of Daeng Mile, Kala Serena, Gowa (31 August 1995):

8

Opening leklek and drumming with tunrung rincik followed by tumbuk rua and tumbuk ikkik. 2'30"

9

Tumbuk sekre and tunrung pappadang. 1 '24"

10 Longer excerpt from middle: tumbuk rua and tunrung pappadang alternating with tumbuk labakbalak. 6'20" 1 1 Fast and dense playing, with tunrung pakdekdong. 0'53" 12 Excerpt of final minutes, leklek followed by tunrung paklekbak. 3'11" 13

Accompaniment for "Tari Pakurru Sumange," with song "Ati Raja," excerpt, performed by members of Sanggar Mahligai: Serang Dakko and Issang (ganrang and rebana), Mappuji (suling), Bunduk (vocal, with others), Iwang (gong), Sale Rane (lae-lae). Recorded by the author at the main hall (baruga), Somba Opu (13 August 1995). 1'49"

14 Accompaniment for "Tari Anging Mammiri," with song "Anging Mammirifk]," excerpt, performed by musicians of Bu Nurhani Sapada, from commercial cassette Musik Iringan Tari Daerah Sulawesi Selatan (IKS). Special Record, Ujung Pandang (late 1970s?) Used by permission. 1'48" 15

"Ati Radja," performed by Hoo Eng Djie and members of his Orkest Werg [Vereniging?] Wari-Waria, from commercial 78 rpm

Contents of Compact Disk

xix

recording Appa Lagu Bunting, Canary Records C1171 (HS-324), Surabaya (late 1930s or 1940). 1'31" 16 "Ad Radja," performed by Djajadi Djamain and his Dasa Rama Band, from commercial 78 rpm recording, Lokananta AD 220 (Surakarta, 1960, released 1961). 3'05" 17

Orkes Turiolo/Orkes Rambang-Rambang: "Dendang-Dendang," sung by Appottamang Sidjaya, accompanied by musicians (on violin, gong, rebana, and kannong-kannong] led by Arsyad Basir, from a master tape recorded by Special Record, Ujung Pandang (ca. 1976?). Used by permission. 2'44"

18 Orkes Turiolo/Orkes Rambang-Rambang: "Dendang Manjina," excerpt, sung by Yummi Kalsum, with Orkes Irama Rambang Turiolo, led by Rustam Basir, with Ar Ridwan (violin), Halid Hazan (trumpet), Andi Soeharto (kannong-kannong), Rasyid Sulaeman (gong), and Rustam Basir, Muchtar Sikkik, Zainal Abidin, and Mulyono (rebana and tambourine). 2'18" 19 Losquin Makassar. "Bannang Ejaya," sung by Hamsan Marliat, from commercial cassette Losquin Makassar: Kuburu'Tani Bungai. Special Record, Ujung Pandang (early-1980s?) Used by permission. 5'18" 20 Losquin Makassar: "Rera Atia," sung by Arwinnya Puspita, from commercial cassette Nostalgia Makassar: Losquine. Libel Record, Ujung Pandang (late 1980s?). Used by permission. 5'13" 21

Pop Makassar. "Bangkenga Cini'," composed, arranged, and sung by Iwan Tompo, from commercial recording Pop Makassar Iwan Tompo: Bangkenga Cini'. Libel Record, Ujung Pandang (1993?). Used by permission. 4'33"

22 Pop Langgam Makassar: "Ati Raja," arranged and sung by Iwan Tompo, from commercial recording Iwan Tompo: Pop Langgam Makassar Abadi, Vol. 3. Libel Record, Ujung Pandang (1995). Used by permission. 4'39"


Orthography, Abbreviations, and Conventions

I use standard orthography for Indonesian words, except when quoting from pre-1972 sources, where Ijl was written /dj/, /y/ was written /j/, Id (pronounced as English "ch") was written /tj/, and in earlier works, /u/ (pronounced as English "oo") was written /oe/. In the case of personal names, I have maintained the form used by the person (e.g., Djirong Basang, Soedarsono). Spelling of words from South Sulawesi's languages required some choices. One finds variant spellings of romanized Makassarese and Bugis words, including song titles. The inconsistency results primarily from the representation of a glottal stop, which is important phonemically, but often not shown in romanized spelling (nor in Makassarese or Bugis script). Yet some writers and publishers, including many Western scholars, choose to represent this with an apostrophe (most Dutch scholars have used this convention or a /q/). Others, including Makassarese linguist Djirong Basang and lexicographers Aburaerah Arief, Abdul Kadir Mulya, and Zainuddin Hakim (see Arief 1995; Arief, Kadir Mulya, and Hakim 1992) as well as Bugis lexicographer M. Ide Said DM. (1977), reserve the apostrophe for contracted forms and use the letter /k/ for the glottal stop. In the present work, I have opted for this system, favored by local scholars, except in proper names and direct reference to published writings. Thus, if I speak of a song without reference to a particular published text or recording in which the title is spelled out, I use the linguists' system, for example, "Anging Mammirik"; but for a particular instance of a song or dance title, I use the exact spelling employed in the text or on the record or cassette label where it appears (e.g., "Anging Mammiri," or "Anging Mammiri'"). xxi

xxii

Orthography, Abbreviations, and Conventions

One also finds inconsistencies in the use of double consonants, which linguists reserve for a nonglottal but phonemic pause on a syllable—for example, kappalak (Mks.; ship) vs. kapalak (Mks.; thick). The former is pronounced with a slight pause on the consonant /p/. A word with an internal glottal stop, such as bakbalak (Mks.; beater), is sometimes written babbalak (or babbala or babbala' or ba'bala'). One learns to read past, or through, these inconsistencies, checking with native speakers and dictionaries whenever possible. I have taken pains to be consistent in my spelling of the Makassarese and Bugis words (and the few Mandarese and Torajan words as well), and provide alternatives in cases where choice of one correct form was problematic. I retain the spelling Makassar, rather than less common (though more linguistically correct) alternative Makasar, and opt to use Bugis rather than the Dutch-derived Buginese. In Makassarese, all /e/s are pronounced as French (or Javanese) /e/. Bugis has a short /e/ (schwa, pronounced as the /e/ in English "oven"), as well as the /e/. In some sources, one finds a capital /E/ used for latter; I have opted again for the format used by lexicographers and translators of Bugis, /e/. On first occurrence of foreign words, I provide brief definitions and identify the language (or languages) of the word, unless (1) context makes the original language obvious or (2) the word is used in several Indonesian languages and its original language would therefore be difficult to determine accurately. I use the following abbreviations: Bgs.

Bugis

Ind. Jvn. Mks. Mndr. Tor.

Indonesian Javanese Makassarese Mandarese Torajan

Other abbreviations that appear frequently in the text: ASTI BKKNI Depdikbud DKM IKIP IKS ISI KKS KONRI NIT P3GK RRI SMKI SMKN TVRI UNM YAMA

Akademi Seni Tari Indonesia Badan Koordinasi Kesenian Nasional Indonesia Department Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan Dewan Kesenian Makassar Institut Keguruan Ilmu Pendidikan Institut Kesenian Sulawesi Institut Seni Indonesia Konservatori Kesenian Sulawesi Konservatori Tari Indonesia Negara Indonesia Timur Pusat Pengembangan Penataran Guru Kesenian Radio Republik Indonesia Sekolah Menengah Karawitan Indonesia Sekolah Menengah Kejuruan Negeri Televisi Republik Indonesiaa Universitas Negeri Makassar Yayasan Anging Mammiri'

Orthography, Abbreviations, and Conventions xxiii

Both in speech and in print, Indonesians tend to employ titles and forms of address with greater frequency than is common among speakers and writers of English. With apologies to those who are accustomed to being addressed as Dr., Drs., Dra. Pak, Bapak, Ibu, Bu, Daeng, Andi, Ny., and so forth, I have opted to severely curtail the use of these forms of address preceding proper names in this book. I chose to omit them from my acknowledgments, and I use them only when first mentioning someone in the text. I make two exceptions: the prestigious senior choreographer Andi Nurhani Sapada I refer to throughout as Bu Nani (thereby avoiding confusion with her late husband, whose name was Sapada), and my drum teacher Abdul Muin Daeng Mile I refer to throughout as Daeng Mile (thereby avoiding the confusion with the English "mile").




1

Introduction

The performing arts of South Sulawesi during the latter half of the twentieth century have struggled to adapt to enormous political, social, economic, and aesthetic changes. The challenges have been mighty, and the responses remarkably varied and not always successful. The cultural terrain I wish to explore in this book roams widely, from village ceremonies to studio-produced popular music. While I do not intend to suggest a single, grand narrative, it is clear from much I encountered there that musicians, dancers, artist-intellectuals, and audiences share a concern for "spirit" or "soul" (Mks. sumangak; Bgs. sumangek) in local performance and sense that loss of local spirit, in the face of Indonesian and foreign cultural pressures, requires vigilance. It is in this sense that I intend the title of this book, which derives from the term for an ancient local ritual ceremony, a term also adopted as the name of a recent secular dance: pakurruk sumangek (Bgs. call back the spirit).1 It suggests not only that local arts have the potential for power, but also that efforts are needed to maintain spirit within the arts and, in local conception, to call back what might be lost. My first exposure to performing arts from South Sulawesi took place far from their local turf: at the SMKI Performing Arts Festival, Taman Ismael Marzuki, Jakarta, September 1979. Unlike many national festivals in Indonesia, in which each province is represented by one act or group, this one involved many items from each of the performing arts schools (SMKI): two from the court cities of south-central Java (Surakarta and Yogyakarta), one from East 3

4 4

Callcalling

Back the spirit

figure 7. / Indonesia

Java (Surabaya), one from West Java (Bandung), one from West Sumatra (Padang Panjang), and one from South Sulawesi (Ujung Pandang). Although not a contest with explicit ranking and trophies, the festival ensured that each school (and hence, supposedly, each regional culture) was seen in relation to the others. The dominance of the Javanese items from the court-cities was evident from start to finish, with Bali a close second. Members of the South Sulawesi troupe told me how inadequate their music and dance seemed next to the courtly gamelan music and dance-dramas of the Javanese and the flashy and virtuosic performances by the Balinese. Even when they performed, the large Javanese gamelan was not removed from the stage. Its continued presence, dwarfing the musicians, musical instruments, and dancers from South Sulawesi and West Sumatra, seemed perfectly to symbolize the Javanese cultural hegemony here in the national capital. At this festival I was especially intrigued with the performances from South Sulawesi: elegantly clad women moving in graceful slow gestures, seemingly incongruous with the thunderous drumming that dominated the accompaniment; women balancing on top of drums as men beat rhythms beneath them; men dressed in black manipulating black sashes enacting a cockfight. As I later learned, the presentations were nothing short of a textbook of essentialized local cultures in South Sulawesi: short dances derived from longer, ritually based dances rechoreographed to make them appropriate for stage presentation to a diverse audience—albeit complicated in the location and agency of their representation. CULTURE ESSENTIALIZED To a far greater extent than in my own country (the United States), Indonesia's cultural diversity is still largely conceived to be coterminous with place. In-

5

Introduction

Figure 1.2 The island of Sulawesi

deed, it is true that most of the Javanese still live in Java (despite years of government transmigration projects), most of the Batak live in North Sumatra (despite strong financial incentives to move to the large cities on Java), and even in the case of the adventurous seagoing South Sulawesian lowlanders—the Bugis, Makassarese, and Mandarese—most still live in South Sulawesi. While this may be the case, culture in Indonesia, as elsewhere, is in flux; peoples, their knowledge, and their cultural practices are in motion, spilling over boundaries at every level. Just how "insular" are the ethno-linguistic groups of this island nation?

6


Indonesia's peoples do not live the cultural life the tourist books and promotional paraphernalia would have us believe. From those sources, one might expect all Javanese to be busy carving wayang puppets, painting batik cloth, or hammering out tunes on gamelan instruments; all Balinese to be on their way to or from a temple festival; all West Sumatrans to be decked out in their wedding silk; all Torajans (upland residents of South Sulawesi) roaming from one buffalo slaughter to another. These are images—cultural representations—developed through a complex interaction of indigenous self-conception, Western colonialism, popular media, scholarship, and global capitalism; and they are, at best, "partial truths" in Clifford's sense (1986). In more subtle ways, much scholarly literature has tended to reinforce not the most stereotypical images, but at least the idea of separate cultural groups whose languages, beliefs, ceremonial clothing, patterns of daily life, and creative expressions array themselves across the archipelago, set off from one another in a spectacular national mosaic of essentialized cultures/ethnicities/locales. Anthropologists have been making considerable headway lately in countering this image. Speaking of this movement, Anna Tsing states: These moves have been exciting transformations of anthropology's once-imagined mission to study unique, isolated cultures. They usefully criticize the field's classic notions of culture as too static, too bounded, too internally homogeneous, too exoticizing, and too local. They each encourage us to redefine the local as a site in which widespread institutions and cultural configurations take on particular forms, rather than as a site of autochthonous cultural formation. (Tsing 1994, 282)

In the case of ethnomusicology, what has been flawed in the view of musical traditions/styles/systems has been the unwillingness of scholars to come to grips with the forces emanating from "outside" the locale in shaping what may be found within. The largely static and separate image of cultural groups is also the one that has constantly been reinforced by and for Indonesians through government pronouncements, publications, media presentations, cultural-amusement parks, and administrative structure. But no matter how pervasive the government's efforts to reify and preserve traditional/regional cultures—their values, their "authentic" forms of artistic expression—people in contemporary Indonesia encounter cultural expression from other regions of Indonesia, and from abroad, on a daily basis. Indeed, some of these encounters are government-sponsored, such as festivals and television broadcasts displaying performing groups from various provinces, or schoolbooks describing key cultural traits of different regions. Other encounters take place through internationally and nationally based distribution of the commodities of popular culture—audio and videocassette recordings, and radio and television broadcasts. It is my intention, and one justified by the dominant discourse in contemporary Indonesia, to examine the performing arts, particularly music, in relation to the dynamics of local identity and power in South Sulawesi. In studies of performance/expressive culture/"the arts" in Indonesia, it has been the norm to

Figure 1.3 South Sulawesi

Figure 1.4 Districts (kabupaten) of South Sulawesi

9

Introduction

delimit one's scope and one's subject in reference to an identifiable group, a place, and one or more genres most closely identified with the group or place. But my intention in the following pages is to complicate the notion of the fit among ethnicity, place, and culture. I make no pretense of telling "the" story of any aspect of the arts in or of South Sulawesi. Instead, I make central to my focus the ethnic group known as Makassarese, the music and dance generally associated with this group, and the city known for most of my period of research as Ujung Pandang (but prior to 1972 and again as of 2000, as Makassar)2 in which they constitute a majority; but I pay considerable attention to other ethnic groups and other artistic forms in South Sulawesi, particularly the lowlands. And throughout, I am concerned with the dialectic between local artistic practice and that of other regions, particularly Java and the Javanesedominated national government. This book, then, is a first attempt at interpreting the various forms of representation that constitute that realm of culture (kebudayaan) known as performing arts (sent pertunjukan) in and around Makassar/Ujung Pandang, South Sulawesi. My research on local performing arts attempted always to keep in its sights the interplays of power imbalances, from the hegemony of global capitalism and national, Java-centric designs, to the local rivalries between and within ethnic and subethnic groups. This involved a research methodology that cast broadly, that went beyond those activities defined locally and nationally as "traditional," and that kept an awareness of the cacophony of discourse (from everyday conversations, to newspaper articles, educational programs, and local scholarship). In the process, I intend to problematize notions of an essential bond between ethnicity and genre, to follow individual performers through actions that challenge even the notion of artistic genres.

MUSIC AND EXPRESSIVE CULTURE This is primarily a study of music, but in South Sulawesi, as in much of the rest of Indonesia, separation of music from the closely related forms of expression, especially dance, would be wholly inappropriate. Much of this study will be concerned with dance-music forms, in contexts ranging from village rituals to interregional festivals. It has long been expected that ethnomusicology must go well beyond musical sound in order not to misrepresent its subject too severely. Indeed, ethnomusicologists have frequently found problematic the definition of their subject of inquiry. The literature in this discipline has often addressed the problem, both summarizing what has been accomplished under the rubric of "ethnomusicology" (e.g., Nettl 1983; Myers 1992), and arguing over the proper emphasis on musical sound structure, related arts, broad cultural context, perception, cognition, description, interpretation, and in some cases forecast and prescription. The community of ethnomusicology would seem to accept as "ethnomusicology" almost any scholarly inquiry that concerns humanly organized sound (as Blacking 1973 succinctly defined it) and the humans who organize it within

10


some cross-cultural theoretical framework, although in practice it has been with an emphasis on musical activity outside what is usually labeled the Western classical tradition. The present study certainly concerns both sounds and the humans who make them, as I encountered them during six periods of field research in South Sulawesi, and as enhanced by my consultation of aural and written sources. However, this is not an ethnographic study of music and dance activity in a small community in which I lived as a participant observer. Nor is it a detailed inquiry into one or several identifiable genres. While it attempts to range widely in terms of local geography and genre, it is not an overview of all musical activity of an identifiable group of people or occurring in a particular place in a particular period of time. While not primarily a historical study, it draws on historical sources to address aspects of recent changes in form and meaning. And while concerned with issues of marginalization, the peoples discussed here are not marginalized to anywhere near the degree that some small groups are in Indonesia (such as the Meratus, studied by Tsing 1993, the Wana, studied by Atkinson 1989, etc.). Yet the peoples of South Sulawesi share a sense of marginalization and uneasiness in their position within a nation dominated politically and culturally by the Javanese. ETHNOMUSICOLOGY NOW Alongside theoretical investigations concerning cultural evolution and musical origins, much of the literature has positioned the ethnomusicologist as an observer and, implicitly or explicitly, a proponent of "traditional" music. (A problematic but widely used term, "traditional" is to be understood here not as static or old-fashioned, but as emanating from established practice dating back several generations or more.) The forces of global interaction through colonialism, Christian missions, and capitalism have been widely understood as threats to the "traditional," forcing many musical practices into extinction or irreversibly weakened condition. This is one dominant discourse, and one with which I would find it difficult to disagree entirely. But this rhetoric of decline fails to take into consideration the active agency of individuals who maintain and transform traditional expression (cf. Slobin 1993; Guilbault 1993a, 1993b; Manuel 1993, among many). I do not see the ethnomusicologist's job to be primarily one of preservation, whether through active intervention or more passive documentation and description. Rather, the challenge faced by ethnomusicologists is to observe closely and to listen carefully, both to the music being made and to the actions and discourses surrounding the music, and to report this process of coming to know as just that—a process, inherently imperfect and shaped by all kinds of contingencies. This is neither science nor fiction, nor is it autobiography. It is more a combination of poking around, reflection, and query, from all of which it is hoped that the readers, regardless of their backgrounds and interests, will share in an awareness of the complex array of forces that are constantly in-

11

Introduction

volved in shaping musical discourse. In this book, along with sounds and their interrelations, I am more concerned with what de Certeau has called the "procedures of 'consumption'"—what users actually do (de Certeau 1984, xiii and 30), and to understand the music (and dance) structures in relation to the contentious world in which producers and users interact. I wish to bring the reader along something like the course of discovery that I have undergone, not foregrounding my experiences (aesthetic, social, and so forth), but, at the same time, not hiding them from view. As Qureshi has written in her introduction to a special issue of the Journal of the American Musicological Society, "The goal is to undermine mastery—of historian over the past, and also of privileged sources within that past" (1995, 338). All the essays, she says, "eloquently speak to the implications of dialogue, de-essentializing and difference" (1995, 339). It is in this spirit that this book proceeds, presenting my own dialogues with those I encountered, de-essentializing notions of Indonesian culture and of regional cultures, and exploring the implications of cultural and social difference.

HEGEMONY The question of power imbalance and hegemony has sprung to the fore in many recent anthropological studies, and in the work of more and more ethnomusicologists as well (among others, Erlmann 1991, 1993; Manuel 1993, 1995; Guilbault 1993a, 1993b; Rice 1994; Turino 1993; Waterman 1990). The concept of hegemony has a copious literature reaching back to seminal works by Marx and Engels (1864/1965) and by Gramsci (1971). Slobin offers a succinct summary of the concept, based on Raymond Williams's (1977) discussion of Gramsci's ideas on hegemony: 1. Societies (nation-state bounded regions) have an overarching, dominating— if not domineering—mainstream that is internalized in the consciousness of governments, industry, subcultures, and individuals as ideology. Let us call it hegemony. 2. Hegemony is not monolithic. There is no Board of Directors that monitors hegemony daily, adjusting and fine-tuning it. It can be formal and informal, explicit and implicit, conscious and unconscious, bureaucratic and industrial, central and local, historical and contemporary. 3. Hegemony is not uniform; it does not speak with one voice. It is complex, often contradictory, and perhaps paradoxical. 4. Hegemony is contrapuntal; there are alternative and oppositional voices in this cultural fugue that affect and shape the "themes." (Slobin 1993, 27)

It is important in an understanding of hegemony to be aware of the internalized nature of its power. Individuals need not be under constant watch by a controlling government eye in order to enact and support its ideology. Self-censorship is one of the most prominent manifestations of internalized mainstream ideology.

12


Other forms, such as escapism and commodity fetishism, are less readily acknowledged (see Manuel 1993,9-10). The studies addressing issues of hegemony have tended to be concerned with broad contours of power in a global perspective, what Veit Erlmann has called "the dialectics of homogenization and diversity" (1993, 4-5). Erlmann and others addressing the politics of "world beat" are concerned primarily with "the local as resilient articulations of opposition against Western hegemony" (Erlmann 1993, 4). Yet other hegemonies abound. As Appadurai states, "But it is worth noticing that for the people of Irian Jaya, Indonesianization may be more worrisome than Americanization, as Japanization may be for Koreans.... For polities of smaller scale, there is always a fear of cultural absorption by polities of larger scale, especially those that are nearby. One man's imagined community is another man's political prison" (Appadurai 1990, 5-6). Hegemony, then, is not only something imposed by the West on the rest of the world. Nor is it absolute. As the well-known scholar of resistance James Scott puts it, the "concept of hegemony ignores the extent to which most subordinate classes are able ... to penetrate and demystify the prevailing ideology" (1985, 317).3

SYMBOLS AND MEANINGS Music and other forms of expressive behavior are imbued with symbolic meanings that are almost always varied, often ambiguous, and potentially contrary. They are, in Timothy Rice's words, "symbols that reference many worlds" (Rice 1994, 309) past and present. Material objects, musical performances, dances, and rituals are meaningful, but in different ways to different individuals and groups and in different historical and social circumstances. The experience of art does not involve the receipt of some message contained in the art itself, but instead involves an active construction of meaning by those who experience it (cf. Errington 1989a, 49). While many scholars would argue that symbols have never contained their meanings within them, it seems clear that the separateness of the two is ever more evident in the present and recent past, owing to the accelerated growth of cultural interchange worldwide. CONSTRUCTED PRIMORDIALISM: CULTURE, ETHNICITY, TRADITION Along with the interpretation of arts and their symbolic meanings as constructed, multiple, and fluid is the important view that cultures, ethnic identities, and traditions are not a priori, primordial truths of human existence. Rather, they too are constructed and negotiated by human actors. While scholars are now (particularly since the mid-1980s) increasingly embracing this more dynamic and problematizing approach to culture, identity, and tradition, they face a challenge in attempting to overturn an enormous body of scholarly thought whose reverberations are felt and persist far beyond the realm of schol-

Introduction

13

arship. Dirks perhaps understates the case when he writes, "The contestation of an anthropology that has been complicit in reifying and naturalizing tradition and custom is a complex effort" (Dirks 1990, 28). As scholars work against the stultifying effects of the essentialized views prevalent in earlier scholarship, it is these very views that are held with increasing fervor by many of the world's peoples who constitute these "cultures," see themselves with these "identities," and possess, nurture, or neglect these "traditions" (cf. Mackey 1995,403). Even among those who support the idea that "indigenous people (natives) should represent themselves" Myers notes the tendency for people "to dismiss intercultural productions of identity" (Myers 1994, 680). This despite the extraordinary extent to which the world's peoples are on the move—whether as immigrants, refugees, tourists, and so on—prompting James Clifford to speak of the "deterritorialization of identity" (1988, 275; see also Gupta and Ferguson 1992; Appadurai 1990, 11). As Dirks and Appadurai, among others, argue, these identities can be shown to have resulted to a great extent from the interactions of colonial powers and the colonized. "The act of reading things together set the stage for movements based on a paradox—the paradox of constructed primordialism.... The issue of constructed ethnicities is surely a crucial strand in this tale" (Appadurai 1990,2). Drawing primarily on his research on India, Dirks argues that "tradition as we know it today was produced through encounters with modernity in the context of colonialism" (Dirks 1990, 28). In a similar vein, Pemberton devotes a significant portion of his book-length study of Java to the colonial construction of "Javanese culture" and "the Javanese" (1994b). In Indonesia, as in much of the postcolonial world, constructed primordialisms of culture, ethnicity, and tradition (and even nation itself) are wrestled with and appropriated at various levels—from nation-state to province to ethnic group, to local community—in the struggle for legitimacy, the right and the power not only to speak (sing, play, dance) but also to be heard (seen, apprehended aesthetically). REPRESENTATION Underlying these constructed primordialisms is the issue of representation— who controls the discourse whereby such primordialisms take shape and move about. In large measure, what ethnomusicologist (along with anthropologists and folklorists) do when they write is to engage in an act of representation. This much-used term appears in the critical writings of many scholars nowadays and can refer to activities at a number of levels. Robert Cantwell, in his intriguing study of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, writes that his entire book "is about representation, the movement of cultural material from one order of signification to another . . . whether undertaken on behalf of power or on behalf of resistance to power" (Cantwell 1993, 5). When I have written about Javanese gamelan music, for example, I have engaged in an act of representation—"moving" or "translating" the music to the printed page as prose, musical notation,


14

diagrams, and illustrations. Similarly, a Javanese festival organizer contributes to the process of definition, not only of "Javanese dance" and "Javanese music" but also of "Java" for those who apprehend. Choice of program, performers, contents and layout of program notes, publicity fliers, and newspaper articles are all aspects of the representation process, and in many cases in the contemporary world, the representation is by someone from outside the group being represented. I became increasingly convinced that to get at a sense of what kind of a world performers and their arts inhabit anywhere in Indonesia, and particularly in places remote from Java, I would need to pay close attention to the multiple representations of Self (individual and group) and Other through which they come to think of themselves and the world. How do people in South Sulawesi encounter performing arts deemed to be "their own"? What sorts of responses do they make to the arts of others? How do they choose to represent themselves to others? In my estimation, while not wholly constructing or inventing themselves, people rework and reenvision their culture and self identity in an ongoing process that involves a dialectic between local, national, and global elements, and between socially defined groups arrayed along lines of ethnicity, nationality, gender, and class hierarchy (cf. Myers 1995).

THE POSTMODERN Questions of representation bring us to the issue of postmodernism—a social and aesthetic condition, a style of action (including the actions of scholars). Reviewing briefly the defining characteristics of this concept, we can note such features as "depthlessness" (Dirks 1990, 30; Pemberton 1994a, 260), "pastiche" (Manuel 1995, 227; Appadurai 1990, 3; Pemberton 1994a, 260), "bricolage" (Manuel 1995, 227), "deferred signification" (Pemberton 1994a, 260), and "blank irony" (Manuel 1995,227). These prominent scholars in anthropology and ethnomusicology have generally drawn their understanding of postmodernism and culled these characteristics from the seminal work of Fredric Jameson (1984 and 1991, cited momentarily). These characteristics have not suddenly appeared by chance, unrelated to the defining social forces of our time. Manuel outlines the requisite historical forces leading to the rise of postmodernism: As a historical condition, postmodernism is related to such features as the penetration of capital, commodification and the mass media to all aspects of public and private life; the undermining of faith in religious or historical meta-narratives (teleological Marxist-Leninism, bourgeois positivism); and a new sense of the subjectivity of all human experience (engendering, among other things, a crisis of representation in scholarship). (Manuel 1995, 229)

I also associate with postmodernism the trend toward dialogic writing, in which authors do not write themselves out of their text in an effort implicitly to claim

15

Introduction

omniscient authority on their subject. Instead, they lay bare the inevitable inadequacies of their research methodologies, their field encounters, and so forth, though without making the writer the center of attention (cf. Gourlay 1978; Clifford 1988; and a notable early example in an ethnomusicological monograph: Keil 1979). To a certain extent, the approach of this book can be understood as postmodern. It makes no claims at comprehensive coverage of its subject(s), argues against cultural essentialism, foregrounds difference, and might be seen to trade a commitment to depth for an emphasis on breadth and diversity. On the other hand, it strives for scholarly rigor, bringing evidence to bear in support of its arguments. The most influential writer on postmodernism, Fredric Jameson, tells us that "the postmodern looks for breaks, for events rather than new worlds, for the telltale instant after which it is no longer the same, for the 'When-it-allchanged,' as Gibson puts it, or, better still, for shifts and irrevocable changes in the representation of things and of the way they change" (1991, ix). While not the central question addressed in the following chapters, I am indeed concerned with locating and discussing the shifts and changes in representation; and I emphasize breaks and events rather than attempting to present a view of arts, culture, and worldview as a coherent systemic whole. Earlier scholarship, by myself and others, has attempted this kind of research on Javanese and Balinese performing arts, and I do not wish to suggest that it is without merit or a project to be abandoned. Rather, my interests in the current work are to draw attention to the dynamic nature of meaning in performance, to foreground the social imperatives and forms of resistance that make the performing arts a dramatic staging ground for the politics of identity. This book explores musical expression and dance as they are embedded in the lives of people of South Sulawesi and how they engage issues of power within that local world and beyond. As Slobin has nicely put it, "Music is at once an everyday activity, an industrial commodity, a flag of resistance, a personal world, and a deeply symbolic, emotional grounding for people" (Slobin 1993, 77). By casting my gaze widely in the chapters that follow, I attempt to engage these and other aspects of music and dance of South Sulawesi, leading to insight (rather than some full "understanding") and placing these arts in the scholarly discourse from which they have been mostly absent. Before turning to the arts, however, we need to know something of the prior scholarship about them, and of South Sulawesian cultural history. THE WRITTEN RECORD Given the promise to attend to certain issues rather than attempt comprehensive coverage of music and related arts in lowland South Sulawesi, it might seem superfluous to offer what by now has become associated with more standard kinds of approaches, namely a review of scholarly literature pertaining to the arts of the area. Yet I believe this will serve a number of useful functions.

16


Although few of the works to be discussed are well known to ethnomusicologists or even Indonesia specialists, a body of literature does indeed exist and forms an important component in the discourse that is shaping these arts. General Sources Local artists and scholars look to one source above all for knowledge of South Sulawesi's ancient heritage: the famous / La Galigo, a lengthy collection (some 6,000 pages in various manuscripts) of mythic stories going back to the original descent of humans to earth—more precisely, to the area now known as Luwu (Luwuk), in the northeastern portion of present-day South Sulawesi. Prose summaries of I La Galigo, written in Dutch by R. A. Kern (1939, 1954) and translated into Indonesian by La Side and Sagimun M.D. (Kern 1989), mention music, dance, and ritual ceremonies (especially weddings). The manuscript sources concerned with later times (historical times) and presumably written more recently than the / La Galigo are referred to collectively as lontarak, in reference to the use of one of several sets of aksara lontarak, Indiederived alphabets used to write Bugis, Makassarese, and Mandarese. However, most of them remain unpublished and untranslated and cannot be said to contribute to the discourse, popular or scholarly, on performance in South Sulawesi. Rather, it is the / La Galigo, that serves as a powerful representation of South Sulawesi's remote past and the great age of its civilization and expressive culture.4 Though of very different provenance, the works of the Dutch missionary and language scholar B. F. Matthes also serve as important historical references. His detailed studies of Bugis and Makassarese languages resulted not only in dictionaries of both languages (Matthes 1859, 1874), but in transcriptions and translations of examples of vocal genres such as Makassarese sinrilik, cuwi, and kelong verse (Matthes 1860,492-655; Matthes 1883) and a range of Bugis literature (Matthes 1864-1872, 1883). Accompanying ethnographic atlases include meticulous line drawings of, among other artifacts, some musical instruments and dance properties (see Schroder and Eilers 1885; see also the catalogs of Juynboll 1922, 1925). Collections of kelong verses in Makassarese script were published locally, such as the substantial volume by Li Eng Tae and Ance' Nanggong (1883). Published writings on South Sulawesi in European languages in the twentieth century have been substantial and form a basis for aspects of this book,5 along with writings by local scholars, mostly in Indonesian, covering local history (Abdullah 1985; Said 1985), celebrating historically important local figures (Abdullah 1991), and offering descriptions of local cultural practices and beliefs, though mostly as cultural inventories (e.g., Bobin, Sidik, and Sudarisman 1980; Herwani 1991; Manyambeang et al. 1984; Mardanas, Abu, and Maria 1985; Yasil et al. 1986; Yusuf et al. 1987). Part of the local discourse also concerns tourism in South Sulawesi (e.g., Amier 1972; Hamzah et al. 1991).

17

Introduction

Literature on Performing Arts in South Sulawesi The number of scholarly studies focusing on the performing arts in South Sulawesi is nowhere near that for Java or Bali. Even the most substantial writings from the colonial era, though descriptive, are based on very limited direct observation, suggesting the greater value attributed to Javanese and Balinese arts. Standing as a first landmark are the two volumes by Walter Kaudern devoted to music and dance in Sulawesi (1927a and 1927b), surveys conducted with a primary interest in tracking distribution, migration history, and patterns of contact and influence. The volume on music is essentially a lengthy catalogue of musical instruments (1927 a) that attempts meticulous identification by geographic location and cultural group for each instrument and instrument type for the entire island of Sulawesi, telling little about method of performance, let alone ritual or other function within the societies in which it was found. He makes no attempt to enter the aesthetic or conceptual world of any of the peoples whose instruments he describes. The drawings and photographs, although of high technical quality, almost invariably show instruments as objects in sterile isolation, without the intrusion of even a human player, let alone an audience or context of performance. In his volume on "Games and Dances" (Kaudern 1927b), he describes a number of dances, with photographs, drawings, choreographic diagrams, and maps showing distribution. He groups the dances into the following broad categories: round dances, contra-dances (warrior dances), sacerdotal dances, professional dances, and European dances (primarily in the Minahasa area of North Sulawesi). Within each category, he organizes his material by region and, for round and contra-dances, within region by ethnic group, eschewing any concern with social meaning.6 In contrast to Kaudern, Claire Holt, a seasoned student of the performing and plastic arts, is clearly concerned with aesthetics in her Dance Quest in Celebes (1939/1980), a brief account of her remarkably short (ten-day) but productive visit to South Sulawesi in 1938, as part of a survey team researching dance in Asia. Familiar with other dances of the archipelago, especially those of central Java, Holt was a keen observer of movement. She describes the many dances she was able to witness, together with their musical accompaniment. Though based on observation of one performance per genre, many of them arranged specially for her, this study serves as a canonical historical source for the few local scholars currently writing about performance in South Sulawesi, as it offers greater detail than almost any prior source. Jaap Kunst made short research trips from his home on Java to other islands during the early 1930s in his capacity as the Dutch government musicologist. After recording fourteen items from Sulawesi at a meeting in Weltevreden (outside what is now Jakarta) in 1929, he made a brief trip to Sulawesi in 1932, recording thirteen items from South Sulawesi, along with a few items from Central and Northern Sulawesi (Kunst 1994, 267-268). His brief coverage of Sulawesi in his survey of the "outer provinces" (Kunst 1946, translated

18

Calling Back the spirit

in Kunst 1994, 1 73-204) includes a mere two paragraphs on lowland South Sulawesi, listing a few instruments and mentioning the Makassarese vocal form sinrilik. Though expressing his intention to "fill the existing void . . . and give the reader an impression of the variety and richness of the musicological and choregraphical treasures that were to be found in the archipelago at that time" (Kunst 1994, 173), the coverage is so brief as to belie the true variety that certainly existed there.7 POSTCOLONIAL ERA. Beginning in the late 1940s and through the 1950s, Indonesians began to publish a few articles in cultural journals on aspects of performance in South Sulawesi. These range from accounts of the prominent Chinese-Makassarese musician Hoo Eng Djie (Yang 1949; Njoo 1950) to individual genres of music and dance, such as Mangemba's discussion of form, meaning, and change in Makassarese pakarena (1957) and ganrang bulo (1958b), and Bugis pajaga (Mangemba 1958a). In the 1960s, very little appeared other than several tourist pamphlets in English that describe performance genres (Anon. 196?a, 196?b) and a short pamphlet of Makassarese song lyrics by composer and violinist Arsyad Basir (1963?). In the early 1 970s, scholars from Java as well as from South Sulawesi published more extensively on music and dance from this province, although rarely going beyond inventory and description (Sumarjo et al. 1972; Sumaryo 1973; Mattulada 1974, 43-46). A few years later, the highly influential choreographer and teacher Andi Nurhani Sapada published a pedagogical compendium of new dances that she had choreographed over the previous twenty-eight years, with photographs, floor plans, and notation of accompanying songs (Sapada 1975). She is the first practitioner of South Sulawesi to contribute to the published discourse, going beyond instructional books (1975, 1992a, 1992b) to author thoughtful articles about aesthetic values and change in South Sulawesi's music and dance (Sapada 1980, 1993). Following Sapada, most of the subsequent writings about performance in South Sulawesi have been authored by performers, whose artistic and scholarly works are central to the subsequent chapters in this book. Local dancer-choreographer Munasiah Nadjamuddin's published a detailed description of her versions of five "traditional" dances of South Sulawesi, together with a cassette containing the musical accompaniment for each (1982). The author seeks legitimacy for her works not only by labeling them "traditional" but also by referring to recognized dance scholars from the West (Curt Sachs) and from Java (Soedarsono), thereby simultaneously displaying the author's erudition and placing these dances of South Sulawesi in a larger context. She also authored a textbook on vocal and instrumental music of South Sulawesi (1983), intended primarily for students at the government-sponsored high schools for performing arts around the country. Songs are notated, some in Western staff notation and some in cipher notation (resembling that now used widely by the Javanese). The extent to which it is used at other institutions is another matter; to my knowledge it is available in the libraries but unassigned and scarcely if ever looked at by students at the SMKIs in Java.

19

Introduction

Scholar-performer Halilintar Lathief has been prolific, from his first published description of dance genres (1976a) and collection of regional songs (1976b), to a range of works on South Sulawesi's musical instruments (1980, 1994a, 1996a, 1996b, 1996c), dance (1983; Latief and Taba 1995; Lathief and Sumiani 1995), and songs (1994b, 1994c, 1994d, 1994e). The more recent works go beyond brief descriptions in encyclopedic style to extended discourse on form, symbolic meaning, social contexts of performance, and history. Lathief and Sumiani (his wife) are prominent contemporary figures in the performing arts world of South Sulawesi—not only writing about it, but also in choreographing, performing, teaching, and organizing festivals and other performances with participants from around the province. That Lathief is of Bugis nobility and Sumiani a Javanese from the court city of Yogyakarta problematizes their central roles in the representation (and presentation) of arts in South Sulawesi. While others have been at least as visible in the realm of performance, Lathief has a near monopoly on the materials published and available locally, with the exception of a recent collection of critical essays on recent developments in arts of (lowland) South Sulawesi (Effendy and Rojak 1999). The upland areas (especially Toraja) have drawn substantial interest from foreign scholars, from Kartomi's pioneering description of Torajan funeral music (1981) to the excellent work by anthropologists. Volkman (1985) and Adams (esp. 1993 and 1997) describe and interpret performance in Toraja's increasingly tourist-oriented society; and Rappoport (2000) covers Torajan ritual music in depth. George (1996) offers a finely nuanced examination of ritual life, including music, of former headhunting peoples of Mambi (west of Toraja and Mamasa). Indigenous scholarship on performance in these areas is still very limited. Beatrix Bulo describes form and function in her native Torajan dance, but in English and obviously intended for the tourist market (1989). In drawing on brief trips and secondary sources, it is often scholars from outside the province who have been empowered to represent the province and its arts in sources widely consulted. Kartomi wrote a short survey of lowland music and dance (1988), and the entry on Sulawesi in The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music (1998). Javanese dance scholar Soedarsono draws primarily on Holt (1939) and a few personal observations for his short overview of the entire island of Sulawesi: 10 pages in a 246-page book, Dances in Indonesia (1974). My Place in the Published Discourse Other minor works have been published, some cited in the following chapters of this book, but the brief survey above should give the reader a sense of what has been written pertaining to music and dance in South Sulawesi to this date. To this literature, I have added a first study of cultural politics and performance in South Sulawesi (Sutton 1995) and now this book.8 Before proceeding further, I need to offer one additional introductory note concerning the expectations of my readers. While this is written in English with a primary intended readership of ethnomusicologists and Southeast Asianists, it will very likely be given critical

20


reading by scholars and performers in South Sulawesi. It will not be anything close to the book most of them expect or desire. This has caused me considerable discomfort in the planning stages, for it is to them that I owe the deepest gratitude for all the information shared. When I first arrived in South Sulawesi in July 1993 and met with Halilintar Lathief, the man who would guide and inspire much of my study and experience over the next four summers, he seemed pleased that a foreign ethnomusicologist was making South Sulawesi the focus of investigation, rather than the far more popular Java and Bali. International scholarly attention, at least in Indonesia, can contribute to local cultural status. My attention to the performing arts of South Sulawesi would certainly give these arts, and their practitioners, a new measure of legitimacy within the arena of national and regional politics. Halilintar and his closest colleagues—all from the lowland areas—were even more enthusiastic when I indicated a preference for focusing on lowland (rather than Torajan) performance. Yet in my conversations with them, as I traveled back to South Sulawesi a number of times after my initial visit, they wondered why I had not already quickly dashed off a descriptive publication or two. Was I planning a comprehensive survey of Makassarese peforming arts? Was I planning to publish pages and pages of drum notation or vocal music notation and in need of additional training? How was my scholarship going to contribute to the preservation and transmission of traditional arts of the region? It was assumed that my training and my duty as an ethnomusicologist was to transcribe, notate, and preserve those musical practices deemed "traditional" and (often synonymously) "in danger of extinction." It might seem easy to argue that such activities on the part of ethnomusicologists have not resulted in the reinvigoration of waning forms of performance elsewhere, but many believe that a collection of drum notations made by me from my study with Daeng Mile—widely acknowledged to be one of the very best Makassarese drummers alive—would greatly facilitate the teaching of the complexities of Makassarese drumming. And while not representative of the variety of styles still practiced, it would contribute to the standardization of one very highly regarded one. I will delve more deeply into the problems of such representation, particularly by a Western newcomer, later in this book. If not an exhaustive study of a particular genre, my colleagues in South Sulawesi asked, then wouldn't the book offer detailed descriptions and definitions of indigenous musical instruments, genres of performance, top performers? When I told them I was working toward something about the contemporary situation and the way various local genres played into this, they expressed only muted enthusiasm. As intimately involved in this contemporary situation as they were, it was not something they felt I might elucidate for them. Rather, an unearthing of little-known traditional practice would be far more interesting and useful for them. Now, as it has turned out, much of what I write about is the world of performance and power negotiation they have created. With apologies for not taking the safer but now dated path of ethnomusicological inquiry, I turn to the complex task I have set myself (beginning here with some background remarks on cultural policy and on South Sulawesi and its peoples). I hope that

21

Introduction

this study, in addition to engaging ethnomusicologists of various specializations, has something of value to offer the performers and intellectuals in South Sulawesi, who are in fact constantly preserving and changing their arts in response to the local, national, and global forces that pervade contemporary life. INDONESIAN CULTURAL POLICY The Indonesian government sees "culture" (and "the arts") as its legimitate concern, and an important one, figuring in the words of the constitution and five-year development plans, in statements by officials at all levels, and in funding for publication and performances. Shaping national culture, and situating local cultures within it, has been managed by a vast bureaucracy extending from Jakarta to the remotest villages, through offices of the Department of Education and Culture. Most often cited as the rationale for such concern has been the recognition on the part of many Indonesians of the extraordinary power of mass-mediated cultural forms from the West. Over the years, despite radical shifts in political orientation from left to right (and, in late 1999, center), the Indonesian government has censored and banned many forms of commercial entertainment circulating more or less freely in the Western world, from rock and roll to pornography. Statements about negative foreign cultural influence appear in the text of the government's five-year plans, and in newspaper and magazine articles dating from the 1950s to the present. One of the most prevalent responses by the government of Suharto was the promotion of certain kinds of "traditional" performing arts as a deterrent to unwanted influence from abroad, preserving or rebuilding a sense of local and national pride. Globalization (Ind. globalisasi) has been widely discussed as one of the major threats of contemporary life; and Indonesians from government officials to artist-intellectuals would seem to agree on the principle of local cultural diversity, if not on its precise content and the means for its promotion. The government's pervasive involvement with the performing arts can be explained in reference to several prominent concerns.9 First is the fear over the effects of inundation by cultural products from abroad, regardless of their content, if their presence becomes so dominant as to eradicate indigenous values and sense of identity—as Indonesian, and as belonging to a particular ethnolinguistic group. Many would argue that such inundation has already occurred and that many of Indonesia's youth have a poor sense of national or local identity in comparison to that of their parents and grandparents. Second is a more direct feeling of repugnance for the assault on values and morality they perceive in the content of certain performance styles, song texts, and films—precipitating the need for outright government censorship of specific items. Third is the recognition that many traditional arts have roots in local rituals that may empower their practitioners and their audiences in ways that may challenge the national government. Thus, the government has supported festivals, contests, and other sorts of public performances that remove "the arts" from the village community context and make them "entertainment." Fourth is the

22


belief that traditional performing arts, however refigured and reinterpreted in contemporary contexts, constitute one of the most important components in the package Indonesia can offer to attract foreign tourists. In the eyes of the government, then, promotion of the forms and techniques of traditional music and dance, removed from potentially resistant forms of ritual and local empowerment, serves both to shore up traditional values and to attract international capital. For many involved in the production of "performing arts" in places like South Sulawesi, globalization is but one of a number of perceived challenges. Finding a presence either in national culture or as distinct from it has been a defining concern for the most prominent arts people, from choreographers and composers, to festival organizers and government bureaucrats. The tension between local (or regional—Ind. daerah) and national has, of course, been a defining issue in the very concept and formation of the Indonesian nation. Uniting a colony of diverse peoples to be rid of Dutch colonial oppression required a search for common heritage and identity (beyond merely a desire for freedom), a task correctly seen by the nation's founders and subsequent rulers as enormous, requiring radical measures. Music and dance have figured in the discourse, from patriotic "Indonesian" songs to national "Indonesian" dances. The original constitution of 1945 contained words about the creation of a national culture (Ind. kebudayaan), in the narrower sense of the term, more or less as used colloquially in contemporary English, to refer to the performing arts, plastic arts, architecture, costume/dress, and literature. The famous Javanese educator Ki Hadjar Dewantara is credited with having called for a national culture built on "the peaks of regional culture" (Ind. puncak-puncak kebudayaan daerah). The question of which regional cultures—which genres of music and dance, for example—were worthy of incorporation was not spelled out, although Dewantara and other Javanese certainly presumed Javanese arts such as gamelan and wayang theater to be among the peaks. But what about regions remote from Java? How might a ritual dance from Sumba or a village song from Sulawesi figure into Indonesian "national" culture, if at all? Cultural policy has never provided clear answers to these questions, and the understanding of what constitutes "Indonesian culture" remains contested, from Jakarta to the distant islands of Mentawai, Flores, Aru, and so forth. During the New Order period, the government became increasinlgy involved in supporting and shaping practices that reified local difference with the pronouncement that "regional culture is national culture." This policy is epitomized in Indonesia's national cultural park, Taman Mini "Indonesia Indah" (Ind.; "Beautiful Indonesia" in Miniature Park), where culture is represented as if it conformed to Indonesia's political administrative boundaries. Each province is represented by a pavilion (Ind. anjungari), with its own local architectural structures and occasional performances of local arts. Yet what is presented at Taman Mini, and supported elsewhere by the Indonesian government, has tended to de-emphasize identity along ethnic lines in favor of constituting identity along provincial lines.10 And what has been supported in the realm of the arts has largely been secular and presentable as entertainment, as often jus-

Introduction

23

tified by its potential appeal to tourists as by its aesthetic or moral value. In particular, practices that support alternatives to officially sanctioned religious beliefs have either been ignored or reformulated. And practices challenging official political views have been forcibly repressed. Since Suharto resigned in May 1998 to cries for reformasi (Ind.; reform), cultural policy has begun to change. A much wider range of political views has been tolerated, although not necessarily with government financial support. As Indonesia grapples with numerous challenges from regions around the country, and the bureaucratic structures of the New Order are dismantled or reshaped, cultural policy may approach questions of national culture and regional culture differently. But evidence as of February 2002 suggests, at least for those areas not in open rebellion, continued support for the same kinds of practices favored under the New Order, still mostly secular and still conceived to reify local identity by administrative locale (province and district).

SOUTH SULAWESI: ETHNICITY AND HISTORY South Sulawesi is one of Indonesia's twenty-six provinces, occupying the southwest peninsula, part of the central highlands, and part of the southeast peninsula of the island of Sulawesi (formerly known as Celebes). Shaped, as some have said, like an orchid or a starfish, this island is home to an enormous diversity of peoples, speaking more than sixty different languages and dialects (Noorduyn 1991). In the early years of Indonesian Independence the entire island of Sulawesi was administered as one province, but the geography and linguistic variation has minimized a sense of pan-island identity. Even its division into four provinces—the others being North Sulawesi, Central Sulawesi, and Southeast Sulawesi—gives little indication of its real diversity.11 Nevertheless, the peoples of South Sulawesi, despite some very significant differences, from dance choreography to religious cosmology, have undergone intense interaction over many centuries, share many cultural characteristics, including a common mythical past, and can in certain contexts see themselves as "South Sulawesian"—particularly in relation to the larger national community of Indonesia. The total population of the province in the 1990 census was 6,980,589 (Penduduk Sulawesi Selatan 1993, 2). As local people are fond of telling visitors and themselves, South Sulawesi comprises primarily four main ethnic groups—in the lowlands the Bugis, Makassarese, and Mandarese, and in highlands the Torajans. The Indonesian census does not register ethnic affiliation, but estimates suggest 3.5 to 4 million Bugis, 1.5 to 2 million Makassarese, 400,000 to 500,000 Mandar, 500,000 to 600,000 Torajan, and about 1 million mixed and other.12 The Mandarese inhabit primarily the northwestern portion of the province, the Makassarese the southern portion (from the city of Makassar, south and east), the Torajans the north-central highlands, and the Bugis the large remainder (eastern part of the peninsula, extending northward around the Gulf of Bone, and the central portion of the peninsula, from west to east). The

24


lowland groups are famous as traders, shipbuilders, and seafarers, often ranging far from home and settling overseas. Many also earn their livelihood from wet-rice farming and nearly all lowlanders are Muslim. The Torajan highlanders are also wet-rice cultivators, and the majority nowadays are Christian or combine indigenous beliefs (Tor. aluk todolo) with Christianity. Their breathtaking scenery and striking ritual practices have made the Torajan highlands a major destination for tourists, whose visit to the lowland area is usually no more than that required for transit. Although many areas are nearly exclusively inhabited by members of one group (e.g., Bugis in Wajo, Makassarese in Takalar), the provincial capital, Makassar (Ujung Pandang), is cosmopolitan, with large numbers of all four main ethnic groups, a substantial Chinese population, as well as Arabs, Indians, Javanese, and other Malay (pribumi) Indonesians. Other smaller indigenous ethno-linguistic groups (Bajau, Pitu Ulunna Salo, Seko, Konjo, Mekongka, Layolo, Massenrempulu) live in small, often isolated communities. The issue of ethnic and regional identity among those I came to know during my research proved a complicated one indeed. Feelings of community based on ethno-linguistic heritage have certainly not melted away, despite strong bonds based on religion (Islam and Christianity) and a growing sense of South Sulawesian identity. In general, people seemed to identify more strongly with one or another ethno-linguistic group (Bugis, Makassarese, Mandar, or Torajan) than as South Sulawesian (that is, pan-provincial) or Sulawesian (panisland). Yet many of the urbanites I knew, whether or not they were themselves of mixed ethnic heritage, often took positions as "South Sulawesians" rather than as "Bugis" or "Makassarese"—at least in some contexts (cf. Antweiler 1994, who found pan-provincial identity to be relatively strong in urban Ujung Pandang). A Bugis family sponsoring a wedding is almost certain to follow Bugis custom, but a Bugis musician or choreographer in this city is likely to incorporate elements identifiable as Makassarese or Torajan in a work that he or she will identify as "regional" (Ind. daerah), and to be concerned about national and international recognition of South Sulawesi as a more important basis for local pride than recognition of Makassar or Toraja. However, many people I spoke with, in urban and especially in rural areas, expressed pride in ethnic or subethnic local identities, and showed little sense of pan-provincial identity as South Sulawesian. The former lend themselves more easily to primordialist conceptions than does the latter. I wish to stress that regional and ethnic identities, while not completely reinvented every day, are most certainly in flux and may often be ambiguous, particularly in response to powerful forces such as a Javanese-dominated national government intent upon controlling all manner of activities (including performance) and a Western-dominated international popular culture (cf. Mbembe 1992). And alongside (or perhaps "above") these local identities is the issue of national identity, the ways one does or does not identify oneself as "Indonesian," a tension underlying the dynamic of local power and local performance.

25

Introduction History

More than many regions of Indonesia outside of Java and Bali, South Sulawesi has been able to trace its history through indigenous manuscripts and numerous accounts by foreign visitors, whose involvement through trade and colonialism has provided a rich record. Prior to the coming of Europeans in the sixteenth century, South Sulawesi consisted of a large number of chiefdoms, grouped into several large kingdoms, each of which was headed by a king who shared political power with his or her various chiefs. Though limited by heredity in most kingdoms, the right to political power did not exclude women; indeed, the mythical first ruler of the Makassarese was Tumanurung, a women descended from heaven. In the sixteenth century, major kingdoms arose in Luwu and its early rival Bone, both Bugis areas. And in the southwestern region of the peninsula the twin kingdoms of Gowa and Tallo (Tallok), strengthened by foreign trade, rapidly grew in power. In alliance, they took control of much of the southern and western part of the peninsula in the late sixteenth century and, after the adoption of Islam in 1605, spread their influence in defeating the Bugis of Bone and other areas that had resisted Islam. Luwu, to the north, had already adopted Islam two years previously. In the first half of the seventeenth century, Gowa further expanded its control to other islands of eastern Indonesia,13 building an empire that local historians claim rivaled that of pre-Islamic Java's Majapahit (thirteenth-fifteenth centuries). The significance of Gowa at its height has been largely underplayed in the national imagination, where Javanese dominance has stressed the glories of Majapahit and the Javanese past, giving only passing mention to major kingdoms such as Gowa in school history textbooks, for example. Yet the peoples of South Sulawesi, and particularly those identifying themselves as Makassarese, are aware at least of the exploits of Gowa's great ruler Sultan Hasanuddin, whose valiant stand against the Dutch navy under Admiral Speelman in the 1660s is not only well documented in the literature, but memorialized in statues, paintings, local plays, dance dramas, and the name of South Sulawesi's— and eastern Indonesia's—most prestigious university (Universitas Hasanuddin). Desperate to reassert its independence from Gowa, the Bugis under Aru Palakka formed a complicated alliance with the Dutch to bring the defeat of Hasanuddin and final destruction of his fortress at Somba Opu in 1669 (see Andaya 1981). From the latter seventeenth century through the early twentieth, Bugis were dominant in much of lowland South Sulawesi, Gowa shrinking to a small and relatively powerless kingdom. Some view this demise of Makassarese power—at the hands not only of the very clearly alien Dutch, but also their local neighbors, the Bugis of Bone—to be the source of the undercurrent of melancholy attributed to present-day Makassarese (and evidenced, they say, in their poetry and current popular songs).14 Makassarese resistance against the Dutch occasionally flared into uprisings, such as those led in the late eighteenth century by the mysterious Batara Gowa (whose name literally translates as

26


"lord of Gowa"), reputed to have been killed and revived four times (see Mukhlis 1985,1987). With the Makassarese under Dutch control, the Bugis exercised increasing independence, resulting in their subjugation by the Dutch following several protracted wars in the nineteenth century. When the Dutch tightened their control in much of eastern Indonesia in the first decade of the twentieth century, local rulers lost the measure of autonomy they had maintained through the previous several centuries of Dutch presence. It was only during the twentieth century, then, that the Dutch took full authority, relegating local rulers to mere figurehead status as they had much earlier in Java. The Japanese occupation (1942-1945) was as brutal in South Sulawesi as elsewhere, causing wide hardship, but ousting the Dutch colonizers. When Holland attempted to regain control of Indonesia in 1945, South Sulawesi became divided, with many fighting against the Dutch, but others moving to accommodate them in forming the Nation of Eastern Indonesia (Ind. Negara Indonesia Timur) rather than remain part of a Javanese-dominated Republic of Indonesia.15 When the Dutch finally relinquished their claim on Indonesia (with the exception of what is now called Papua, formerly Irian Jaya and Irian Barat), the island of Sulawesi accepted its status as a province within the Republic of Indonesia. It remained one province through ten years of great turbulence fomented by the disgruntled former revolutionary hero Kahar Muzakkar (also spelled Qahhar Mudzakkar) who, unwilling to accept his being denied officer status in the new Indonesian army, was passed over by Javanese, who had the benefit of greater formal education. He and his "gangs" (Ind. grombolan) waged guerilla warfare throughout southern Sulawesi, strengthening their support by adopting the separatist banner of Darul Islam, and at times controlling most of this vast region outside of the city of Makassar.16 Complicating matters further was the Permesta rebellion of 1957, involving prominent military and civilians from North and South Sulawesi.17 In the 1960s, many of Kahar's followers lost heart and he was eventually killed by government forces in April 1965, only months before the nationwide trauma of the anticommunist countercoup began to unfold. For the latter part of the 1960s, Islamic resistance in southern Sulawesi rose again, this time as Operasi Taubat (Mks. Tobak), translating literally as "Operation Repent/Forswear." Members of the reformist Muhammadiyah Islamic party led this movement which, strengthened by the virulent anticommunist fervor of those years, resulted in the killing and intimidation of many who did not espouse orthodox Islam. These included many performers of local ritual practices—musicians, dancers, and spiritual healers (Bgs./Mks. sanro). Even secular musical practice, such as singing and playing stringed instruments, was suppressed, with greater tolerance only for music with Islamic or Middle Eastern roots, such as qasidah and gambus (see chapter 9). From the 1970s to 2002, South Sulawesi has enjoyed a period largely free of open hostilities. Though ethnic rivalries persist, they have not resulted in the kinds of deadly conflicts springing up elsewhere in Indonesia in the late 1990s, other than one anti-Chinese rampage in late 1997. Islamic lowlanders and

Introduction

27

Torajan highlanders have not burned each other's churches or mosques. While Torajans may justifiably point to cagy Bugis entrepreneurs making large profits on Bugis-owned hotels in Toraja, or Makassarese may complain about prices they must pay Chinese merchants in Makassar, more disgruntlement has been aimed at the national government, widely seen to be taking much in resources and returning proportionately little in development funds, or to be imposing in local affairs by strategically placing government yes-men in key administrative positions (though this has diminished considerably since the early days of the New Order). South Sulawesi's history is rife with struggle for local control. Local leaders, from Sultan Hasanuddin to Kahar Muzakkar, have been willing to risk all in order to maintain local power in resistance against encroachment from outside, be it Dutch or Indonesian. Local concepts of identity articulate strong adherence to a moral code of honor/shame (Mks. sirik; Bgs. siri) requiring decisive, even deadly action if violated. Local power has been eroded not only by the Dutch during the colonial era but also by Java, Jakarta, and global consumer culture in the decades since. In the chapters that follow we will be looking at local performance in these contexts, as musicians and dancers in South Sulawesi stake their claim.

2

South Sulawesi on Parade

Representations of the Local in the Culture Week Festival

Boarding the Garuda Airlines airbus for the final international portion of my journey on 17 July 1993, I was startled out of my jet lag by a small item in the events calendar of the inflight magazine: South Sulawesi's fourth annual Culture Week (Ind. Pekan Budaya) festival, scheduled to begin that very day in Ujung Pandang, the provincial capital where I was about to begin new research. When I arrived at Hasanuddin Airport three days later and boarded a cab for the twenty-seven-kilometer ride to downtown Ujung Pandang, my inquiries to the cab driver concerning the big cultural festival were met with a polite and dispassionate remark that, as far as he knew, there was no festival going on at the moment, and none planned, though there had been several in previous years. At the hotel where I stayed for my first few days, I encountered the same response. What a remarkable contrast to Yogyakarta and Bali, for example, where almost everyone is aware for months in advance of the big festivals in June and July, each of which in recent years has lasted for several weeks and been heavily promoted through the tourist infrastructure (hotels, airlines, ground transport, etc.). As it turned out, the inflight magazine had been very nearly correct. A major cultural festival had been scheduled to begin 17 July, but only two weeks before my arrival, plans at the national governmental level forced a sudden postponement of the festival for one week. With many hundreds of musicians, 28

The Culture Week festival

29

dancers, painters, craftsmen, and cooks from each of South Sulawesi's twentyone county districts (Ind. kabupaten) and two urban municipalities (Ind. kota madya) all prepared, often under great duress, to leave their homes for a week to participate in the festival, the new governor, General H. Zainal Basri Palaguna, announced suddenly that the festival would be postponed one week in order to accommodate the just-announced visit to South Sulawesi by Vice President General Try Sutrisno and his wife. Never mind that such a late schedule change might not only seriously inconvenience these hundreds of artists still further, and the local bureaucrats at the kabupaten, kecamatan (Ind.; township/district), and desa (Ind., Mks., Bgs.; village) levels who were also obliged to participate in the festival, but also disappoint whatever domestic and international tourists might have arranged their itineraries to enable them to attend the festival. A vice presidential visit was more important, for it offered local officials a chance to enhance their legitimacy as brokers of something that the New Order had come increasingly to champion as Indonesia's great resource: "culture" (Ind. budaya; also kebudayaan), not in the sense of systems of meaning or of being in the world, but of display: architecture, handicrafts, food, dance and colorful costumes, musical instruments and unique styles of playing and singing. I learned of the delay the day after my arrival, when I met two prominent local figures: Halilintar Lathief (hereafter, Halilintar), the organizer of the previous year's festival; and Mukhlis Paeni (hereafter, Mukhlis), the organizer for the 1993 festival. Halilintar taught dance at the local teachers' college (IKIP) and was married to a Javanese dancer, Niniek Sumiani (hereafter, Sumiani), whom my wife and I had known in Yogyakarta fourteen years earlier and who, we had heard, had surprised and disappointed the performing arts community in Yogyakarta by marrying "someone from Sulawesi" and moving away from the city where she would have had a fine career as a Javanese dancer. Mukhlis was a leading scholar of history and literature, professor at Hasanuddin University. After an afternoon watching Halilintar and Sumiani's dance and music group rehearse for several upcoming performances, I met Mukhlis, who drove me out to the island of Somba Opu, a site only six kilometers south of the city center, where a newly conceived cultural park, Taman Miniatuur Sulawesi (Ind.; Miniature Sulawesi Park) was being built on the grounds of the ruins of an ancient Makassarese fortress, Benteng Somba Opu. It was this very site where the Culture Week festival was to begin in just three days. It was Mukhlis himself who had spearheaded the drive to create the cultural park in the late 1980s. He saw a particular advantage to locating it at Somba Opu, the historically sacred ground that had just begun to be excavated. It was here that the Makassarese Sultan Hasanuddin had built his great fortress and commanded his forces in their valiant battles against the Dutch. Originally, Mukhlis wanted to create a kind of cultural haven, to rekindle interest among local people in their own genius—their architecture, performing arts, and literature. People were to live on the site for months or even years at a stretch. Infrastructure would be kept to a minimum in order to preserve it as a retreat from the nearby urban hustle and bustle. In order even to begin, however, he needed

30

CallingBackthespirit irit

the support of local government, and his original vision was substantially modified, accommodating the ideas of then-governor H. Achmad Amiruddin and various other officials, in particular the Department of Tourism. An enormous sum (millions of dollars, according to Mukhlis and others) was provided to build roads, a central meeting hall (Bgs., Mks. barugd), a historical museum, and a dike to protect the island from occasional flooding from the Jene Berang River, near whose estuary the island is situated. The idea of a cultural park representing some larger political and cultural entity in miniature was in many ways a direct imitation of the Taman Mini "Indonesia Indah," conceived by Indonesia's former first lady Tien Suharto and built in the early 1970s on the outskirts of Jakarta, despite considerable protest from the local population and others. Like this national cultural park, Taman Miniatur Sulawesi was at first conceived to represent the island of Sulawesi with all its cultural diversity—most endurably with "traditional" houses (Ind. rumah adat/rumah tradisional) from each region, and occasionally with arts festivals and other activities. Yet because it was located just outside Ujung Pandang, in the southern part of the province of South Sulawesi, the only houses that had been built were from each of the twenty-three administrative districts (counties and municipalities) of this one province. Thus it was, de facto, a Taman Miniatuur Sulawesi Selatan (South Sulawesi in Miniature Park), and on close inspection actually attempted to curb local differences, subsuming them under a single general plan. As Robinson notes, "Reflecting the approach to 'tradition' of the national government, the strategy of making the houses all basically the same asserts a common history, a shared past, rather than a celebration of rich diversity" (Robinson 1997, 82).1 From a practical standpoint, the park offered very little infrastructure: no accommodations, no restaurant facilities, only a few itinerant salespeople offering cigarettes, meatball soup (Ind. bakso), dry snacks, bottled soda, and iced fruit (Ind. es teler). Despite the modest network of paved roads and paths, public transportation vehicles were prevented from entering the park. As a site for a major cultural festival, it seemed logistically unaccommodating. On my first visit to Taman Miniatuur Sulawesi, escorted there by Mukhlis as the heat subsided in the late afternoon, scarcely a soul was to be seen other than a few local residents—those who had not been pushed off the island by the construction necessary to build the culture park or to conduct the excavations of the ruins rediscovered during the 1980s. The "traditional houses" (rumah adat/ rumah tradisional) representing the various districts were the financial responsibility of each district budget. It was no surprise, nor apparently very much concern, to Mukhlis that parts of Sulawesi outside this province were not represented at all. Why would they wish to invest in a potential tourist spot located far from their own territory only to see whatever income it produced go into the coffers of a different province? Thus, it seemed just as appropriate that the week-long cultural festival I was about to witness was devoted exclusively—and comprehensively—to South Sulawesi. Each district was compelled to send representative groups, and so they did. Many of the participants—dancers, musicians, craftsmen, cooks,

The Cultuh

31

The Kajang RumahAdat at Taman Miniatuur Sulawesi, Somba Opu

religious officiants—had been summarily commanded by local bureaucrats to abandon their homes, their families, their work in the rice fields, boatbuilding yards, small shops, or classrooms to provide free spectacle at the festival. For the duration of the festival they were housed dormitory-style in locations around Ujung Pandang, with no privacy or security for personal belongings and only basic cooking facilities. Because their refusal would have embarrassed the local officials and resulted in disfavor, even persecution back home, nearly all of those "asked" to participate had no choice but to do so. Such was the "order" typical of the New Order. Several performers mentioned clever villagers feigning ignorance or even hiding when local cultural officials would come seeking potential performers for the festival. With no compensation for lost time at work, and payment sufficient only for meager meals, most participants reluctantly accepted their involvement as a dutiful sacrifice rather than an honor. The festival opened under the burning tropical sun at 3 P.M. on Saturday afternoon with a short speech by the governor and a symbolic three strokes on a local (Makassarese) drum, followed by a two-hour parade (Ind. karnaval) of musicians, dancers, and other colorfully dressed participants. Each group was preceded by a man carrying a sign identifying the district from which the participants had come. Stoically ignoring the heat, each group passed in front of the large entourage of district-level and provincial-level government officials dressed in their "traditional clothing" (Ind. pakaian adat), arrayed in orderly protocol and fanning themselves as they sat under the protective covering of a temporary roof near the main meeting hall at Somba Opu. Next to this main seating area was a second protected area for other visitors, including a very few foreigners (myself among them). On the other side of the parade road was the

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Makassarese musicians on parade at the opening ceremony of the fourth Culture Week festival, Taman Miniatuur Sulawesi, Somba Opu, July 1993

"public"—consisting, I learned, mostly of local residents of Somba Opu island, along with several hundred spectators composed of Ujung Pandang residents and a few foreign visitors. Snack food and plastic cups of water were served to the seated guests, while others were kept at bay by local police in uniform. A truly remarkable array of musical instruments, playing styles, dance techniques, and costumes streamed past over the course of these two hours— ensembles of drums, some played in extremely rapid interlocking and combined with ear-splitting double-reed playing; dancers accompanying themselves with long bamboo rattles and metal concussion plaques; dancing horses, each bearing a costumed woman; bamboo flutes, bamboo trumpets, choruses singing long, droning parallel seconds punctuated by high yelps. Just as the cultural theme park concentrated supposedly typical houses from each district in a kind of postmodern juxtaposition, so this opening parade offered a continual stream of sounds and images, each growing out of a particular local heritage but here shorn of its roots and ripe for all kinds of new signification. Each group was identified explicitly by the district from which it came, and this, for most residents of this province, also suggested ethnicity. For those who obtained the printed program for the week, the order by ethnic group was inscribed in explicit headings above the lists of districts and performance genres or ritual types presented (Daerah Bugis, Daerah Makassar, etc.). Halilintar and others registered little surprise, telling me that this represented a kind of cultural hierarchy within the province: the majority Bugis first, followed by the closely related Makassarese, then the contrastive and highly touristed Torajans, and finally the supposedly less distinctive Mandarese. From the standpoint of popularity among both foreign and domestic tourists, Torajans are far ahead of all other re-

The Culture Week Festival

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gions of South Sulawesi, to the considerable consternation of many lowlanders, who find it difficult to understand why their cultural heritage, rich and glorious, somehow seems unable to capture the attention of tourists, who routinely stop in Ujung Pandang only for a night before proceeding to the Torajan highlands for fabulous mountainous scenery, picturesque villages, and what no doubt strikes most as an exotic and primitive ritual life. After just a two-hour break, the first evening of the culture festival got under way with a performance of "Dances of the Bugis Regions" on the open concrete stage at the western end of the Taman Miniatuur Sulawesi grounds, with audience members sitting in chairs under a protective roof, but otherwise open to the night air. Dancers, many of them visibly exhausted from their earlier participation in the opening parade, presented several newly choreographed dances based on martial arts and ritual dances from several predominantly Bugis districts. The performance ended with a dance-drama pasting together short dances with interludes of melodramatic gesturing, presented under a blur of seemingly random changes in stage lighting. This last item, I learned from Halilintar, was required by the festival organizers in an effort to inspire creativity in a genre now promoted at the national level, based on Javanese models, but lacking deep roots among any of the peoples of South Sulawesi. Mukhlis had chosen to identify this item as massurek, a Bugis term for the reading of narrative texts. In the printed program this word is followed by an explanation in parentheses: "MASSUREK (dalam bentuk gerak Tari)," literally: "NARRATIVE (in the form of dance movements)." Mukhlis explained that he wished to use a local term rather than the Indonesian drama tari or sendratari (from sent/art, drama/drama, and ton/dance). Yet because South Sulawesi had no indigenous tradition of dance-drama other than the mostly slapstick Makassarese kondo buleng,2 an improvisational form based on a single narrative, no local term existed. The creation of dance-dramas in South Sulawesi began only in the late 1960s and has been primarily a response to national expectations, which are modeled on the traditional arts of Java and its immediate neighbors (Bali and Sunda). Yet his choice was problematic not only because of its usual reference to an entirely different genre of cultural activity (reading aloud, rather than dancing), but also because he chose to apply this Bugis term to the dance-dramas presented on subsequent evenings by representatives of the other ethnic groups. The next evening set a pattern that was to recur on the third and fourth evenings: several performances on open stages at either end of the island (roughly a kilometer apart), with a ritual being enacted at one of the traditional houses in between, and all three events beginning at the same time (7:30 P.M.). Like the Bugis dance performance the first night, each subsequent dance performance presented short choreographies based on traditional genres (and identified by genre name and district) and culminated in a dance-drama. The music performances took place on the eastern stage, each evening's presentation labeled not by ethnic group but by instrument or genre (frame drum night, flute night, plucked string night, etc.). The printed program listed individual items again by district and by instrument or genre name. Audience

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White heron (left) and soldier (right) in Makassarese slapstick drama Kondo Buleng, with rebana players seated left and right, 1930s. (Photo number 29757, Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunke. Used by permission.)

reaction varied tremendously from one item to the next, no doubt reflecting district loyalty as well as aesthetic judgment on the level of performance. In the evening of plucked string music, consisting mostly of boat-lute (kecapi) playing and singing, some groups played intricate patterns, sang inspired and often humorous verse, and even demonstrated acrobatic agility in bodily contortions and balancing maneuvers while playing. Though not officially designated as a contest, this event, like the drum performance I witnessed several days later, clearly pitted one group against another, with the audience passing comparative judgment by the volume of their applause. The ritual performances were also labeled not by district but by ethnic group-for example, the Upacam Adat Bugis (Ind.; Traditional/Customary Bugis Ceremony), which I witnessed as it unfolded at the Luwu traditional house and in fact represented dances originating from Luwu and not normally performed in other Bugis areas. The audience did not applaud, but watched with considerable attention, seemingly more enthralled by this than were the audiences at the dance performances I saw. Many of those watching were Bugis, Halilintar and his friends told me, and were very likely witnessing this royal ritual, with its long rows of female pajaga dancers in shimmering costume, for the first time in their lives. In many ways I was reminded of the slow and fluid movements of central Javanese court dances (bedhaya and serimpi) I had seen so often in Yogyakarta and Surakarta. The Bugis music here was much sparser, several drums with singing. For a livelier male and female dance with


35

men wielding swords and shields, which took place subsequently on the ground in front of the house, the music included drums, end-blown bamboo flutes (suling), and several small gongs. An announcer occasionally described the dances, their meanings and contexts, in Indonesian language (rather than Buginese) in an attempt to educate those present. Enhancing the music, dance, and ritual performances were the sale of various local crafts, food, and beverage at some of the traditional houses, as well as an exhibit of paintings by South Sulawesian artists (with no attempt to link style or subject to particular localities or ethnicities within the province). With no prior experience on this island, and only very limited knowledge from the literature available, I was able, nevertheless, to see a process of local essentializing that was taking place in most of these representations. The means by which the various components of this festival were labeled clearly reified identity on three levels: 1. District (in the signs carried in the opening parade, in the identification of groups participating in the evening dance and music performances, and in the sites of the "rituals") 2. Ethno-linguistic group (in the labeling of the evening dance and ritual events as one of the four, and in the headings in the listing of the opening parade) 3. Province (in presenting "all" of the province—that is, all the districts and all the main ethnic groups, but no participants from outside the province)

This was quintessential cultural representation in Suharto's New Order Indonesia, celebrating cultural "difference" while reinforcing various levels of officially determined local identity, all under a supposedly unified umbrella— hence, the conformity to provincial and district lines (although more than a few performers representing one district were actually from another), and the exclusion of anything Chinese (despite the centuries-long presence of Chinese especially in the Makassar area and their long involvement with local music).3 Groups were not identified by their names, if such existed, nor by their leaders, but only by the subprovincial political district they represented. Indeed, many of these groups were only put together on orders of local bureaucrats to fulfill the demands from the provincial government. The performers were nameless, in some senses like modern-day court servants, performing at the wish of their local rulers and as a manifestation of local polities, with the important difference that there was no ongoing commitment of support, however meager, for these performers from the rulers. Some participants complained of the financial losses they would incur leaving their villages for a week with compensation that was insufficient even to cover the cost of transport and maintenance while at the festival. Those who came to watch seemed to enjoy themselves. According to Halilintar, many of those present tended to choose the events related to their own ethnic heritage. Torajans living in Ujung Pandang, for example, delighted in seeing Torajan dances, hearing Torajan music, particularly in this pan-

36

Calling Back the spirit

provincial context. Very few of the audience members, Halilintar thought, had come from far away—it would have been too expensive and there was no lodging provided. And while the participants from one locale were expected to view performances by those from other locales, they generally did not. Many left as soon as their performance had ended in order to get back to their rice fields and other responsibilities at home, even though it meant paying for their own transportation. Although the Culture Week festival was expected to draw many local residents and to present local culture to them as both entertainment and edification, it was also intended, like similar events presented elsewhere in Indonesia, to attract tourists. Whether significant numbers of domestic tourists from outside of South Sulawesi came is difficult to determine, but I strongly suspect, as did others with whom I spoke, that the numbers were small. And foreign tourists were very few indeed—hoped for, no doubt, but not yet there in anything like significant numbers. Once again, the lowlands seemed incapable of anywhere near the touristic draw of upland Toraja, despite a truly staggering variety of cultural performances representing the entire province. In response to the new emphasis on tourism, Mukhlis had organized a fullday conference on this topic, listed as part of the festival program and held in one of the larger traditional houses (Mandar) on the park grounds. For this gathering, he used the term tudang sipulung (again Bugis), to the irritation of Torajan, Mandar, and Makassarese participants.4 The participants were all aware of the strong attraction the Toraja highlands had for tourists, both domestic and international. Most of the lowland participants were enthusiastic about expanding tourism and suggested that with substantial funding they could attract tourists to the many interesting cultural sites scattered throughout lowland South Sulawesi. Some, however, expressed open hostility to the whole tourism enterprise, citing the unwanted introduction of foreign tastes and ideas, and what they saw to be an inevitable rise in prostitution and drug traffic. In general agreement over the desire to bolster local culture and resist excessive global influence, the participants were divided on the basic question of tourism's beneficial or detrimental effects. Certainly it could be a great source of revenue, but at what social cost? Indeed, those familiar with the Toraja highlands have recognized the transformative power of tourism there.5 Yet tourist attention, aside from bringing in revenue, is for many Indonesians an important gauge of local worth and international recognition—in short, a measure of pride. In later conversations with Torajans both in the highlands and in Ujung Pandang, I found frequent expressions of pride in the power of attraction their homeland held for tourists. A number of lowlanders, on the other hand, indicated a combination of jealousy and bewilderment that tourists did not flock to their homeland. Tourism is an important component in the power struggle between ethnic groups at the provincial and national levels, as it is also in the power struggle between provinces and nations in the global economy.


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The Vice President Arrives By the fifth day, all four ethnic groups had presented their dance evening, and all but Makassar had presented their "rituals." This was the day that the vice president was to come, escorted by motorcade directly to the main hall (baruga) at 4 P.M. to witness the Makassarese ritual. Hours before, police and military positioned themselves along the winding cut-stone road that led to the baruga from the newly built bridge to the island. Cameras and video recorders were strictly forbidden. Performers from the various districts whose traditional houses were represented along the roadway to the baruga were signaled to perform as the motorcade approached. The atmosphere was extremely tense. The vice president and his wife sat through the elaborately staged Makassarese ritual and left immediately afterward, presumably impressed not only with the particular event at which he was the guest of honor but also with the magnitude of the entire festival and the cultural theme park grounds on which it was being held. Certainly that was the hope of the governor and other provincial officials, who had delayed the festival to make it possible for them to attend. What news might they bring back to Jakarta about South Sulawesi? The vice president could not have judged the quality of music and dance or the authenticity of the ritual, but he could easily see that the provincial government was capable of staging an elaborate cultural festival. Given the national government's emphasis on tourism as a core component in Indonesia's development, would not this major event signal to the vice president South Sulawesi's achievements and future potential? Transvestite Priests and Fashion Shows Several hours after the vice president and his entourage left, the main evening performance was offered by various groups of transvestite dancers, most of them transvestite priests (bissu), and predominantly from Bugis areas. The bissu date back at least to the era of the / La Galigo epic (thirteenth-fourteenth centuries), in which frequent mention is made of their prominent role in public life. They have served as keepers of the regalia, formerly for kings and lesser rulers, and now for a few villages. Their ritual prayers preserve an ancient language, often referred to as "bahasa bissu" (language of the bissu), whose lexicon suggests Sanskritic roots.6 It is thought that the word bissu derives from the Indie biksu (a term for Buddhist priests) and that the South Sulawesian bissu may have originated from contact with Buddhist officiants from Sumatra over a millenium ago (see Pelras 1996, 72-73). Their close association with a belief system that existed prior to the adoption of Islam in South Sulawesi (seventeenth century) and their sexual ambiguity have made their position in South Sulawesi society extremely marginal. During periods of Islamic radicalism in South Sulawesi, particularly the Darul Islam movement under Kahar Muzakkar from around 1950 to 1965, bissu were threatened

38


with death and many, it is widely held, were killed. But in the more than thirty years since the death of Kahar, bissu have reappeared and still guard regalia in a few villages, perform at major wedding ceremonies, and maintain a ritual life separate from Islam.7 Mukhlis had arranged to bring various bissu groups to participate in the Culture Week festival, presenting them outside their usual ritual performative contexts. A large crowd gathered for this event, held in the courtyard immediately in front of the baruga where the vice president had witnessed a much more carefully controlled event earlier. Several of the bissu groups went into trance, dancing with their daggers drawn and demonstrating invulnerability as they pressed the blade tips into their hands, wrists, necks, and ears. Audience members clapped and laughed nervously, asking each other whether the trance and stabbing were real or only staged. As most bissu are Bugis, Mukhlis attempted to incorporate other ethnic groups, by inviting a Makassarese secular transvestite dancer (pamasari) and musicians. As this dancer gyrated erotically to the pulse of the music, sneering audience members offered money, stuffing bills into the dancer's blouse. No such derision was evident in response to the bissu, whose ancient historical roots and association with magical power assured them a somewhat more respectful, if no less curious, reception. Mukhlis could offer no simple explanation for his decision to involve bissu in the cultural festival this year. He knew they would draw great curiosity, and he said he felt they deserved the recognition that participation in such a prestigious event bestowed. Based on video footage I watched some years afterward of a bissu ceremony in the village of Segeri (courtesy of Sirtjo Koolhof, who was present and took the footage in 1996), what the bissu presented at the cultural festival was not radically altered to accommodate a casual audience in a nonritual setting. Rather, it seemed that they simply performed short excerpts of what would be part of a one- to seven-day ritual. This same kind of excerpting also occurred in the upacara adat (Ind.; traditional/customary ceremony) events that had occurred previously in the festival, but with the difference that no one had constructed the bissu event with any pretense of ritual coherence. The audience was not led through a representation of some ritual, real or imagined, but rather presented with several chunks of something much longer and complex. At the same time as the tari bissu, on the western stage where the dance performances had been given on the previous evenings four evenings, the first of two evening-long fashion shows took place, in which young men and women modeled pakaian daerah (Ind.; regional/ local clothing) to a large and enthusiastic crowd. The following evening the contestants modeled pakaian nasional (Ind.; national clothing): mostly Javanese or Javanese-inspired blouses (Jvn., Ind. kebayak) and wraparound batik skirt for the women and suits and ties for the men. The music accompanying this evening consisted mostly of old and new kroncong songs in the national language, cassette tapes amplified to near distortion level through the enormously powerful P.A. system. Differences in actual clothing were rather minimal, especially for the men. What was

39


being judged was primarily the attractiveness and sophistication of those modeling the clothes: how well they walked and struck poses. (On the following evening, the judges' results for both the nasional and the daerah competitions were to be announced.) This fashion show drew a larger audience than any of the previous dance, music, or ritual ceremony events, suggesting that the lay public had greater interest in palpably "modern" events than those showcasing the "traditional" or tradition-based. Finale The seventh and final night of the culture festival opened with positively frenetic drumming by Daeng Serang Dakko and his group, the winners from the previous afternoon's drumming contest. After several welcoming speeches and the compulsory committee reports, festival officials began to award the prizes from various contests: painting, songs, the opening parade (karnaval), and finally, the much awaited crowning of the winners of the fashion shows, who took the titles Dara and Daeng Pariwisata (literally, "the young girl and gentleman of tourism").8 Along with the tudang sipulung conference held earlier in the week, this central attraction of the festival also brought attention to tourism, widely championed as an important component in Indonesia's development strategy and eagerly sought by officials and businessmen in various parts of Indonesia, although (as noted above) the whole elaborate festival attracted very few actual tourists. Following the crowning came a long series of presentations of keepsakes to representatives of the participants from each district, a short speech about the value of the festival, given on behalf of the governor by one of his assistants, and a final dance-drama. In the printed program this was listed as a drama ton, using the Indonesian terms (not a massurek, the term provided for each of the dance-dramas presented at the regional dance concerts earlier in the week), and involved Indonesian dialogue. Yet the title used Makassarese language "Pabbundukanga ri Mangkasara: Episode KARAENG GALESONG" (Mks.; "The War at Makassar: Episode [concerning the] Ruler of Galesong [a Makassarese area south of Ujung Pandang]"). With the rapid-fire interlocking of Makassarese drums, puik-puik, metal gong, and kattok-kattok, occasionally enhanced by electronic keyboard providing sound effects, dancers portrayed a valiant battle in which Makassarese fought against the Dutch, mostly at sea. As the drama closed and the large crowd dispersed, bright white lights came on and the sounds of dangdut music9 in Makassarese language boomed through the public address system, much as it had as the audience had gathered for the night of "regional dances" the first night of the festival. The memory of all the live performances seemed to fade rapidly, and the park soon returned to its quiet and nearly deserted state—as I had witnessed it just over a week ago with Mukhlis. But what a magnificently rich event to kick off what would become a protracted engagement on my part with issues of performance in South Sulawesi.


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PERSPECTIVES ON SOUTH SULAWESI'S CULTURE WEEK FESTIVAL What I saw, the interactions I had with others present, and my subsequent research in the local press have all raised issues that I would like to explore further here. The event I attended was the fourth "annual" Culture Week festival in South Sulawesi; and after a hiatus in 1994, it resumed in 1995 and annually after that. Location A defining characteristic of any festival, beyond its performative "content," is the location of its enactment. The first Culture Week festival of South Sulawesi was held in July 1990 in the main square in downtown Ujung Pandang (Karebosi), before Taman Miniatuur Sulawesi had been completed: a central location, easily accessible by the urban population and by tourists who might be staying (if only for a night) in Ujung Pandang's hotels. The second and all subsequent ones have been held at Taman Miniatuur Sulawesi, whose historical significance as a site of the great Makassarese kingdom of Gowa under Sultan Hasanuddin has been much celebrated locally. As a large square easily accessible by public transportation, Karebosi seemed a judicious choice for such a large-scale event in 1990. In years prior, the square had been the site of dance festivals, carnivals, and sporting events. Somba Opu is an island, far from the city center and, until 1991, was accessible only by boat. A lengthy one-way bridge was completed just days before the 1991 Culture Week festival, but access to this site still presented enormous logistical difficulties in comparison to Karebosi Square. But with its ancient ruins and the traditional houses built among them, Somba Opu and the Culture Week festival mutually empower each other. Local discourse did not put it this way, exactly. But numerous spokespersons, including the governor himself, proclaimed the importance of attracting people—tourists and local residents—to the island in order not only to see the performances of the festival, but also to walk among the ruins and see the recently built houses from all over South Sulawesi. One writer described it as an "historical monument that holds various mysteries of times gone by."10 The historical memory serves local pride in a number of ways: pride in the genius of local architecture and building construction (the careful brickwork and enormously thick walls of the fortress), pride in the strong sense of local independence and intolerance for subjugation by outsiders, and also a pride in international stature of the local kingdom as a trade center. These associations justified it as a culturally (if not logistically) appropriate site for Miniature Sulawesi and for the Culture Week festival—two new forms of cultural representation typical of New Order Indonesia, the cultural park and the cultural festival, here superimposed (physically) on the ancient ruins. But while New-Order-Indonesian in style, the park and festival present local architecture, dance, music, costume, and food as their constituent elements. What interests, then, was the festival conceived to serve?

The Culture Week Festival

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Local Identity or Tourist Dollars? In Indonesia of the 1990s, the nurturing of local culture and the attraction of international tourist dollars were often seen as largely compatible, albeit separate, goals. In 1989 President Suharto signed an executive decree to intensify efforts in attracting tourists, making the general public more aware of the national priority being placed on tourism, and endorsing the promotional strategies of "Visit Indonesia Year 1991" and "Visit ASEAN [Association of Southeast Asian Nations] Year 1992." The larger policy is referred to as kampanye sadar wisata (Ind.; campaign for tourism awareness) and was successful at least in getting bureacrats at all levels of government thinking about tourism. It is little surprise that the Culture Week festivals in South Sulawesi began in 1990. Nor is it surprising that much of the public discourse about the events has emphasized tourism. Typically linking tourism and preservation, Amir Hassan Saltik wrote, "Indeed it has become a real goal of the government that... growth in the area of local/regional culture preservation together with tourism development is to be ever more greatly encouraged. Because of that, South Sulawesi Culture Week No. III of 1992 constitutes a mirror of tourism development."11 With tourism very much a hot topic in Indonesia of the 1990s, a considerable amount of the discourse around many events such as South Sulawesi's Culture Week festival attempted to situate the potential tourist appeal of the event as a kind of natural bonus, an outgrowth of the more important task of rediscovering, preserving, and developing local culture and the strengthening of jati diri (Ind.; true self) a recent coinage that can be understood as "identity" (usually at the subnational level: ethnic, provincial, even village). In his address when he opened the Culture Week, the governor said, activities such as this, which began in 1990, are intended as an effort at digging up/rediscovering, building and developing local culture as a part of national culture. Also at the same time they also become an arena for promotion that can raise the interest and the flow of tourists visiting this region.... The digging up/rediscovering regional culture is important not because culture is attractive to tourists .. . but because it represents a mirror of people's identity that can become a protective amulet and a tie securing the national unity (the wholeness of the nation). 12

Similar views, linking the support of local traditions with both the enriching of national culture and the promotion of tourism, were voiced by bureaucrats at every level. The formula seems to be that local tradition is likened to raw material that, when properly rediscovered ("dug up"), supported, and developed, contributes to national culture and at the same time, because it reifies local identity, makes the particular locale attractive to tourists seeking "otherness." In noting that only a very few foreign tourists came to the 1992 event, Mukhlis stressed that the search for identity, not tourism, should be seen as the main purpose of the festival: "Dr. Mukhlis Paeni said to Pedoman Rakyat, since the beginning, hooking/snaring foreign tourists has not been the principal target. The goal of carrying out the Culture Week festival... is more focused on

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the search for identity. Mukhlis stressed again and again, the Culture Week festival is only focused on efforts to implant cultural longing [nostalgia] at the same time efforts to inventory South Sulawesian culture."13 Mukhlis's remarks concerning the inventorying of local culture are very much in keeping with official policy in the Department of Education and Culture, which devotes funding to various projects labeled inventorisasi (Ind.; inventorying), a process that involves searching, locating, and digging up/rediscovering—an archaeological metaphor pervasive in official discourse about local traditional culture. The explicit mention of longing/nostalgia in his use of the Indonesian word kerinduan is somewhat unusual, however, although this aspect of the support of what are seen as age-old local traditions is undoubtedly shared by many. Strengthening local traditions is often defended as an important means of countering the onslaught of globalization, but nostalgia for an idealized past is also evident here in Mukhlis's remarks. One South Sulawesi Culture or Many? The announcement of the 1991 festival, as printed in the local newspaper Pedoman Rakyat, stated explicitly that "in this culture week festival attempts will be made to create similarity in the culture of South Sulawesi which is supported by the four ethnic groups of this region, i.e., Bugis, Makassar, Mandar and Toraja. In certain sections there will be activities representing the four ethnic groups, but in certain other activities these four ethnic groups will reflect similarity, so as not to accentuate the individual local districts (kabupaten)."14 Be this as it may, each of the first three days of that festival was devoted to one ethnic group (omitting, conspicuously, the much-touristed Toraja). Festivals since 1991 have highlighted differences, with complaints when district boundaries are transgressed, as in this remark in a local paper: "In fact there were areas that appeared at the parade who took dancers from other areas. This is not right, is it[?]"15 Something was not right—things were not in the proper pigeonholes mirroring the official administrative division of the province. Such expectations would certainly seem to be set against any kind of even subcultural admixture and instead aimed at reifying small districts through emphasis of difference. One of the factors contributing to the debate over unity or diversity within South Sulawesi, related to the scheduling of the Culture Week festival since 1994, was the establishing, over the objections of many local historians, of an official historical date for the founding of "South Sulawesi"—not as a province but as a cultural entity. A seminar was held 18-19 July 1995 to determine the date. In a remarkable synthesis of reasoning and expediency, the participants chose 19 October 1669, offering separate explanations for the choice of day, month, and year. The 19th was an important date in relation to Indonesian independence, the participants proclaimed, because it was on 19 August 1945, just two days after the proclamation of independence, that the Indonesian Independence Preparations Committee (PPKI) established Sulawesi as one of Indonesia's provinces. The month of October was especially important for South Sulawesi, they continued, because it was on 15 October 1945 that the former

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rulers of various regions in South Sulawesi expressed their united support for the Indonesian revolution against the Dutch (see Ricklefs 1993,214). Yet it was 1669 that was chosen for the year of South Sulawesi's founding, to commemorate the final battle between Gowa and the Dutch. The insistence on the year 1669 was, according to the governor himself, intended to stir pride in the great patriotism and heroism of "the people of South Sulawesi," even though many of the inhabitants of the South Sulawesi peninsula at that time were indifferent or even hostile to the Makassarese under Hasanuddin. In a public announcement concerning the findings of the seminar, the governor stressed that South Sulawesi was not merely a province or administrative unit but "constitutes a phenomenon which is very closely tied by culture, history, geography, area, politics, government and demography."16 While his statement is valid to some extent, it is, nevertheless, difficult to follow the logic behind cobbling together a single date from three temporally separate events. Global, National, Local The Culture Week festival has been conceived to be a celebration of all that is local within the province of South Sulawesi. Yet the festival is also an important arena for dialogue and negotiation with the nation and the world, marshaling local resources in order to gain national and international status for the entire province. The presence and participation of prominent national figures at the festival has preoccupied local government officials from the start. Cabinet ministers were present at each of the first two festivals, and the vice president, as mentioned above, in 1993. Indonesia's minister of tourism, postal service, and telecommunications, Soesilo Sudarman, was present for the opening, flanked by South Sulawesi Governor H. Achmad Amiruddin and South Sulawesi's pioneering dance choreographer Andi Nurhani Sapada (Bu Nani). The following year, the Indonesian minister of agriculture, Ir. Wardoyo, opened the festival. One of the features that stands out when one surveys the variety of presentations at the Culture Week festivals over the years is the display of weapons, flags, and people dressed and marching as soldiers. All of these reference local polities. Participants carry, and sometimes wield, various daggers (Ind. keris), lances, and swords distinctively local in design. A group of men dressed in local costume may represent the "army of Luwu," for example (1991), or court officials of the kingdom of Bone. Others carried flags/banners from several former kingdoms of South Sulawesi or shout oaths of allegiance (Mks. ngaruk) to a ruler. All of these were presented ostensibly as relics of a different time—part of local heritage and lore which should be saved from extinction—yet they may be presented with such fervor that one senses just beneath the surface of proper New Order Indonesia citizenship, an energy fed by local alliances and a renewed sense of local pride. As of yet, no prominent international figure has appeared as part of the Culture Week festival. More obvious in the realm of international recognition is

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the concern over attracting foreign tourists to the festival. In response to the low numbers at the 1992 festival, several officials suggested that the unpredicability of the date might make it difficult for foreign tourists to plan their itinerary to incorporate a visit to the festival. As a result, the 1993 festival was scheduled for nearly the same dates as those of the first two festivals (mid-July), although, as we have seen, it was delayed at the last moment to accommodate the vice president's visit. After the hiatus in 1994, Governor Palaguna determined that the festival should take place not in July but in October, coinciding with the date that he and a number of local consultants had decided was the "founding day" (Ind. hari jadi) of South Sulawesi, described above. Creativity or Preservation? Should the Culture Week festival emphasize the creative work of local people, striving to revise or even revolutionize local dance and music, or should it emphasize older, extant genres, many of which are—as has been said of so many cultural practices in New Order Indonesia—"almost extinct" (Ind. hampir punah, nyaris hilang)! Neither creativity nor preservation has become the absolute preoccupation of the festival under any of its organizers, but the issue is frequently raised in discourse about the festival, as well as other artistic endeavors supported in South Sulawesi. In the opinion of close observers with broad knowledge of artistic practice throughout the province (such as Halilintar and Djamaluddin Aziz at the Ujung Pandang office of the Department of Education and Culture), only the first Culture Week festival presented "truly authentic" (Ind. betul-betul asli) performances from the various districts. The others have presented a combination of practices, some resembling older practice, some consciously created (Ind. dikreasi) or engineered (Ind. direkayasd) to fit the festival needs and even to display new creative energies. From a certain perspective, of course, everything presented at the festivals has required creative input. Even the most traditional genres have had to be modified for presentation on stage or as part of the opening parade. And certain items, such as the dance-dramas, have involved bold originality in both choreography and musical accompaniment. Here the "traditional materials" discovered and supported through the inventorization and excavation efforts of previous festivals and other local efforts (official and otherwise) have served as a basis for innovative creations, but some young creative artists register disappointment that creativity has not been encouraged even more in these festivals. Even the most conspicuously creative element in the 1990 Culture Week festival, Halilintar's dance-drama "Hae," drew on local tradition. It involved opening shouts, dancers running with white streamers—many elements that bore no relation to indigenous modes of expression in movement, costume, or musical accompaniment. But it also incorporated dancers in costumes widely described as "traditional dress." One reviewer interpreted this as Halilintar's glorification of tradition and saw the whole work as a "mirror of contemporary South Sulawesi society.... On the one hand we don't want to lose our roots, on


45

the other hand we have the responsibility to accept/receive that which enters from outside."17 The following year, Halilintar presented another dance-drama, this time on the penultimate evening of the festival. In contrast to the non-narrative and impressionistic themes of "Hae" of 1990, this work took a clearly historical theme—the fall of the great Fort Somba Opu in 1669—and presented several historical vignettes with the title "Bunga Rampai Somba Opu" (Ind.; "Somba Opu Bouquet"). According to one reviewer, "From the language, dialogue, dance, costume, music, properties and everything else. It breathes with the spirit and culture of Makassar."18 And on the final evening of the 1991 festival, yet another tribute to Somba Opu was performed: a play by local playwright Rahman Arge, billed as a drama klosal (Ind.; colossal drama), with over two hundred performers drawn from more than ten troupes active in Ujung Pandnag and the district of Gowa, and simply entitled "Somba Opu." Arge cautioned against seeing his production as an accurate representation of history: "The atmosphere of war is only intended as a fleeting impression, but what is the emphasis of this Drama is situated in the conflict of ideas and humanity, between colonial occupation and patriotic resistance. This drama does not pretend to represent historical data, but instead [it is] especially an effort at interpretation of the 'spirit of history' relating to that which is important for the nation's future."19 The presentations on the final evening of the festivals in 1992, 1993, and 1995 all consisted of episodes from "Pakbundukanga ri Mangkasara'" (Mks.; "The Makassar War"), a dance-drama work written by local playwright Yudisthira Sukatanya.20 The subject matter, as noted above in my description of the 1993 festival, was essentially the same as that of Arge's and Halilintar's works. The tension between creativity and preservation has been hotly debated among intellectuals and performing artists. Yet for others, the difference between new works stimulated by the festival and the presentation of older genres was of little significance. What mattered was the value of both as manifestations of local cultural identity. The festival, then, was helping to "preserve South Sulawesi's culture"21 and also to "develop" it. Local Humility and Frustration An anonymous editorial in 1990 lamented the sad state of local culture in comparison to that of other areas (read Java and Bali) in Indonesia: "We have to admit, the development of South Sulawesian culture is quite far behind if we compare it to the development of culture in other areas of the archipelago.... South Sulawesian culture ... does not make a sufficient contribution to the development of national culture."22 The editorial continued to blame local society's whole attitude toward its own heritage: "The reason is certainly related to the attitude of our society these days who are sometimes improper/obscene in enacting their own culture."23 Two local culture experts, H. D. Mangemba and Mattulada, the article adds, see an urgent need "for engineering change in South Sulawesi culture soon" (Ind. segera dilakukan rekayasa budaya

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Sulsel)—something like the call by the governor and others for inventory, lest local culture further erode and be unable to find a place in the emerging national culture. In response, the editorial argues that promotional activities such as the Culture Week festival need to take place much more frequently, to stir things up after so many years of sleep. How fair is this opinion? Certainly by 1990 the kinds of cultural activities supported by the festival occurred with far greater frequency than during the troubled years of Kahar Muzakkar and the aftermath of 1965. But it is widely acknowledged and lamented among artists I spoke with that the period of disruption following the revolution was so long and pervasive within the province that many performance traditions had ceased to exist and, perhaps more tragically, others that could have had a very strong presence locally and very possibly nationally were in a fragile state. Thus the need for concerted effort now. What about the concept ofbudaya Sulsel (Ind.; South Sulawesian culture)? Some are suspicious, others even hostile to the very idea. One outspoken Mandar artist employed at the district-level Department of Education and Culture in Majene complained to Philip Yampolsky in October 1996 of the cultural colonialism involved in the Culture Week festival. He called the whole festival Polusi Budaya (Ind.; Cultural Pollution) instead of Pekan Budaya (Ind.; Culture Week), saying it was orchestrated from the provincial center, trying to create a South Sulawesian culture, which he saw as an impossibility. The committee wanted culture "made in Mandar, assembling Makassar," he told Yampolsky (in English). He explained with an example of the demand from the committee the previous year for the Mandar participants to provide something involving simultaneous singing and dancing for the opening parade, even though the only people who do both simultaneously in Mandar are crazy people wandering the streets. He felt that the festival organizers had their own ideas about packaging, wishing to present an image of cultural diversity within the province, but not by displaying the real diversity that exists. Nevertheless, many younger artists expressed a sense of mutual support across ethnic boundaries in this notion of an emerging South Sulawesian culture, which is more correctly seen as a concern for the various cultural strands that make up the South Sulawesi fabric in the national and international context than a conscious or deliberate call for a local melting pot. In other words, it is not a call to obliterate the aesthetic distinctions between Mandar, Torajan, Bugis, Makassarese, and other practices, but rather to support all of them— sometimes as distinct items of repertory (i.e., Makassarese, not Mandarese), other times as components in creative admixtures, such as dance-dramas, plays, and musical compositions. The result, of course, is the gradual construction of something only identifiable as South Sulawesian. Yet we have also seen the attempts by officials, such as the governor, to construct a sense of South Sulawesian culture going back many centuries. And indeed, despite the persistence of distinct languages, rituals, beliefs, and arts, numerous commonalities speak to a history of intensive interaction over many centuries. How meaningful the commonalities are, in comparison to the differ-


47

ences, is difficult to determine. Government officials have seemed to be concerned that a sense of province-wide identity be supported, even as obvious diversity persists at the more local levels. And, as we have seen, the governor himself has stated that South Sulawesian identity should not be seen as recently imposed, but as ancient heritage. Former hotel manager Syahrir Maula, who has ample experience in the area of arts promotion, expressed concern over the lack of creative courage in South Sulawesi compared to what he encountered in other provinces (such as Central Java, Sunda, and others). He complained that South Sulawesi very much needed artists who could break through the stiffness of the old, out-ofdate forms to develop them into something catchy and enjoyable, like Sunda's jaipongan (lively social dance and music genre, originating in the mid-1970s from earlier practice). He noted that practically every time Indonesia relied on regional arts to represent Indonesia internationally, it chose Javanese (he might have added Balinese) arts, whereas "South Sulawesi is hardly ever given a chance. The reason is of course because the arts in this area are not yet able to conform to the needs of the times."24 This would require not simple upgrading or modifications, but bold creative input. Whether this kind of bold creativity will eventually find a central position at the Culture Week festival is yet to be seen. For the 1990s, it continued to offer a broad range of items—attempting to "represent" the province to itself and to others. This required the visible indexing of many of the provinces regions, ethnic groups, conservative and innovative energies, and the catering to various tastes (local, national, international) in order to ensure adequate audience presence. It is a polysemic project, hotly contested by government officials, local artists, and willing and unwilling participants. As a first encounter with performance and cultural issues in South Sulawesi, I could not have stumbled on a better introduction in July 1993. We now need to delve more deeply into the historical antecedents to this festival and the major figures involved in representing South Sulawesi through the performing arts, a task which will occupy much of the next two chapters.

3

From Ritual Enactment to Stage Entertainment

Andi Nurhani Sapada and the Aestheticization of South Sulawesi's Music and Dance, 1940s-1970s

PERFORMANCE OUTSIDE OF RITUAL The creation of secular entertainment from the performative aspects of ritual enactment has been widespread in Indonesia—indeed, in many parts of the world—resulting in enormous changes that often delegitimize practices and beliefs that may have held sway for generations. It is tempting to view all instances as part of a grand narrative of secularization and commodification, but the circumstances and motivations vary markedly. Certainly what has taken place in South Sulawesi has, in part, been a response to the global march to modernity. But other important conditions underlie the particular contours of performance history in South Sulawesi. Not least among these has been the subordinate position of local peoples under Dutch colonial rule and, subsequently, as Indonesians living under the hegemonic shadow of Javanese-dominated official culture. Before the Indonesian revolution, a great variety of ritual dances and music were performed with some regularity in South Sulawesi's courts and villages. Some local performance genres were secular—the humorous pantomime kondo buleng, the playing of bamboo flutes (suling), and the singing of kelong verses to the accompaniment of kecapi. And even some of the ritual dances were at least occasionally presented in shortened versions for Dutch colonials 48

And!~Nwhani Sapada, 1940s-}97Os

49

and other foreign visitors. During her visit in 1938, Claire Holt witnessed and documented several ritually based dances (Makassarese pakarena bura'ne, Toraianpagellu' and mabadong, Bugispajaga, and several dances of the Bugis bissu). Commenting on the appearance of only ten rather than the usual twelve dancers in the pakarena bum 'ne, she comments, "But then this was not a real celebration. Only some guests from foreign lands had asked for the favour of seeing the pakarena dance. There was no danger, therefore, that some spirits or deities might be displeased on account of the incomplete number of dancers. Perhaps even, in this case, they would be gratified?" (Holt 1939/1980, 21-22). Traveling under official Dutch auspices, Holt was able to see performances specially arranged for her visit. However reluctant the performers might have been to present certain dances out of ritual context, they complied with the wishes of their colonial overlords. Refusal would no doubt have triggered some measure of harshness. Yet, as far as can be determined from written sources and the memories of the older performers I interviewed, no sustained effort was made during colonial times to develop ritual dance and music for secular performance. This was to change following the overthrow of the Dutch. Underlying many of the developments in performing arts in South Sulawesi since the late 1940s is this region's problematic relationship with the nation-state of Indonesia and its dominant ethnic group, the Javanese. As mentioned in the introductory chapter, the first two decades of Indonesia's independence (1945-1965) were enormously unstable for South Sulawesi. Colonial-era sources and local memory provide evidence of many local forms of music and dance being performed with some frequency prior to this period— either as part of court rituals for local nobility and royalty or as village rituals for individual commoner families and communal ceremonies. Yet these have faced great challenges since. Many came under direct persecution from the supporters of Darul Islam and Muhammadiyah owing to their evocation of local spirits and magic, as well as a mildly sensuous or even openly erotic nature— putting them at odds with the teachings of orthodox Islam. Many of the local people I spoke with remembered these Muslim forces killing bissu, smashing drums and other instruments, and destroying local female dance costumes, such as the short-sleeved baju bodo (deemed too risque, as it exposed the female arm). Many in Sulawesi had supported a Dutch-inspired coalition known as the Eastern Indonesian Nation (Negara Indonesia Timur, NIT) during the revolution. Although it collapsed and Sulawesi became part of the Javanese-dominated Republic of Indonesia in 1950, Sulawesians were viewed with suspicion and contempt by the Indonesian majority, and this view both triggered and was exacerbated by the Darul Islam resistance. While some South Sulawesians supported the resistance as a just response to marginalization by other Indonesians, others made attempts to forge a new legitimacy for South Sulawesi within the new national context, in spite of the chaos. One of the fronts for this kind of quest for legimacy was performance. The first president, Sukarno, was a keen supporter of the arts, especially those of his own ancestry—Javanese and Balinese. Yet he saw the need to incorporate the arts of other Indonesian regions.

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Sukarno helped create an atmosphere that persists today in Indonesia, in which local performing arts with roots going back generations were valued as cultural capital, not only for the particular locale but also for the nation itself. Early on, Sukarno promoted troupes of Indonesian performers traveling abroad as cultural diplomats. Under Suharto, these overseas "missions" continued, and many of these arts were promoted as tourist attractions. With South Sulawesi's troubled social climate during the Sukarno years, it is remarkable that significant efforts were made to nurture local performance traditions. Some villagers held secret ceremonies, risking severe reactions from the Darul Islam supporters. For them, the discourse of nationhood and their place within the new Indonesian nation had very little to do with their tenacious efforts. Rather, it was the persistence of religious beliefs in the ritual efficacy of performance. For others, however, placed in positions of privilege and larger political authority, South Sulawesi's place within the nation was indeed a nagging problem. What might South Sulawesi contribute to the cultural and artistic life of Indonesia? ANDI NURHANI SAPADA Even before my first visit to South Sulawesi, Indonesian friends mentioned the name Andi Nurhani Sapada as a dominant figure in the region's performing arts. And during my first few days there, her name came up repeatedly—first with Halilintar's students, then with Halilintar and Mukhlis, without my asking about her. As I sat watching a dance rehearsal at the institution where Halilintar taught, I asked several of the students to comment on each dance item as it was rehearsed. For the first few, they gave the name of the dance, followed by the name of an ethnic group and location from which it came—for example, Tari Pagelluk, Toraja (Tana Toraja); Tari Sayo Kembe, Mandar (Kalumpang, Mamuju). These were followed by a Tari To Mepare and Tari Pattennung, identified as "karya Anida"—the former based on Torajan movements, the latter on Bugis movements (from Pare-Pare). "Anida," they explained, was an acronym for "Andi Nurhani Sapada," the famous choreographer who had transformed South Sulawesian performance. Halilintar escorted me to her house the next day for the first of what would be many meetings with her. As I was to learn from many South Sulawesians, whether they liked her choreographic and musical works or not, her vision and energy were seen as enormously important in shaping the performing arts in South Sulawesi, particularly in the first few decades after Indonesian independence. Basically, she is credited with creating a stage performing arts tradition in South Sulawesi, building on choreographic and musical elements deriving from ritual practices and fashioning from them products appropriate for secular entertainment. Indeed, there seems universal agreement among the people of South Sulawesi that this one woman almost single-handedly steered the course of South Sulawesi's performing arts from the 1950s well into the 1970s. She did so by drawing on some of the very arts subjected to persecution by Darul Islam and

Andi Nurhani Sapada, 1940s-1970s

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Ny. H. Andi Nurhani Sapada ("Bu Nani") at her home in Ujung Pandang/Makassar, August 1999

recontextualizing them as short, secular stage performances, appropriate for entertainment not only locally but also—more important—nationally and internationally. Born of mixed noble ancestry, a Bugis father and a Makassarese mother, and provided with education and travel experiences exceedingly rare for Sulawesian girls, even of high birth, Andi Siti Nurhani Daeng Masugi (as she was known until her marriage) felt a need to secularize South Sulawesian performance, to put it on stage, to make it accessible as entertainment to an audience seeking beauty and diversion, rather than spiritual potency. Over the course of three decades Bu Nani, as she is known, drew on a variety of local ritual dances to create a repertory of short, fixed choreographies, easily taught in formal classes, and performed on stages at local wedding receptions, provincial contests and festivals, and occasionally at national events and on Indonesian international artistic missions. She was born in the town of Pare-Pare, about 135 kilometers north of Makassar, on 25 June 1929. Her father, Andi Makkasau Parenrengi Lawawo, was a local ruler (Mks. datu) who turned away from this position to join in the struggle for Indonesian independence and was one of many South Sulawesians executed under the ruthless campaign of Dutch Captain Raymond "Turk" Westerling in 1947.1 While she was still very young, she moved to Makassar, where she lived with her grandparents and, beginning in 1933, attended a Dutch school (Europeesche Langere School, Saint Jozef). She also joined a young girls' club (Jonge Meisjes Club), organized by Dutch nuns. When her

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grandfather was assigned to work in Ambon in 1938, she went along with him and continued her education there until the beginning of the Japanese occupation, in 1942. During the occupation she remained in Ambon, where she studied Japanese language and typing. She returned to Makassar in 1946 and, at the urging of her mother and her grandfather, continued her schooling. The family's emphasis on education, particularly for a girl, was truly unusual. Her mother, Rahmatilah Sonda Daeng Baji, had been the first woman from South Sulawesi to go to school in Java, an experience that contributed to the family's progressive stance. South Sulawesi had an extraordinarily low rate of literacy and formal education, even for men, in comparison to many other regions of Indonesia at the time of independence (see Harvey 1974, 75,430). From as early as she could remember, she was keenly interested in music and dance, though in Makassar and Ambon her experience centered primarily on Western and Western-derived forms. She learned piano and developed a singing voice that became known to radio listeners in Makassar in the late 1940s as the voice of Daeng Sugi. She decided to use a stage name in order to maintain anonymity, since it was considered inappropriate for a woman of noble birth to be an "entertainer." When I spoke with her in 1994 about her life, she emphasized that she was especially concerned to keep her immediate family from knowing she was performing publicly and to protect the family name. From 1948 to 1951, she sang with the group Badji Minasa,2 led by the famous Makassarese songwriter and musician Borra Daeng Ngirate. She was widely acclaimed for her rendition of "Anging Mammirik," a song attributed to Ngirate, but whose text dates back at least to the latter nineteenth century (cf. Matthes 1883, 32). The Badji Minasa repertory consisted of songs composed and performed in Western diatonic tuning, accompanied by various small ensembles incorporating at least some Western instruments (such as violin, guitar, clarinet, and bass, among others). Her main emphasis as a singer was in the performance of Makassarese songs (Ind. lagu Makassar; Mks. lagu Mangkasarak), arising from her long residence in the city of Makassar. Yet she was equally fluent in Bugis and Makassarese languages, and from her formal education she was fluent in Dutch. She also had learned the new national language, Indonesian, and by 1947, as a part of a middle school organization (Persatuan Pelajar Sekolah Menengah), composed a script for an Indonesian-language radio drama: Majulah Puteriku (Go Forward, My Girl). Later, as a college student at the local teacher's college, IKIP (Institut Keguruan dan Ilmu Pendidikan), she majored in English, having already studied the language during previous schooling and used it on her many international trips. Despite her mixed Bugis-Makassar ancestry and her residence in Makassar, the first dance style of South Sulawesi that Bu Nani studied was the pattuddu, a female dance of the Mandar, who live mostly in the northwestern region of the province. She studied with Inche Maulana Daeng Tarring, the wife of her high school teacher in Makassar, and rechoreographed a version of pattuddu in 1947. She describes her version as quite close to what she studied, saying that it did not diverge from its original form (tidak meninggalkan bentuk


53

aslinya) (Soepanto, Hafied, and Kutoyo 1991,49). In 1950, President Sukarno visited Makassar and, when he informed local authorities that he was looking for a local traditional dance, Bu Nani was asked to prepare something and presented her "Tari Pattuddu" with costumes borrowed from former Mandar royalty (personal communication, 19 August 1999). In 1950 she married Andi Sapada Mappangile, a lieutenant in the military police, and took the name by which she is still formally known today: Andi Nurhani Sapada. Her husband was one of the revolutionary heroes recognized both locally and nationally. He opposed Kahar Muzzakar and the Darul Islam forces and supported cooperation and integration with the Republic of Indonesia. Though not a performer, he supported his wife's artistic endeavors in the early years and helped develop an expanded musical ensemble during the 1960s (see below). They had nine children over the course of the next eighteen years, some of them accomplished performers.

TAILORING THE PAKARENA FOR DIVERSE AUDIENCES Bu Nani's second effort at rechoreography, the one for which she is most famous, was the Makassarese pakarena (more precisely, pakarena baine, for female dancers), for which she took a vastly complicated genre of dance and music still performed in villages and once performed for Makassarese royalty over the course of many hours, drew on certain movements and created a dance lasting less than ten minutes, with a much-altered musical accompaniment. She began her study of pakarena in 1951, by inviting to her home a famous pakarena troupe leader, Parancing, from the village of Polongbangkeng, in the district of Takalar (about sixty kilometers south of Makassar city). As she gained familiarity with the movement vocabulary, the musical accompaniment, the costuming, and the patterns of interaction among the performers, she decided on a number of radical changes in order to render it appropriate for secular entertainment and a variety of audiences. She opted to discard the vocal sections, whose style she judged to be too peculiar and inaccessible to a nonMakassarese audience, replacing them instead with a well-known local song employing a diatonic scale ("Bunganna Ilang Kebok"). She maintained some of the drumming, but eliminated entirely the element of spontaneity so prevalent in the longer pakarena, and emphasized the calmer rhythmic patterns over the more frenzied ones—thereby making it sound more "civilized," she told me, and also making it easier to play, and thus more accessible to a wide spectrum of musicians. She even incorporated a Mandarese drum rhythm for one section (Soepanto, Hafied, and Kutoyo 1991, 50). Her "Tari Pakarena" evolved over the next several decades, with alteration of dance movements and the text to the accompanying song. Assisting in this process were two outstanding local musicians, both resident in Ujung Pandang in the 1990s and both outspoken advocates of Makassarese culture and identity: Fachruddin Daeng Romo and Mappaselleng Daeng Maggau. These two men

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Pakarena dance in the style pioneered by Bu Nani, performed at a variety show in Mamajang, Ujung Pandang, celebrating the fifty-fourth anniversary of Indonesia's independence, August 1999

were masters of the virtuosic Makassarese pakarena drumming style associated with the areas of Gowa and Takalar. When they collaborated with Bu Nani, they both saw benefit in broadening the appeal of Makassarese arts, even if they did not agree with all the changes Bu Nani and her followers introduced. My hours with Romo were among the most memorable of all the time I spent in South Sulawesi. As he recalled his early days he exploded with complaints about the undeserved neglect of Makassarese revolutionary heroes, the lack of appreciation and understanding for things deeply Makassarese, such as pakarena. He grumbled about the radical transformations to this dance wrought by Bu Nani, even though he had participated as a drummer and consultant. In its village forms, and presumably its court forms, the musicians alternated between soulful singing of ancient and powerful Makassarese songs and spirited instrumental playing, which expressed the strong, extroverted ideal of Makassarese masculinity. With musicians and dancers facing each other, the female dancers were the essence of composure, scarcely moving to the thunderous drumming, and often standing entirely still, gazing downward. Bu Nani's pakarena no longer placed the musicians and dancers in proximity, facing one another. And it no longer emphasized this contrast; the musicians' role was greatly muted and the dancers' correspondingly more active and, though not flirtatious, certainly more alluring. Former versions of pakarena often required the dancers to cover most of their faces with their fans, and to gaze no more than three meters in front of them (personal communication, F. Dg. Romo, 9 September 1995). Bu Nani told me her pakarena allowed the audience to see

Andi Nurhani Sapada, 1940s- 1970s

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the dancers, who would normally be attractive girls or young women. What a shame, she said, to have pretty dancers that remained mostly hidden from view (personal communication, Bu Nani, 23 July 1993). Moreover, she modified costumes and chose color combinations based not on their former signification of social rank but on more purely aesthetic criteria.3 INVENTING A MUSICAL ENSEMBLE Subsequent efforts by Bu Nani involved Bugis dances, but she also began to create new, secular choreographies (see below), many accompanied by wellknown secular songs in local languages, these often arranged for a new kind of ensemble she and her husband had developed, consisting of two-stringed lutes (Ind. kecapi) and bamboo flutes (Ind. suling), often combined with local percussion instruments (e.g., item 14 on accompanying CD). She attributes the initial idea to her husband, who suggested combining the kecapi with suling in 1960, shortly after their move to the kabupaten Sidenreng-Rappang (Sidrap), where he had been assigned as district head (Ind. bupati). Kecapi and suling had each been widely used in South Sulawesi, but not played together.4 The ensemble came to be known simply as kecapi suling, and it involved at least several kecapi, one or more suling, and a double-headed drum, usually Bugis genrang or Makassarese ganrang. Other indigenous instruments provide secondary rhythmic accompaniment: lea-lea/lae-lae (fringed bamboo), dengkang (gong), and beccing/baccing (cymbals).5 Often the kecapi and suling play the same melody, though the suling dominates. In many arrangements the suling play the melody with the softer-sounding kecapi providing simple harmony or filling in during rests or long-held tones in the suling part. Bu Nani worked with musician and arranger A. S. Said to develop the ensemble and its repertory. At first, Bugis songs from the local region (Sidrap is largely Bugis) were arranged for the ensemble. Soon other songs were added— Makassarese, Mandar, Torajan, Bugis from other regions, and even a few Indonesian songs. These were sometimes performed publicly simply as music, but they served primarily as the new musical sound for Bu Nani's dances. In the late 1960s, A. S. Said and other musicians expanded this ensemble by increasing the number of kecapi and suling players to as many as 90 (Pulu 1975, 1). Though given the name sinfoni kecapi (sometimes spelled simphony kecapi or symphoni kecapi), the suling is no less important in this enlarged ensemble than in the smaller one. Music for the large ensemble has always been arranged and written out, with kecapi and suling playing four-part harmonized arrangements of songs (mostly Bugis), and sometimes with the melody and words sung by the kecapi players (see Pulu 1975). The texture is mostly homophonic, with occasional passages of contrapuntal writing; and the ensemble is significantly louder than the intimate playing of one or several suling or kecapi alone. The first public performance of sinfoni kecapi took place on a visit to South Sulawesi by President Suharto only a few years after he was first elected to office—either in 1969 (Pulu 1975, 1) or 1972 (Sapada 1975, 16). It was

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intended as an impressive ensemble, and has played primarily for large government functions. Nevertheless, the relatively high pitch range and soft sound of both the melodic instruments and the lack of any bass range make this ensemble sound far less forceful than the name sinfoni suggests. In order to accommodate the diatonic songs arranged for the sinfoni kecapi and the smaller kecapi suling ensembles, Bu Nani and Said employed a kecapi with six grip (cylindrical protrusions along the neck for stopping the strings), arranged to produce diatonic intervals. This version of the instrument had been developed by Bu Nani in 1957 (Lathief 1994a, 23), prior to her move to Sidrap, and could sound seven tones per octave, approximating (although not quite dupicating) a Western major diatonic scale. The seventh degree, now routinely referred to as ti (from the do-re-mi solfege), is somewhat flat, as it is on many suling of South Sulawesi. The oldest known kecapi in South Sulawesi contain only four (see Kaudern 1927a; Lathief 1994a, 1996c). The Bugis musician Daeng Massikki of Sidrap is credited with adding a fifth grip after his 1911 apprenticeship to a violin player from Malaysia, Ince Daimang (Lathief 1994a, 22). This change enabled the kecapi to play the Malaysian-influenced Bugis songs ("Suben Dilari," "Masmira," "Timang Bertimang," among others), which use a Western-influenced scale system (Lathief 1994a, 23). The six-grip kecapi has come to be known as the kecapi Anida (the acronym based on Bu Nani's married name, explained above), and is now the kecapi produced and sold most widely, the one used in school music programs. Clearly, we can clearly see the hegemonic influence of Western music operating in South Sulawesi in the production of a new musical ensemble and style that, owing to the prominence of its producers (Bu Nani and her associates), quickly comes to represent South Sulawesi, to itself, to other Indonesians, and abroad. The use of local language and local instruments assured its identification as South Sulawesian (or, more precisely, Bugis), and the harmony and diatonic scale are intended not to make it "Western" but to make it "modern." However, in the 1990s I encountered oppositional practice and discourse that problematized the use of these Western-derived elements in a music purporting to represent South Sulawesi, as will be discussed further in the following chapter. NEW CHOREOGRAPHIES AND MUSICAL ARRANGEMENTS FOR SOUTH SULAWESI A number of dances Bu Nani created during the 1960s drew on Bugis traditions from various regions of South Sulawesi. In 1963 she choreographed "Tari Donda'dondang," inspired by the sensual female dance pajogek (pajoge) from Bone.6 As with the female entertainer dances of Java (Jvn. ronggeng, taledhek, tandhak)—which are believed to be the historical source of the Bugis pajogek7—the pajogek sing and dance in a flirtatious manner, joined by men from the audience, who are expected to pay a fee for the privilege of dancing with them (Lathief 1983, 46-47; Kennedy 1953, 103-104). Sometimes the pajogek

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was performed by men in female costume (Bgs. calabai), as reported by Holt (1939/1980, 87-89),8 who witnessed staged performances by both female and male pajogek. Several Indonesian scholars also mention the transvestite pajogek, whom they identify as pajogek angkong (Sumarjo et al. 1972, 32; Lathief 1983, 47-49). The female pajogek described by Kennedy (in Pampanua, north of Bone) were slaves. Both Holt and Kennedy remark on the unerring maintenance of a downward gaze by these dancers, even though the movements were at times lively and the basis of the dance erotic. Bu Nani's dance maintained some of the sensual movements, with greater license for the dancers to turn their eyes toward the audience, but now performed without the presumption of erotic availability. The "Tari Donda'dondang" provided no opportunity for men to join in—spontaneously or otherwise—as social dance partners with the female dancers. Instead, this new dance made a stage spectacle of the pajogek movements, to be appreciated as dance, as art—albeit light entertainment—and not as a precursor to flirtatious encounter, either during the dance or afterwards. Whereas the musical accompaniment for pajogek was limited to one or two drums accentuating the movements of the dancers and providing a rhythmic framework for their singing, Bu Nani's "Tari Donda'dondang" is named after the song that accompanies it, "Donda'dondang Lancirang" (Bgs.; "Song/Singing from Lancirang," a village in Sidrap district), which is played by the kecapi suling ensemble that has become emblematic of Bu Nani's work. Shortly after arriving in Sidrap, Bu Nani choreographed several dances inspired by local practice, but not based in any particular local dances. One was "Tari Pa'bekkenna Ma'jina" (Bgs.; "Goddess's Belt/Sash Dance"), also called "Tari Pelangi" (Ind.; "Rainbow Dance"), debuted in 1961, which features seven girl dancers twirling colored sashes or scarves symbolizing the coming of rain at the end of the dry season. Though the theme of welcoming the first rains was based on everyday life in South Sulawesi, this dance was not modeled on any extant dance of South Sulawesi. Bu Nani reports that the twirling was inspired by dances she saw while on tour in China in 1954 (Sapada 1975, 25). The musical accompaniment consisted of two Bugis songs, "Kandope" and "Ongkona Arampone"9 with the usual combination of kecapi, suling, gendang, lea-lea, and beccing providing instrumental interludes as well as melodic and rhythmic support for the songs. Also choreographed in 1961 was her widely popular "Tari Bosara'," in which female dancers each carry a bosarak (Mks./Bgs.), a covered dish used in Bugis and Makassarese ceremonies, in this instance containing sweet snacks (Ind., Mks. kue). Though the practice of offering guests food in bosarak dates back many generations, they were not carried by dancers until Bu Nani choregraphed this dance—which draws mostly on Bugis movements, with some Makassarese elements as well. It is a favorite at tourist presentations and other kinds of receptions for visitors, as it incorporates crowd-pleasing snack service as the finale of the dance. The musical accompaniment, like the dance movements and the main dance prop, has both Bugis and Makassarese origins. It consists of three Bugis songs: "Donda'dondang Lancirang," "Indo Logo" (a

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personal name), and "Kapala Mojong" (Bgs.; "Head of Mojong [Village]"), the same instrumentation as in "Tari Pa'bekenna Ma'jina," and specifically Makassarese drum patterns, such as tunrung pakanjarak (see further discussion in chapter 7). Neither of these dances has even a hint of sacral character, though they relate to locally important events: the blessing of rain after months of dry season and the serving of guests. Some of Bu Nani's dances are purely celebrations of movement and secular themes, such as her "Tari Anging Mammiri'" (Mks. "The Wind Blows"; 1963), accompanied by the song she helped make famous during her days singing with Ngirate's Badji Minasa group (item 14 on the CD). And her "Tari Pattennung" (Bgs.; "Weaving") of 1962, inspired by a Balinese dance ("Tari Tenun") she had seen performed at the president's palace in Bogor, depicts women weaving cloth for silk sarongs. However, other of her dances reference ritual beliefs and practices even as they emphasize the aesthetics of pretty costumes and complex floor patterns over any claim to the conjuring or manipulation of spiritual power. Most famous is her "Tari Marellau Pammase Dewata" (Bgs.; "Asking the Blessing of the Gods"), which Bu Nani describes as having a "sacred quality" (Ind. sifat sakral) and represents old customs and beliefs from around South Sulawesi (Sapada 1975, 17). The dancers bear various paraphernalia associated with local rituals, such as incense, betel, bananas, cooked rice, and flower offerings, as they dance to two Bugis songs, employing the usual instruments, though without beccing, an instrument more closely associated with ritual than others in the usual ensemble Bu Nani employed. The songs are "Ana' Bura Mali'" (Bgs.; "Child Who Is Not Taken Care Of," "Orphan") and "Ongkona Sidenreng" (Bgs.; "Favorite of Sidenreng"). The dance movements themselves, however, were inspired by a Western dance Bu Nani saw during a visit to Cairo, Egypt, in 1963—the opening number in a show entitled "The Balloon." Indeed, despite Bu Nani's association of this dance with Bugis ceremonies that invoke the spirits of deceased ancestors (Ind./Bgs. upacara "attoriolong"; Sapada 1975, 17), it has always been a staged entertainment, appreciated primarily as art, not as ritual. Bu Nani often used it as an opening number in major performances as a respectful request for divine blessing, yet it was not an enactment in which direct contact with ancestors or deities was sought. While living in Sidrap in the 1960s, Bu Nani and her family also gained familiarity with some of the ritual dances of the nearby Torajan highlands. In the face of ongoing denigration of the Torajans by the lowland Bugis, Makassarese, and Mandarese, Bu Nani's daughter We Tenrisau Andi Sapada drew on Torajan ritual dance movements and drumming rhythms to create the very secular "Tari Ma'latu Kopi" (= "Tari Mallatu Kopi"; Tor.; "Picking Coffee Dance") in 1968. Following an opening section of drumming taken from the accompaniment of the Torajan pagelluk and utilizing a Torajan double-headed drum, the musical accompaniment included a Torajan song, "Batingna Lebonna," followed by the multilingual "Cakodo'-kodo'." Many people remarked to me on the special significance of this work, for in the schools she opened around the province, there was considerable resistance on the part of the Muslim lowlanders to don


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the costumes and learn the movements associated with the upland animist and Christian Torajans. Yet the reputation of Bu Nani and her family was so well established by this time that younger students were able to overcome their initial reluctance. That Bu Nani's eldest daughter, with her noble Bugis ancestry, was the creator of the dance and she and her siblings willing to perform it, gave the dance an acceptability that would not have come nearly as readily were lowlanders asked to imitate Torajan ritual dance directly. The crossing of ethnic lines was evident from Bu Nani's earliest efforts, and her schools made absolutely no attempt to channel Makassarese into learning her Makassarese-based dances, Bugis to learn her Bugis-based dances, and so on. Likewise with the music, which in some cases combined elements of genres developed by different ethnic groups within one piece or medley. Though many of the songs arranged for sinfoni kacapi were Bugis, she promoted these widely throughout the province, regardless of ethnicity. No less significant than the crossing of ethnic boundaries was Bu Nani's contribution to the breakdown of class boundaries. Torajans were still widely viewed as social inferiors by lowland South Sulawesians in the 1990s. Torajans had often been taken as slaves by lowlanders until the early twentieth century (see Bigalke 1983, Sutherland 1983) and still often worked as servants in the homes of middle- and upper-class Bugis and Makassarese. And among the lowland groups, performers had been from the lowest echelons of society. Halilintar told me that Bu Nani's special contribution was to take dances formerly performed only by members of the lower classes and make them respectable by removing them from their context. Since Bu Nani herself was a member of the elite, her willingness to teach and perform made it easier socially for others to follow (personal communication, 21 July 1994). FULFILLING NATIONAL EXPECTATIONS: BU NANI'S DANCE-DRAMAS Many of Bu Nani's dances represent actions that suggest a simple narrative. Beginning in the mid-1960s, Bu Nani expanded her creative output by developing more complex narratives that could fit more appropriately in the category of dance-drama, rather than dance, some depicting national history, others local South Sulawesian history or customs. These clearly constituted a response to Javanese and Balinese dance-dramas, which were held in high regard at the national level, representing a kind of benchmark of artistic sophistication. And Bu Nani had long been concerned with gaining respect at the national level. Her early staged versions of pakarena and other local dances had come to the attention of President Sukarno, who invited her troupe regularly to perform for National Independence Day celebrations in Jakarta, beginning in August 1953, and included her troupe in a number of international tours, including a celebrated tour to China in 1953. The content of the early dance-dramas consisted largely of preexisting choreographies (often those created by Bu Nani herself), songs, and drum patterns. But the use of these indigenous forms to convey a

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story was new. This creative development gave South Sulawesi an important basis for competition with Java and Bali, putting it well ahead of most other societies in eastern Indonesia, many of which were still having considerable difficulty fielding dance-drama troupes for national festivals and competitions in the 1990s. Bu Nani's first effort at dance-drama, in fact, chose as its subject a historical figure with no connections whatsoever with Sulawesi. This work, Kartini (1966), celebrates the life of Javanese noblewoman Kartini, a women officially touted as an early Indonesian feminist and nationalist, but often viewed with some ambivalence, owing to her close Dutch friendships. Shortly afterward, she choreographed a second dance-drama whose subject and style were very clearly South Sulawesian: Sultan Hasanuddin, which opens with a version of pakarena, followed by a depiction of aspects of the life this Makassarese ruler. This is a large-scale work, involving forty-two dancers, five musicians, and one expert at the shouting of oaths (Mks. pangaruk). Instead of the usual kecapisuling ensemble, this work involves a pakarena ensemble (two ganrang, one puik-puik, and one gong) as well as one player of the indigenous fiddle kesokkesok (who also sings sinrilik). The verbal texts are in Indonesian and Makassarese, and the entire production engages the issue of Sultan Hasanuddin's importance as a "national" hero (of Indonesia) through the magic of hindsight. Twelve of the dancers represent guests at the court of Gowa from societies on other islands: Sumatra, Java, Kalimantan, Bali, Timor, and Maluku (the Moluccas). Narration in Indonesian clearly explains the accomplishments of Hasanuddin and the glories of the kingdom of Gowa, seeming to promote local pride among Makassarese and other South Sulawesians and, at the same time, educate non-South Sulawesian Indonesians. A lengthy passage of oath-shouting (aruk) is given in Makassarese, providing an element of local authenticity, but is then redelivered in Indonesian translation (see Sapada 1975, 69-71). This and others, such as her 1967 Pajonga (Mks.; Deer Hunter), focus on South Sulawesian subject matter and employ dance movements inspired by local traditions and musical accompaniment utilizing South Sulawesian instruments. Yet they clearly represent an important effort by Bu Nani to respond to the challenge from elsewhere in Indonesia to provide South Sulawesi with some repertory in the category "dance-drama." Her earlier Kartini was an even more deliberate engagement with the national context, employing South Sulawesian movement and music but celebrating a Javanese woman prominent in the national imagination.

OTHER INNOVATIONS Several of Bu Nani's dances were choreographed, or rechoreographed, to be presented by large numbers of people as tari massal (Ind.; mass dance). Such spectacles became widespread in Indonesia during the Suharto era (19661998), often used to welcome distinguished visitors or to celebrate important official events, such as national holidays, commemorations, and the opening of


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large public buildings or other projects. These could involve as many as several hundred dancers and a large number of musicians, in Bu Nani's case almost always an augmented version of her kecapi ensemble. One of these was Tari Paduppa (Bgs.; Receive Guests Dance), a welcoming dance to receive guests at a social function, presented by three hundred dancers for the opening of the College Students Sports Week in Makassar in 1968 (Soepanto, Hafied, and Kutoyo!991,55). Bu Nani's frequent experience overseas and in Java provided her with an unusually broad perspective on movements, floor patterns, musical accompaniment, costuming, and staging. Yet with this knowledge, she nearly always emphasized the South Sulawesian identity of her dance creations, whatever the outside influences. One dance, however, her "Tari Sulawesi Pa'rasanganta" (Mks.; "Sulawesi, Our Country") of 1968, combined costumes, movements, and music from around the island of Sulawesi, in an explicit indexing of the island, rather than any single ethno-linguistic group or large region. Bu Nani's description of the dance (Sapada 1975, 50-55) categorizes sections by ethnic group and province, but it also suggests a kind of cultural integrity for Sulawesi as a whole, evident also in the name of the arts institute she founded, Institut Kesenian Sulawesi (Ind.; Sulawesi Arts Institute; see below). Although by 1968 the provincial boundaries of South Sulawesi had already been established, the reference to Sulawesi as a meaningful sociopolitical unit ("our country," "our land") had some historical basis. The piece itself consists of ten dancers, each wearing a costume deriving from one ethno-linguistic group. The musical accompaniment consists of five songs, one from each provincial region of the island and one in Indonesian. The dance opens and closes with the title song, "Sulawesi Pa'rasanganta" ("Sulawesi Pakrasanganta"), composed by Baharuddin Mandjia, with text in Makassarese language. As the piece begins, four dancers appear, each wearing a costume representing one of South Sulawesian group: Bugis, Makassarese, Mandarese, and Torajan. On a vocal signal ("Ooo"), the music switches to "Wulele Sanggula" from Kendari, Southeast Sulawesi, as two dancers appear, one dressed in costume representing Buton, the other Kendari. This is followed by the song "Ina Nikeke" from Manado, North Sulawesi, with two additional dancers, one in costume from Manado, the other in costume from Gorontalo. Last to appear are two dancers wearing costumes from Central Sulawesi, from the Donggala and Kulawi groups, dancing to the Donggala song "Pomonte." Each of these songs was associated with a dance in the region of its origin: "Wulele Sanggula," from tari malulu, a social dance in which men and women hold hands; "Ina Nikeke," also from a social dance; and "Pomonte," from a dance depicting the harvest of rice. As each new set of dancers appear, those already on stage continue to dance, their movements conforming to the style of the region featured. Thus, although each costume corresponds with one ethnolinguistic group, the dancers wearing these costumes perform movements associated with more than one group. The next section involves all ten dancers arrayed in a V shape, dancing to the refrain section of "Rayuan Pulau Kelapa" (Ind.; "Lure of the Island of Coconuts"), a widely known Indonesian song

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employing a diatonic scale and often harmonized. This, Bu Nani explains, is included to signifiy the "unity of the Indonesian people" (Sapada 1975, 54), and is followed by the dancers' exit to the title song "Sulawesi Pa'rasanganta." The emphasis on distinctive costuming, indexing particular ethno-linguistic groups who maintain this level of difference within a larger frame of unity or sameness echoes the national motto (Bhinneka Tunggallka; Old Jvn.; Unity in Diversity) and presaged New Order approaches to national culture evidenced in the Taman Mini "Indonesia Indah" theme park outside Jakarta, as well as countless festivals and arts missions. Through the 1990s, South Sulawesi continued to represent itself, in tourist performances and other cross-cultural encounters, with costume displays, emphasizing clothing and jewelry items, more than dance and music. For example, a parade of young women in five distinctive costumes is a regular feature in the tourist shows provided by Makassar's most famous performing arts troupe, Yayasan Anging Mammiri' (usually referred to as YAMA). This emphasis on costume is, I believe, attributable to the greater apparent equality across ethnic groups in sophistication and of clothing, in comparison to performance traditions. Whereas a full Javanese gamelan or Balinese gamelan gong kebyar often makes a stunning impression, all the more so when they accompany dynamic dances, the musical traditions of South Sulawesi are less likely to have immediate appeal and the dances make their strongest first impression through the costuming more than the movement vocabulary.

THE DISSEMINATION OF BU NANI'S WORKS Along with the creation of new dance and music, Bu Nani developed a system of education and dissemination, beginning with the founding of Institut Kesenian Sulawesi (Ind.; Sulawesi Arts Institute, IKS) on 2 July 1962. This private organization, administered and funded outside the purview of national or local government programs, spread rapidly during the 1960s and early 1970s, by which time there were branches in fifteen kabupaten (more than half of South Sulawesi's twenty-three administrative districts). Bu Nani's dances, the music created by her team of musicians, and her approach to costuming, were all taught widely as graduates of her early classes took up positions around the province. Here, it seemed, was the infrastructure necessary for the growth of a pan—South Sulawesian tradition of music and dance, even as the genres associated with particular ethno-linguistic groups and subgroups continued to survive and slowly evolve under older forms of village patronage. In the 1970s, she also pioneered in helping to found the Konservatori Kesenian Sulawesi (Ind.; Conservatory of Sulawesi Arts) in Makassar city, later to become a governmentfunded school of the arts: Sekolah Menengah Karawitan Indonesia, first in Ujung Pandang, now located just south of the city, in Sungguminasa (see Mangemba 1978, 18-19). While IKS became rather less active in the mid-1980s, the SMKI has drawn a substantial number of students each year, further contributing to the legitimization and intermingling of "South Sulawesian" arts (see chapter 8).

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To assist in the dissemination of new dance creations taught under the aegis of IKS, most of which were choreographed by Bu Nani herself, the Ujung Pandang branch of this institute arranged with the local Special Record commercial cassette company to produce a cassette of music for accompaniment of IKS dances. This cassette, still available at cassette stores in Ujung Pandang in the mid- to late 1990s, contains music for many of the dances discussed above, along with a few others choreographed by Bu Nani or her senior students. For all of these but the "Tari Pakarena," the musical accompaniment is the small kecapi-suling ensemble, with drum and sometimes other percussion. The recording has, by all accounts, contributed enormously to the formation of a dance (and dance music) canon in South Sulawesi, and to the standardization of accompaniment and thus choreography for the individual items. The wide availability of cassette players among dance teachers and students and the extremely limited choice of accompaniment for local dances in the marketplace has made this one of the most successful recordings of local music. While much creative activity in Indonesia goes unrecognized, Bu Nani's many accomplishments in South Sulawesi and beyond earned her the highest form of recognition at the national level in 1 972, when she was awarded the prestigious Anugerah Seni (Ind.; Arts Award), given to only a handful of artists from around the country, most of them usually Javanese. She was the first person from South Sulawesi to win this award, and the only one to win it in dance. Not a single musician from South Sulawesi has been so honored. The only other artist from South Sulawesi to win this award in any field is dramatist Rahman Arge (in 1978). Bu Nani is deservedly proud of this award, for it simultaneously honored her own personal creative efforts and her longtime crusade to win recognition in the national arena for performing arts of South Sulawesi.

BU NANI'S VISION AND LEGACY I came to know Bu Nani in the mid-1990s, a time during which she was still active in an advisory capacity, serving on the juries for arts contests, continuing to travel and to write, but no longer in the prime of her career. What I learned in our conversations echoed what her biographers (Soepanto, Hafied, and Kutoyo 1991) say of her special concern for the place of South Sulawesi's performing arts within the larger contexts of the Indonesian nation and the modern world. Speaking of her invitations to perform with her troupe in Jakarta and abroad, as a representative of the Indonesian nation-state, she says, "With these opportunities, South Sulawesi carved a path in the historical development of its dance arts by placing itself on a par with the dance arts from the regions of Bali and Java."10 Her sense of competition is clearly directed at the two regions most recognized for having significant, or "heavy" art forms (Bali and Java). When she speaks elsewhere of South Sulawesi's arts competing on a national level, she refers to the need to reach the level of "other regional arts that have weight" (Ind. seni daerah-daerah lain yang berbobot, Soepanto, Hafied, and Kutoyo

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1991,4). Here she is obviously aware of the cultural vision expressed by the Javanese educator Ki Hadjar Dewantara and incorporated into the 1945 Constitution, which saw a new Indonesian culture emerging from the "peaks of regional culture" (see Yampolsky 1995). Dewantara certainly implied that prominent cultural peaks were to be found in Central Java and Bali, but for him and other Javanese nation-builders, perhaps not in Sulawesi. Eschewing a view of regional culture as static, Bu Nani rightly sees regional and national culture as contested, negotiated turf, and has striven to build up South Sulawesi's potential cultural peaks and to assure the Javanese at least occasional glimpses of them. Aside from any aesthetic particulars, many of Java and Bali's performing arts were widely known to have been developed or transformed within the royal courts. Although Bu Nani noted the public distrust of anything "feudal" (Ind. feodal), particularly in the 1950s, as a significant factor in the near extinction of many of South Sulawesi's performing arts traditions, she also recognized that associations with court culture had positive as well as negative ramifications in the shifting aesthetic climate of postrevolutionary Indonesia. Thus, she stressed the court origins of such dances as pakarena and pajaga. And she often referred to herself and her troupe as "palace dancers and musicians" (Ind. penari dan pemusik istana), in reference to their regular engagements by President Sukarno at the president's palace in Jakarta. With the emphasis on this neocourtly status, not only did she maneuver toward a position of respect for the performers and her early creations, but she also paved the way for local acceptance of Torajan-based songs and dances and reworkings of other noncourt genres being performed as part of her new South Sulawesian art tradition. Quite in keeping with the rhetoric concerning national and regional culture that has persisted, at least as rhetoric, from the Sukarno era to the present, Bu Nani registers her belief in the building of a strong national culture based on the regional. "Through art, artists erase the boundaries that intensify the animosity between ethnic groups. With their artistry, artists succeed in making regional arts not only the property of this one region, but also of the nation."11 Repeatedly, Bu Nani cites the evidence of her invitations to Jakarta and, even more so, her frequent trips abroad as measures of success. Admittedly, those who have appeared in Jakarta or abroad invariably speak with pride of these modern-day imprimaturs of success. But only a few of them actively pursue this kind of supralocal visibility with anything like the persistence and vision of Bu Nani. Bu Nani's upbringing, her education and early travels, laid the basis for her awareness of trends and tastes beyond the borders of South Sulawesi. Her mother had been educated in Java. Bu Nani lived in Ambon, traveled to Java shortly after the revolution (accompanying South Sulawesian former royalty in an early visit with Sukarno), and began making regular international tours in the 1950s. She freely admits a fondness for Western music, ballet, and literature. And while she is like most non-Javanese in her distaste for some forms of Javanese performance, she was keenly interested in how these forms appealed to international audiences. Hence her attention to costume details, varied floor plans for dances, and larger ensembles for musical accompaniment, among others.


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IN THE WAKE OF BU NANI'S WORK While much is rightfully credited to Bu Nani, the creative and organizational efforts of her students and colleagues were essential for her approach to local performing arts to spread and to take root throughout much of the province. First, it became not only acceptable, but also fashionable for girls and young women of various of South Sulawesi's elite to study Bu Nani's dances, usually at one of the branches of the IKS. I spoke with a number of middle-aged and elderly wives of businessmen, university professors, and civil servants, many of whom had studied at least a few of Bu Nani's dances during their early years. In Ujung Pandang, along with many smaller towns and villages around the province, Bu Nani's name was widely known and her approach to performance deemed by many to be the appropriate one for the modern era. One of the most prominent performing artists, a former student of Bu Nani and also a pioneering educator, was Munasiah Nadjamuddin Daeng Jinne, born on 27 November 1941 in the kabupaten of Jeneponto (a Makassarese-speaking area ninety kilometers south of the city of Makassar). Munasiah was interested in performance from an early age. And with Bu Nani's group she performed at the president's palace in the 1950s. Beginning with her "Tari Pagalung" (Mks.; "Farmer's Dance") in 1965, she began to choreograph short, secular dances, with a variety of musical accompaniments, ranging from purely percussive to the combination of kecapi and suling made popular by Bu Nani. Though most of her works drew on local themes and movements, some were performed in other parts of Indonesia, such as Jakarta, Yogyakarta, and Surabaya. And some of these were dance-dramas, which she refers to as sendratari, using the Indonesian-language term invented to name the new Javanese dance-dramas with no verbal dialogue developed in the early 1960s. Though less consumed than Bu Nani by the issues of national and international cultural dialogue, Munasiah draws clear distinctions between the different orientations in her creative and pedagogical work, intending her new works for local audiences and her reworking of well-known local genres primarily for nonlocal consumption. In addition to the new dances she has choreographed, numbering well over twenty, she has long been an advocate for the teaching of "traditional" dances from South Sulawesi's four main ethnic groups. At the performing arts academy she helped found in 1971, and in the book she published in 1982, she presents versions of the most emblematic dances: Makassarese "Tari Pakarena" (a short version, essentially the same as that choreographed by Bu Nani, although Bu Nani's name is inexplicably omitted from the discussion of the dance and its background), Bugis "Tari Pajaga" (from Luwu), Mandarese "Tari Pattuddu" (apparently somewhat different from the one Bu Nani choreographed in 1947), Torajan "Tari Pagellu'" (derived from the best-known ritual dance of Toraja); and the Bugis "Tari Pajoge" (from Bone). Though shorter than the older versions that inspired them, these choreographies presented by Munasiah mainly attempt to make these dances appropriate for stage presentation. Like most of Bu Nani's dances, they involve greater variety in floor patterns and movements, including greater freedom in

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turning the torso, and seek to maximize the visual impact by emphasizing colorful and elaborate costumes and revealing the full face of the dancer (who in some genres, such as pakarena, often hid most of her face behind a fan and only looked downward). The musical accompaniment for each of these five "traditional" dances was recorded commercially in 1982 and is one of the very few cassettes of dance music available. In contrast to the IKS recording mentioned previously, this recording presents a variety of musical styles, some dating back many generations. The instrumentation for four of the eight items consists of percussion only: one or two drums (with the addition of metal wooden concussion slats for "Tari Pajaga"). Her "Tari Pakarena" employs the same two ganrang, puik-puik, and gong, sounding very similar to the accompaniment on the IKS cassette. The other three items are new creations, involving kecapi with suling or with ganrang and bamboo castanets (referred to as ganrang bulo, though this Makassarese term can also refer to bamboo idiochord tube-zithers). What I find especially interesting about this tape, and the book with which it is coordinated, is the slippage in the notion of "traditional." Both the tape and the book have the same title, Tari Tradisional Sulawesi Selatan (Ind.; Traditional Dancefs] of South Sulawesi). Yet the first dance both in the book and on the tape is a version of Bu Nani's "Tari Pakarena." A new creation in 1951 had become a "traditional dance" by 1982. One could point to the "traditional" sound of the instruments accompanying this dance, but even the music is "traditional" only in contrast to pop music performed on electric guitars and synthesizers. The use of indigenous costuming and instruments, even the relatively recent combination of kecapi suling and the performance of essentially diatonic songs, comes to be construed as traditional and local. This is so, in part, because in the Indonesian imagination, local and traditional are often blurred to the point of becoming synonymous. One of the organizations most influential in promoting Bu Nani's legacy has been Yayasan Anging Mammiri' (YAMA), founded in 1964 and headed for nearly thirty years by Ida Joesoef Madjid (also spelled in other variants, such as Ida Yusup Majid). One of Bu Nani's students, and herself a highly influential member of the local elite, Ida Joesoef was born in Bantaeng (ca. 125 kilometers southeast of Makassar) on 27 May 1945 and spent her childhood in several predominantly Makassarese-speaking areas. Like Bu Nani, she attributed her accomplishments in part to her modern-minded parents, who encouraged her education and her study of Western ballet. With Bu Nani living in Sidrap during the early 1960s and her IKS centered there, the governor of South Sulawesi offered Ida Joesoef some funding to develop a dance and music organization based in Makassar city that would take over the functions formerly fulfilled by Bu Nani. Yayasan Anging Mammiri' was officially founded on 27 May 1964—exactly nineteen years after her birth and less than a year after her marriage. It has trained performers, developed new choreographies and musical arrangements, and presented performances locally, nationally, and internationally ever since. Like Bu Nani, she choreographed short dances and dance-dramas based primarily on indigenous forms


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of South Sulawesi, with musical accompaniment on local instruments (e.g., item 13 on the accompanying CD). In the late 1990s, YAMA continued to offer instruction in various dances and music of South Sulawesi and to offer performances for government functions, for tourists, and for individuals. Most of these have been choreographies and musical arrangements made by Bu Nani's artistic offspring, rather than Bu Nani herself. For years Ida Joesoef served as the head of this organization, but in the early 1990s she turned this function over to her daugher, Bu I'in Joesoef Madjid, who maintained a consistent schedule of rehearsals. The group has had numerous engagements, more than other dance and music organizations of similar orientation. Some of these engagements have resulted from close connections between Ida Joesoef's family and local elite, and this produces no small measure of anguish on the part of other organizations. YAMA's presentations have carried on the legacy of Bu Nani's work—mostly short, secular dance numbers, most of them accompanied by Bu Nani's kecapi-suling-percussion ensemble. Display of costumes has been a prominent part of their tourist shows in the 1990s, as noted above, and was for several decades previously. Many other private dance and music organizations, usually identified as sanggar, have sprouted up in Ujung Pandang and surrounding areas. And not all of these represent merely a continuation of Bu Nani's legacy. In fact, as we will see in the next chapter, some seem to be seeking to move in a reverse direction. Yet even the most radical of the younger artists acknowledge the enormous impact of Bu Nani, and join with the many other South Sulawesians in marveling at the extent of her accomplishments in the midst of great cultural and political turmoil in which the very act of music and dance performance in certain circumstances risked severe repression. Clearly the level of artistic activity in South Sulawesi would have been different without someone like Bu Nani. But despite her accomplishments locally, the fact remains that very few other Indonesians, let alone foreigners, have much exposure to any of South Sulawesi's performing arts. Foreign arts missions devoted wholly or even partially to South Sulawesi performance have been only occasional, and national media representations have been rare indeed (see chapter 9). Nevertheless, Bu Nani carved a small niche for South Sulawesian arts in the national consciousness and, more importantly perhaps, stimulated an enormous amount of activity and at least some controversy throughout much of the province of South Sulawesi. One can only wonder about the state of performing arts there had someone with different background and different aesthetic proclivities had the opportunity to shape so much of the activity and the discourse over the critical first three decades of Indonesian independence. Certainly Bu Nani had an exceptional knowledge and appreciation for Western and other foreign artistic practices. And while they helped shape her work, they certainly did not result in an overwhelming Western orientation in either her music or her dance. Western influence might have been greater, or might have emerged in forms other than the size and musical arrangements of the sinfoni kecapi. Dances might have incorporated substantial ballet or modern dance movements, or a combination of

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Calling Back the Spiritt

South Sulawesian and other Indonesian elements. But Bu Nani and her most influential students and younger colleagues have persisted in drawing largely on local particulars—movements, instruments, songs, and dance and dance-drama themes—for their work. Identity as South Sulawesian has been far more important than identity as art, or identity as Bugis, or Makassarese, or another particular ethnic group. Underlying all of these creations is a tenacious pride in being South Sulawesian and representing this region in the arts, whether to other local residents or to outsiders. For Bu Nani and others of the elite, the question of one or another ethnic group has been downplayed. Even the music, movements, and costumes of the long-derided Torajans have been actively cultivated and promoted as part of the larger South Sulawesian identity. This legacy has continued among many of the elite, who consider local ethnic rivalries to be old-fashioned and contrary to what appeared to be a growing sense of unity within the Indonesian nation. And while Makassarese villagers may still sense significant difference between their cultural practices and those of Bugis or Torajan, the rural population has appeared, even through the national turmoil of the late 1990s, to be more tolerant of and willing to participate in music and dance deriving from outside their own locale. Bu Nani's artistic accomplishments are not the only force behind these changes, but one would be hard put to identify another single individual anywhere near as central to them as she.

4 From Entertainment to Art and Back to Ritual

The Struggle for Legitimacy and Artistic Power, 1970s-1990s

Many parts of the world during the twentieth century have seen the commodification of musical and dance forms once rooted in ritual practice. As these forms are secularized and restructured to conform with commercial expectations and packaged for diverse (and often uninformed) paying audiences, local practitioners often despair at the disempowerment of locally rooted traditions, and in response may adopt various oppositional tactics. In this chapter I would like to address a set of responses spearheaded by a small group of artist-intellectuals in Makassar, who have been attempting—often in ways that startle the local population—to revitalize local performance through its re-ritualization. In the process, I will also address the notion of a "work of art," the presentation of mock ceremony as "art," and the creative and performing "artist" in lowland South Sulawesi as these concepts have developed in recent decades. Music and dance forms prevalent in certain court and village rituals, and which became the inspiration for light stage entertainment from the 1950s through the mid-1970s by Bu Nani and others, have recently been recontextualized and presented as part of a postmodern ritual complex, recapturing lost spiritual power, and glorifying local culture, as distinct from "national" Indonesian culture. From the efforts of Bu Nani, as detailed in the previous chapter, a flowering of dance studios and music groups, formal classes, and tourist performances 69

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appeared in the local landscape. Along with her dances and musical arrangements, still very much in evidence in the 1990s, others have created new dances and music in close imitation of her secular style—short items intended to be accessible across ethnic and linguistc boundaries, not only within the province but also nationally and internationally. This has played into the Indonesian government's support for performing arts suitable for display to diverse audiences and, preferably, no longer tied to local spiritual power, which could very well represent a threat to centralized national order. The resulting artistic blandness and impotence has not found universal acceptance there, however. Among a growing group of artist-intellectuals, college-educated and politically astute, a remarkable form of resistance is rapidly taking root, whereby the forms of performance associated with local spiritual potency are being incorporated into a kind of postmodern crusade to resacralize performance, taking the arts away from light and safe entertainment in an effort to recapture their spiritual power. To some this is a futile effort, even laughable, for it is often carried out in nontraditional juxtapositions. Yet to those involved as performers, and at least to some local people who watch—often mystified, but nevertheless drawn in—this is an important new direction in performance, in fact, problematizing the very conception of this kind of performance as "art" in the modern sense.

SECULARIZED RITUAL AS ART Before turning to the re-ritualization alluded to above, we need to consider the rather substantial effort made by many of the cultural power brokers of South Sulawesi, in step with efforts throughout most provinces of the nation, to present staged versions of certain ritual ceremonies—not as spiritually powerful alternatives to staged entertainment, but as workable alternatives or frames for the kinds of entertainment developed by Bu Nani and her peers. These make no pretense of ritual efficacy; rather, they represent an attempt to impress an audience with the "art" of a Makassarese wedding or a Bugis harvest ceremony— colorful, grand, exuberant, varied. In these presentations, short items of dance, music, and other "attractions" usually frame sample actions prescribed in a "real" ceremony (i.e., a wedding ceremony in which the couple actually become married), and all are tailored to fit expected time for public secular entertainment (anywhere from ten minutes to a few hours). A wedding ceremony that joins two people in matrimony, a harvest ceremony that offers thanks to local spirits for a bountiful yield or supplicates those spirits for a better harvest next year—these are ritual enactments tied with local beliefs, in a system referred to in Indonesian and many regional languages as adat (Mks. adak; Bgs. adek). Yet increasingly over the last several decades, the staged presentations have been passed off as adat, which the government has claimed to support, even though these presentations, secularized and aestheticized, do not serve adat functions. Acciaioli argues that

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despite its policy of homogenizing corporatism, the Indonesian state has committed itself to respecting local adat (custom, culture) as any local government official will insist and as indeed its national motto Bhinneka tunggal ika, usually translated as "unity in diversity," is claimed to signify. But the principle of respect for adat has concealed what is perhaps a more cunning strategy serving to topple particularistic loyalties. Throughout Indonesia, despite the persistence of adat in name, the way in which adat is regarded has undergone a transformation, one perhaps most aptly characterized as an erosion. (Acciaioli 1985, 151-152)

In South Sulawesi, particularly lowland South Sulawesi (less so the Torajan highlands), ritual acts outside the practices of orthodox Islam, many of which would have constituted local adat, have been challenged both by the outright repression by vigilant supporters of Darul Islam and Operasi Taubat and by the less severe emasculation and appropriation as colorful pagaentry by the New Order government. As we saw in chapter 2, the annual Culture Week festival has usually included one or more "traditional/customary ceremonies" (Ind. upacara adat) as part of the scheduled fare—staged both to entertain and to inform primarily those who would identify themselves as unfamiliar with the represented traditions. For example, this could mean a Torajan watching a Bugis circumcision ceremony or an urban Makassarese watching a village Makassarese boatbuilding ceremony. These ceremonies are likely to have been performed by individuals for whom the ritual source is still meaningful, but not necessarily. Some of the musicians and dancers for several of the "traditional ceremonies" in the 1993 and 1995 Culture Week performances were students or recent graduates of the SMKI high school for performing arts and were chosen for their technical skills, some from different ethnic backgrounds than that of the ceremony being staged. Among the many participants with whom I spoke in 1993, however—even the Bugis involved in the Bugis "traditional ceremony," for example—the event was basically a secular staging in fulfillment of a government decree. While the stunningly attired group of female dancers and the austere music of the lone drummer created a quasi-ritual feeling of grandeur, they admitted, it was not powerful in the way the same ceremony would have been back in Luwu under more usual circumstances (i.e., the proper ritual context). Nevertheless, for those who had moved away from their ancestral villages to live in Ujung Pandang—clearly a majority of those present at the Culture Week festivals—there was a kind of temporary nostalgic sense of ethnic community as these urbanites recalled or imagined these ceremonies as recreating the home village or district. This was particularly true for the Torajans, the most marginalized of South Sulawesi's four main ethnic groups, who made up the majority of the audience for the Torajan events at the Culture Week festival. The presentation of staged ceremonies for a diverse audience of individuals who watch, rather than participate, has been one of the hallmarks of cultural activities championed by New Order cultural policy and featured at the New Order's favorite showcase: Taman Mini "Indonesia Indah." At this national

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cultural park, "traditional ceremonies" have been presented on a regular rotating schedule throughout the year since 1987. Provincial governments have been requested to send substantial troupes to represent their province; specific ethnic content is left up to the individual provincial decision makers. In April 1 994, for example, South Sulawesi sent a contingent of dancers and musicians to perform "Bunting Mangkasara" (Mks.; "Makassarese Wedding") at Taman Mini. In Jakarta they were joined by a large number of Jakarta residents from South Sulawesi, for a total of sixty-four members of the imaginary wedding party, plus thirty-five dancers and eighteen musicians. Participants were drawn from eight separate dance and music studios (Ind. sanggar) in Ujung Pandang, with a production staff of twenty (some of whom performed as well). This enormous — and enormously expensive—undertaking got no one actually married. Nor was spiritual power invoked or attempted to be. Instead the event was intended, in the words of Bachtiar Dg. Leo, the head of the committee in Ujung Pandang who coordinated the event, to represent South Sulawesi and, thereby, to contribute toward cultural preservation and interethnic appreciation: The presentation of the dance fragment "Bunting Mangkasara" is not only to put forth the variety and richness of Makassarese culture of South Sulawesi . . . but this presentation also represents a show of respect and an effort at preservation of the cultural values bequeethed by our ancestors. The richness of these values is also the richness and pride of all of us together. It is also a part of the richness of the nation. '

The choice of a wedding ceremony, rather than merely a succession of decontextualized dances, was to demonstrate and further the preservation of cultural acts that not only inexplicably hold up important cultural values but also serve to attract tourists. With the individual dance and music items framed within a staged ritual, the performance supposedly offered an entrance into Makassarese cultural life, albeit idealized. It is still a secular framework for artistic performance, though now part of the aesthetic is the ceremonial progression as well — not just Makassarese music and dance as objects of beauty but also Makassarese wedding as an object of beauty. In other presentations at Taman Mini a ritual occasion may be evoked, but without attempting to re-create a sequence of events typical of actual ritual practice. In September 1993, dancers and musicians from the city of Parepare and the neighboring districts of Sidrap (Sidenreng-Rappang) and Barru came to Taman Mini to present a "Cultural Panorama of South Sulawesi (Sidrap, Barru)" whose theme was Bugis harvest ceremony. In slightly less than two hours the audience was treated to a short dance-drama, Bugis songs played by a sinfoni kecapi suling, six dances, and a demonstration of mattojang (Bgs.; to swing back and forth on a swing) in which one performer sits on a wooden swing seat as others set him (or her) in motion by rope pulls, symbolizing the mythical descent of the deity Batara Guru from heaven to earth. This was by no stretch of the imagination a re-creation of any kind of harvest ritual, despite the explicit labeling of the six-dance cluster and regional songs as "Pesta Panen Raya" (Ind.; Great Harvest Festival/Celebration). Nev-

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ertheless, H. Beddu Amang, the head of the Association of South Sulawesi Families (KKSS), wrote the following in his welcome to the group, printed in the program: "Tonight, we experience an inner feeling that is the same as the atmosphere after harvest in our native village.. . . For those members of KKSS who left our native village long ago, it will represent a flashback to life back when we were children. And for our children... at least it can be a kind of stimulation about the artistic and cultural richness of the nation."2 However this might have been received by Indonesians from other ethnic backgrounds, let alone by foreign tourists, the important audience for Amang were the South Sulawesians in domestic diaspora—those whose memories might be triggered by the presentation and their children, who at least might gain an appreciation of their ethnic heritage. For him, and for them, it was a "nostalgia" evening, even though no one could possibly remember a ritual remotely resembling this carefully timed and overofficiated performance. Similar evenings, with something proclaimed as a "traditional ceremony" from South Sulawesi, have been presented every year since 1987. Presentations of ceremonial life as entertainment, as art, as secularized cultural nostalgia have not been limited to places where audiences are likely to include many South Sulawesians (as in the Culture Week festival, or at Taman Mini in Jakarta). At contests and festivals in other locales within Indonesia and on international arts missions, short reenactments of some indigenous ceremony—always specific to a single ethnic group—have been routine at least during the 1980s and 1990s. For example, a troupe participating in an arts festival of eastern Indonesia, held in Den Pasar in 1988, included a depiction of a Bugis rite of passage involving a girl passing into womanhood. At several points, an old woman—possibly a practicing dukun (Ind.; shaman), although perhaps only acting the part—played ritual instruments, snapping lontar palm leaves (Bgs. sinto) near the girl (an ancient Bugis practice), and later sounding hand cymbals alternately on either side of the girl, who was given one traditional blouse (Bgs. waju) after another to wear all at once. This was presented as but one program item (Bgs.; Mapasiori Waju), along with various short, secular dances, songs, and a display of various indigenous costumes modeled by men and women and announced by an emcee. Both within the province of South Sulawesi and elsewhere, then, aspects of ritual ceremonies have frequently been presented with the purposes of entertaining an audience, sharing an aspect of local culture, but without the efficacy that motivated the full ceremonies in their former communities. Some presenters hope that such performances will meet the aesthetic expectations of unfamiliar audiences, who may be more impressed by the display of colorful costumes and unusual ritual practices than by the musical sounds and dance movements. For others it has fulfilled a kind of nostalgic fantasy of pastoral ceremony, bereft of the kind of spiritual power that might challenge New Order policies or Islamic teachings. But a rather different direction has been taken by a small but visible group of urban artist-intellectuals who view these disempowered ritual entertainments as anything from bland and boring to outright desecration.

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Halilintar Lathief and Niniek Sumiani, Ujung Pandang, September 1995 HALILINTAR LATHIEF AND THE RECAPTURE OF RITUAL One of the artist-intellectuals at the forefront of this direction has been Halilintar Lathief, who has spearheaded a return to all kinds of ritual performance, from bissu-inspired trance dances to the almost impossibly slow and stately cloth shawl dance (salonreng), the otherworldly singing of dondo and leklek, and passionate drumming and meditative dance of Makassarese pakarena. These he has often juxtaposed in ways thoroughly "untraditional," though framed with the burning of incense, meditation, the uttering of magic spells, and wildly shouted oaths. The more conservative members of the dance and music community in Makassar shake their heads in confusion or disgust. Halilintar has gone mystical, they often told me. Yes, and along with him, a significant number of young followers and colleagues. This group of artists and intellectuals speak with guarded derision of the hopelessly bland dance and music that represents the legacy of Bu Nani, even as they speak reverentially of Bu Nani herself and can comprehend the magnitude of her vision and accomplishments. But where Bu Nani has led has not fully satisfied the need felt by some in South Sulawesi to be able to lay claim to performing arts of "weight" and "power"—something to inspire awe, to make one's hair stand on end, or perhaps even send an audience member into trance. Bu Nani's works have never been challenging or "weighty," for this has never been her intention. She devoted tremendous energy to forging a path toward modernity; Halilintar and his cohorts no longer saw this as a valid goal. But as they have maneuvered to turn away from this modernity, they cannot simply retreat to the past—the pre-In-

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donesian, the precolonial, the pre-Islamic. Instead, they have plunged headlong into a kind of postmodern pastiche of seemingly ancient/traditional performance—music, dance, and ritual enactments—with avant-garde improvisations, presented in settings ranging from government-sponsored festivals to privately sponsored "contemporary ritual arts" performances. Halilintar has struggled against the grain throughout much of his adult life, going beyond his own ethnic background to embrace a range of cultural forms, and defying his own family's firm conviction that dance was an inappropriate career choice for a male. He himself is of Bugis noble ancestry and has lived in Makassar since he was a child. After completing his high school education in Ujung Pandang at the new high school for performing arts and an undergraduate degree in architecture at Universitas Hasanuddin in Ujung Pandang, he moved to Yogyakarta, where his parents thought he was pursuing a graduate degree in architecture at Universitas Gadjah Mada, but where in fact he matriculated at the Indonesian Arts Institute, ISI (Institut Seni Indonesia, formerly known as ASTI)3 and pursued a degree in dance composition. In addition to obtaining his degree, he befriended a number of Javanese performers with interest in ritually based performance and married one of them—Yogyakarta's premier court-style dancer, Niniek Sumiani. Relocating to Ujung Pandang after graduation, Halilintar and Sumiani were appointed dance teachers at the local teacher's college (IKIP) and also founded an independent dance studio (Sanggar Latar Nusa—Latihan Tari Nusantara— Ind.; Rehearse/Practice Dance of the Archipelago), which has trained dancers and musicians in a combination of older forms from South Sulawesi, as well as innovative modern creations that draw on local forms, often with Javanese and other Indonesian nuances. During the Festival of Indonesia in the United States (1990-1991), it was Halilintar who headed the South Sulawesi component, choosing performers and directing the group during their two-week appearance at the Smithsonian's Folklife Festival on the Mall in Washington, D.C. Halilintar's artistic activities began during his high school days. He began research into a number of local traditions in the 1970s, gathering data on pakarena in various rural locales, paying attention to its transmission and the contexts of its performance, in addition to the particular vocabulary and sequences of movements and their coordination with musical accompaniment. It informed his own choreography, although he did not publish the results of this research until incorporating them into the major study of pakarena he co-authored with Niniek Sumiani (1995). From rather early in his career, then, he was paying attention to the ritual practices and belief systems underlying this and other dances. Halilintar's early activities as a choreographer moved in several directions. Some of his works were highly experimental, particularly during his years as a dance composition major at ASTI/ISI in Yogyakarta. Here he borrowed heavily from the international dance movement vocabulary taught as part of the curriculum and created works with such modernist titles as "Inikah Ini" (Ind.; "This Is This," 1982), "Menuju ke X" (Ind.; "Aiming toward X," 1983), and "Seni Eksperimen: Terminal Al" (Ind.; "Experimental Art: Terminal Al,"

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1985). Yet he also choreographed works drawing on South Sulawesi's ritual traditions, such as his "Upacara I" (Ind.; "Ceremony I," 1984). He began to forge an approach to performance that was modern, local, and spiritual— performances that would be acceptable as modern owing to their experimental daring; local in their copious use of movements, sounds, and costumes from South Sulawesi's traditions (primarily Bugis and Makassarese); and spiritual in the engagement with those ritual forms associated with spiritual power.4 While some still identify Halilintar as a "choreographer," he has more accurately been seen in the 1990s as a kind of organizer, ideas person — even a mystical master. In the late 1990s, he was engaged in research and thinking in preparation for writing a book on mystical theories of local dance, based on, in his words, "reading manuscripts, talking with elders, and lots and lots of direct observation of performance" (personal communication, 19 July 1996). The theory he was constructing, however, was not of just one ethnic group, but would apply to all, or to each in dialectical opposition to the others. For instance, he was theorizing correspondences between parts of the body, directions, elements, and ethnicity: head upper torso lower torso/groin legs

around, circular up and down spread out, expand triangular

air/wind earth water fire

Mandar Makassar Bugis Toraja

While he was not ready to offer a complete exegesis of these correspondences, he said that the association between the directions and the ethnic group developed out of his experience watching and studying not only dance movements but also everyday body language from the different groups, with Makassarese emphasizing up and down, Mandar circular, and so forth. It is difficult to determine the extent to which these correspondence might be recognized by others, but the practice of linking aspects from different experiential realms in a larger schema is not uncommon in South Sulawesi's manuscript literature.5 Over the course of several years during the late 1980s and early 1990s, Halilintar held monthly performance meetings for which he invited accomplished performers closest to traditional roots. These were most often located on Somba Opu island, beginning before the construction of the Taman Miniatuur Sulawesi cultural park and continuing during and after its construction. He favored the rumah adat Kajang (Ind.; traditional house from Kajang; see photograph 1), owing to the association of this subdistrict of Bulukumba with local mysticism and ritual practices, including trance (see Hamzah 1989; Anon. 1988; Lathief 1982; Muthalib M. 1988). For those years, Halilintar led a group of student performers known as Badik Pusaka (Mks.; Sacred Heirloom Dagger) and often invited large groups of students from IKIP, where he taught. On some occasions, according to Halilintar and drummer Daeng Serang Dakko (personal communication, 28 July 1996), many or even most of those in attendance would fall into trance and perform strange improvisations. In imitation of bissu,

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Transvestite priests (bissu) from Segeri, Pangkep district, stabbing themselves with daggers while in trance, presented by Halilintar Lathief at Indonesian Performing Arts Society (MSPI) festival and conference in Karangasem, Bali, September 1999

they sometimes danced in trance with daggers drawn, pressing them against their necks, ears, and hands. In July 1994,1 attended an evening's gathering arranged by Halilintar at the Kajang house on Somba Opu. Those present included his close artist-intellectual colleagues, devoted college-aged students (mostly middle and upper class), an elderly man famous for the ecstatic shouting of oaths (Mks. ngaruk), a group of martial arts performers (pamancak), and village dancers and musicians for pakarena and salonreng.6 He, his colleagues, and students participated in the recitation of prayers, the carrying of ancient Makassarese and Bugis ritual objects, and the performance of several dances. One of these involved male dancers who went into trance while wielding swords, and another a trio of dancers performing a symbolic cockfight with scarves (pakbatte passapu), a dance genre associated with the isolated Konjo-speaking peoples of Tana Toa, Kajang, who practice the unique local belief system known as agama patuntung, an animist and ancestor-oriented religion (see Rossler 1987, 1990). Invocation of this unique area through the dance helped to provide an aura of spiritual potency far removed from the larger forces of Islam and Jakarta/Javabased culture. The event I attended in July 1994 was free of any association with a particular individual or village ritual need. Instead, it seemed to celebrate the very fact of ritual performance itself—or, put another way, this unorthodox juxtaposition of ritual elements consituted a self-conscious ritual itself. Performance genres often viewed as old-fashioned were here treated reverently by middleand upper-class youth. The worlds of national government cultural policy,

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Islamic restrictions on performance, and spirit beliefs were all held at bay, as performance invoked a spiritual realm unique to South Sulawesi and harked back to an era before Indonesian nationhood, before Dutch colonialism, even before the coming of Islam. In addition to these private "rituals," Halilintar has made public presentations that either draw heavily on ritual aura for aesthetic effect or even present newly invented rituals, billed as art but aimed at more than entertainment. In this he is not alone in Indonesia; several Javanese have leaned heavily in this direction and have, Halilintar acknowledges, inspired him in his own work. The two most prominent Javanese performing artists moving away from lighter, secular stage performances toward more spiritually powerful, ritually based performances have been Soeprapto (in Surakarta, Central Java) and the late Benedictus Suharto (who was dance teacher at ISI when Halilintar was a student there). It is certainly possible to interpret Halilintar's approach to creativity and performance as one, albeit unusual, response to the national rhetoric about digging into the past to rediscover and strengthen local identity. Yet the monthly neo-rituals and the other, more public events organized by Halilintar and others have also represented resistance to dominant narratives. In September 1995, an international festival billed as "Ritual Arts, Sharing Time" was held at Soeprapto's retreat in Mojosongo, Central Java. Among participants from Germany, the United States, Australia, England, and Indonesia, Halilintar presented a two-hour performance based loosely on bissu rituals. The fact that the government's director general of culture, Edi Sedyawati, opened this event was something of a surprise, and indicated to some observers that she was not simply a mouthpiece for established government rhetoric on culture and the arts. While that may be so, I believe, along with others who were present, that she viewed these performances as creating "art" from the raw materials of ritual, rather than actually enacting ritual itself. In New Order Indonesia, according to anthropologist Greg Acciaioli, "regional diversity is valued, honoured, even apotheosized, but only as long as it remains at the level of display, not belief, performance, not enactment" (1985, 161). Halilintar's rituals, however, push the limit of "art" as such, going beyond display and performance in quest of belief and enactment, and it is in this sense that they challenge the status quo. Furthermore, the organizers and their followers seek to insulate themselves from the prevailing cultural hierarchy, rather than integrating themselves into it at a position subordinate to the Javanese. The village-based musicians and dancers who perform in Halilintar's productions are largely unconcerned with issues of interprovincial rivalry and national cultural politics. They willingly partake for the affirmation they enjoy, as sophisticated urbanites sit reverentially—or, moved by local spirits, enter into trance—in response to music and dance that much of the population dismisses as old-fashioned, superstitious, or irrelevant. What Halilintar and his colleagues have developed challenges not only the dominant discourse on "preserving" regional culture but also any easy interpretation with regard to authenticity and appropriation. While the literature of cultural studies certainly problematizes the notion of authenticity in the postmod-


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ern world (everything and nothing can be authentic), this concept most certainly informs cultural discourse in Indonesia, with words such as asli (Ind.; original, indigenous, authentic) and even otentik (Ind.; authentic). Taylor writes of various kinds of authenticity, noting that "all these authenticities have at bottom an assumption about an essential(ized), real, actual, essence" (1997, 21). And in music, he states, it is "an assumption of original, untainted ways of musicking and sounding" (1997, 21). Cultural discourse in Indonesia generally is much concerned with seeking, identifying, and preserving local essence. The idea of essentialized identities, based on ethno-linguistic grouping, province, district, or even village, is promoted under the rubric of jati diri (Ind.; true self), involving a search for distinguishing characteristics (Ind. ciri, ciri khas). Among several categories of authenticity, Taylor identifies an "authenticity of primality" that involves a thirst for "the timeless, the ancient, the primal, the pure, the chthonic"—something that represents an antidote to a world "often conceived as ephemeral, new, artificial, and corrupt" (Taylor 1997, 26). For the urbanite participants in South Sulawesi these new rituals indeed not only embody a timeless, pure element but also are palpably chthonic. Of course, evaluations of authenticity, in South Sulawesi or anywhere else, are not universally shared. For many urbanites, Bu Nani's works are authentic—representing a kind of South Sulawesian essence, derived from more primitive, imperfect forms of performance and made to fit with "modern" times by nature of their more civilized and cultured forms. Bu Nani gained a reputation for her knowledge of authentic movement patterns and, especially, costume design for dancers, even though she deliberately modified aspects of some costumes to enhance the aesthetic effect of her own dances. For Halilintar and his middle- and upper-class students and colleagues, however, the authentic practices are those from which Bu Nani drew and which do not cater to aesthetic standards imposed from outside, even though they may be presented for outsiders and judged by aesthetic standards. Their very "primitiveness" is their power. And because each constituent element in Halilintar's rituals is seen by him and his cohorts to be "authentic," the whole event takes on legitimacy and power, at least for them. Feeling the loss of the authentic, the old, the real, and the locally powerful, and imagining it possible to reclaim it, Halilintar and others use and appropriate what they can of local performance most removed from the pollution of commodification. Whereas the village performers described them to me with such adjectives as "strange," "modern," "confusing" —certainly not authentic, despite their full, spirited participation in the events—Halilintar and his cohorts experience these reinvented rituals as a return to the authentic. The meaning these reinvented rituals has for his students and colleagues invites consideration of sociologist Erving Goffman's distinction between front and back regions. "The front is the meeting place of hosts and guests or customers and service persons, and the back is the place where members of the home team retire between performances to relax and to prepare" (MacCannell 1976,92). Like the tourist, brilliantly deconstructed by Dean MacCannell in his 1976 study, the urbanites at these rituals imagine themselves to have gained

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special access to the "back," where they not only encounter it but become part of it themselves. "Sightseers are motivated by a desire to see life as it is really lived, even to get in with the natives, and at the same time, they are deprecated for always failing to achieve these goals" (MacCannell 1976, 94). Anthropologists and others, MacCannell writes, assume a "distinction between false fronts and intimate reality, a distinction which is not, for them, problematical: once a person, or an observer, moves off-stage, or into the 'setting,' the real truth begins to reveal itself more or less automatically" (MacCannell 1976,95). It's all the more so if the setting is a ritual and the observer becomes a participant. What transpires at these rituals is, for the urban participants, the real truth. Some of them commented to me that the dances and music presented here were the "true" versions (of pakarena, salonreng, etc.). If seeking the authentic, the real, however problematic, is the primary motivation, one might ask, why don't these students move to villages and apprentice themselves to these performers? Aside from the great sacrifice in social status and economic well-being such a move would represent, the urbanites also view what they are doing as in some sense avant-garde. It's new, certainly, in comparison to what Bu Nani and her followers continue to do, and controversial in ways that challenge prevailing norms of performance. The challenge comes from the very paradox of championing supposedly undoctored, uncommercialized sounds and movements recontextualized into a sacred or mystically powerful framework. Yet is this goal being sought by means of appropriation? The village performers involved in these events expressed optimism (somewhat misplaced) about renewed interest and support for their art from urbanites who, to them, represent one branch of the cultural establishment. They remain somewhat mystified concerning the goals of these postmodern rituals and yet heartened that they are not asked to de-sacralize their performances to make them safe for touristic or nonritual presentation. Yet clearly the bigger winners are Halilintar and his colleagues, whose reputations rely primarily on their ability to commandeer performances by top village performers and to enthrall and mystify all who happen to witness the performances. Though less radically "cross-cultural," the situation is reminiscent in some ways of Paul Simon and Ladysmith Black Mambazo (see Meintjes 1990; Taylor 1997), or Peter Gabriel and the Babacar Faye Drummers (Taylor 1997)—outsiders recognizing musical riches and providing a new, much wider set of contexts for chosen exponents of those riches, simultaneously reaping benefit for themselves (enhanced reputation, financial reward, and so forth). But is Halilintar's approach a return to the old, the authentic? While these events incorporate and celebrate the old, they also control it and use it to serve a kind of urbanite nostalgia, rejecting the bland present by invoking an imagined past. And because they surprise and challenge their audiences, they conform to notions of "art" (rather than light entertainment). But what results can certainly be seen as no less problematic in its relation to "tradition" than the work of Bu Nani. Clearly, we would have to argue that, while containing elements local people are likely to judge as authentic, the performances Halilintar


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arranges are not authentic, nor are they conceived to be. Rather, they invoke authenticity and artistic daring at the same time. Interpretation imposed from outside can just as easily see both Halilintar and Bu Nani, or neither, as "authentic." But for those involved, the question of authenticity is critical. And for this reason, I would argue, we must balance scholarly distrust of claims to "authenticity" with the realization that such claims may be central, and thus real, to both the discourse and the practice of performance traditions in Sulawesi, and elsewhere around the globe. RITUALLY INSPIRED ART AMONG HALILINTAR'S PEERS Halilintar is not the only creative artist who has moved away from the light stage entertainment of Bu Nani to neo-ritual and more serious art. Nurhadi, a former student of Halilintar, teaches dance at the local performing arts high school (SMKI), choreographs and performs with several groups, and has his own dance and music group (Sanggar Samparajae).7 Building on several earlier works, he choreographed a piece titled "Balle Sumanga'," named after a stately instrumental music often used to accompany certain stages of Makassarese marriage and circumcision ceremonies. The title translates literally as "medicine for the spirit," an obvious reference to the drum and puik-puik music generally referred to as tunmng pakballe sumangak.8 The music is intended to be ritually efficacious in preventing mishap in relation to the important life-cycle rituals of circumcision and marriage. He presented the work at a workshopfestival of SMKI groups from around the country, held in Yogyakarta in 1994, where it won first prize. Again, in this public presentation, for an audience not exclusively South Sulawesian, the work was judged along aesthetic lines (sophistication of floor plan, variety of movements, coordination of dancers with musical accompaniment, costume design, etc.). Yet the impetus underlying the work was the powerful association of performance with healing and protection from harm, combined with a desire to express the modernist yearnings of Makassarese (and presumably other Indonesian) women for greater freedom of expression than was characteristic of previous generations. I saw this work performed as part of the celebration commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Makassar Arts Council (DKM) in July 1994, six months after it had taken the prize at the SMKI festival. A group of musicians— one puik-puik player, one gong player, one kattok-kattok (bamboo slit gong) player, and no less than five ganrang (Makassarese drum) players—filed onto the stage. Following an introductory solo on the puik-puik the rest of the ensemble entered with a thunderous tunrung pakanjarak, the fast and loud opening pattern for many Makassarese dances. But by less than thirty seconds into the performance the ensemble switched to the slow, stately tunrung pakballe sumangak, as the dancers positioned themselves on the stage, seated with their legs tucked underneath them. They began by leaning forward, nearly touching their foreheads to the floor, then circled around, arching backward. Just after

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three minutes, the dancers rose, squatted again, then stood, and each opened a large fan held in the right hand. The dancers circled around, crouched over with their fans low to the ground, then stood fully upright and leaned forward and back. As they leaned side to side, they extended their arms parallel to the ground and spread their feet wide apart, one leg bent at the knee, the other straight. From these stances, they periodically rushed into formations of diagonal lines, then back to the straight line or circle. The intensity of the music gradually built over the course of the dance, utilizing the same sequence of patterns one hears spread out over a much longer period in the ritual performances of tunrung pakballe sumangak. About nine and a half minutes into the performance, the drumming and puik-puik stopped completely, leaving only the kattok-kattok playing a stark ostinato as the dancers resumed their sitting position, waving and arching their fans around their torsos. At ten minutes fifty seconds, the drums and puik-puik started up again, with fast and loud playing, now in patterns taken from the Makassarese ritual dance pakarena, as the dancers slowly arose, each holding a short scarf in her hand. After two minutes of slow movement by the dancers, the group split, with the four in blue costume moving to stage right and the four in red to stage left. Again the music stopped, just at the moment that the dancers dropped their scarves and sat down again. The performance appeared to be complete, but no sooner had the lights dimmed than a lone male dancer dashed onto the stage yelling and waving a flag as the musicians played loud and fast pakanjarak again. As in some of Halilintar's earlier works, the flag was the emblem of a former Makassarese or Bugis kingdom (not the Indonesian national flag, nor anything representing the province of South Sulawesi), and signified local power, the "glory of Makassar's past," the choreographer told me. The idea was adopted from Halilintar's Sere Palanro, which debuted in 1986 and was performed several times in 1993.9 The music ended on a sudden signal as the lights went black and the performance was complete. The program notes directed the audience's attention to the bold movements of the eight female dancers, who move rapidly across the stage, stretching their limbs and turning their bodies in ways unknown— and presumably proscribed— in "traditional" Makassarese dance. This gendered interpretation was also covered, rather unquestioningly, in the review by Saho'as (1994). Although this work did not have the full ritual trappings of either of the neo-rituals directed by Halilintar that I described previously, it was clearly indebted to the new direction forged by Halilintar. This was not light tourist fare; it might very well please foreign audiences, but not as folkloristic entertainment as has been typical of many Indonesian "arts missions," but instead as serious "art." The scripted message about women longing for greater freedom, and enacting this wish in the dance, conforms nicely with international arts expectations that a creative artist, through his or her art, make a "statement." Yet beneath this surface, particularly for local audiences familiar with Makassarese ritual music, the work was heavily indebted to traditional ritual and succeeded in large part because of its invocation of the supernatural and the curative powers of drum ensemble music.

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Another approach is exemplified by the performance group known as Mahligai (Ind.; palace; figuratively, "high hopes"), sponsored by Mukhlis until he moved to Jakarta in 1997, which drew on traditional forms in an attempt to classicize them. The group consisted of highly talented musicians, directed by drum virtuoso Daeng Serang Dakko and senior singer and instrumentalist (suling, kecapi) Daeng Mappuji, and a combination of accomplished and apprentice dancers, mostly young. Their avowed orientation was klasik (Ind.; classical). Though they did perform some of Bu Nani's and Ida Joesoef's short, secular pieces (e.g., item 13 on accompanying CD), the items they were most proud of were two lengthy dances presented as a "court" versions: pakarena and salonreng. Their intent, as explained by several members and by Mukhlis himself, was to reference the past and re-create something of the grandeur of the former courts. A polished austerity was their goal, not flashy entertainment nor bizarre pre-Islamic ritual. This approach to performance, aiming for "high art" through reconstruction of the refined and courtly, can clearly be seen to conform with New Order policy of building national culture from the "peaks of regional culture" (as first articulated by Ki Hadjar Dewantara and included in the Indonesian constitution). It is, in that sense, not oppositional, but it was also intended as a means of competing with Javanese, who also boast an aesthetic for slow refinement, as these dances struck me and others as rivaling, in grace and length, the bedhaya and srimpi (group female dances) of the Central Javanese courts.

ART FOR ART AND ART FOR CAREER During the long-departed days of Makassarese and Bugis royalty, kings and noble families maintained court dancers and musicians who, in exchange for patronage in the form of land and living stipend, performed exclusively at court. None of the performers I met had enjoyed such status themselves, but most were sure in their claim that such had been the case. Some of the top musicians I spoke with, such as Makassarese drummers Daeng Serang Dakko, living in Somba Opu, Gowa, and Abdul Muin Daeng Mile, living in Kala Serena (Kala Sekrena), Gowa, assured me that if they had only been living seventy or eighty years ago, rather than in these crazy, mixed-up times, they would not have to scrounge for a living because they would have steady jobs as court musicians, with all their needs taken care of. Through the 1990s Serang Dakko worked as a security officer (Ind. satpam) at the Taman Miniatuur Sulawesi culture park on the island of Somba Opu, and played music for the underactive music and dance troupe Mahligai, which rehearsed weekly just a few meters from his house. Daeng Mile worked in the rice fields he owned, occasionally made bricks to supplement his income, and also played for weddings, circumcisions, and other ritual events, in addition to serving as musical leader for many of Halilintar's productions. Neither of these superb musicians was able to make a living from performance alone, but each identified himself as a musician who also had other work, rather than as security officer or farmer who also played music.

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They proudly used the Indonesian term seniman, the Indonesian word for "artist," situating themselves among numerous artists around Indonesia—not only those who play the older forms of music ("traditional") but also those who experiment and create new musical sounds and forms. Those in the popular music world are more likely to be referred to by various specific terms: penyanyi (Ind.; singer) or the widely used loan term artis (Ind.; artist). Among the subcategories of seniman, Serang Dakko and Daeng Mile both felt comfortable defining themselves more specifically as seniman tradisional (Ind.; traditional artist) or, incorporating the ethnic dimension, seniman tradisional Makassar (Ind.; traditional Makassarese artist). It is at this level that they differentiated themselves from someone such as Halilintar. And yet because of the shared identity as seniman they could, albeit with a measure of uncertainty, participate in performing arts that were "non-tradisional" or moderen (modern). Serang Dakko formerly performed with Halilintar and his group; Daeng Mile has been involved in almost all of Halilintar's productions through the 1990s. Because Halilintar has asked little in the way of accommodation and instead encouraged them, in the context of his neo-ritual performances, to use the music and movements they have learned to be appropriate for ritual performance, these seniman have found it more satisfying to participate in Halilintar's performances than in the more purely secular stage entertainment pioneered by Bu Nani and her followers. By design Halilintar's approach to performance has relied on an unlikely combination of seniman tradisional, formally educated urban intellectuals, and student followers who perform together. The multiple meanings this kind of performance has for these contrasting groups are difficult to pinpoint, yet my conversations with some of the members over the course of several years has given me at least a partial view. The mix has allowed the members from each category not only to be seen performing together but also for each one to imagine himself or herself in one or both of the other categories, fulfilling certain kinds of identity desires born of contemporary cultural contradictions. Certainly Halilintar and his inner circle of intellectual-artists have become part of the "traditional arts world" through their intensive involvement, even though they do not actually play the complex interlocking drum parts or dance the long, slow dances. While they would hesitate to call themselves seniman tradisional, they become de facto ritual practitioners, caring for and distributing ritual paraphernalia, burning incense, directing performers, uttering prayers, and so forth. At the same time, they are also seniman moderen, creating new forms of performance that, while drawing heavily on acknowledged traditions in ways rather different from those of Bu Nani and her followers, may impress audiences regardless of their particular regional or ethnic identity as worthy modern art, as in the performance he mounted at the Ritual Arts, Sharing Time festival in Central Java in 1995. The students have performed dances and music taught to them by the seniman tradisional or carried ritual paraphernalia in ways dictated by knowledge of traditional practice. Thus, they too have developed a sense of being "traditional artists," and at the same time being modern artists, apprenticed, as it


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were, to Halilintar and his modern artist-intellectual cohorts. A number of these students confided to me over and over again their great respect for talented traditional musicians, such as Daeng Serang and Daeng Mile. While they did not dislike some forms of popular music (tastes varied from individual to individual), hardly any of them registered a predilection for mainstream Western or Western-derived rock and pop. Though many had learned dances by Bu Nani, or music arranged for the accompaniment of these dances, most of these students found her dances and music to be lacking something fundamental. They were too commercial, sacrificing too much of the village and ritual roots from which they were derived, they said. The seniman tradisional themselves also have begun to blur into the category of modern artist—whose performance simultaneously mediates between mundane and spiritual (as ritual art) and also between local tradition and modernity. Consider the numerous ways in which these performances fit local ideas of "modern." They have broken with tradition in overall structure, juxtaposition of repertory items, and relation to audience. They may be presented in festivals or contests judged on originality and the imaginative and organizational skills of the creator (choreographer, director). The seniman tradisional know that "artists" in this more modern, international sense enjoy greater prestige in contemporary Indonesia than do the upholders of tradition, no matter what the government rhetoric may say to the contrary. While not fully committed "modern artists" themselves—a category still mostly conceived to be available only to those with formal education and wide cultural experience—they partake of this world and begin to distinguish themselves from their peer seniman tradisional who do not have comparable experience navigating new performance challenges such as those faced by participants in Halilintar's productions. Paralleling the change of direction in dance and the music that accompanies it, some local musicians have begun to compose original music works that draw on local traditions (instruments, playing techniques, extant passages and songs). One performing artist creating new musical works is Basri Baharuddin Sila, a Makassarese born in 1953 and the husband of Ibu Andi Ummu, the head of Sanggar Batara Gowa, one of Makassar's oldest and best-known music and dance troupes. He spent several years in the early and mid-1980s in Yogyakarta as a "disciple" (Ind./Jvn. cantrik) and then assistant teacher at Javanese art master Bagong Kussudiardjo's Padepokan Seni (Ind.; Arts Residence), a small private school of performing arts located several kilometers southwest of Yogyakarta city. There he had intensive exposure to a range of regional music and dance forms from Java, Sunda, Bali, and other parts of the Indonesian archipelago. Most influential in his own subsequent work, Basri told me, was the technical know-how he gained from his years at Bagong's. Yet he also acknowledged the importance of his exposure to Bagong's approaches to artistic creation: seeking something new, making it appropriate for the intended audience, basing it on Indonesian regional expression, but not limiting it to traditional constraints. Mixture of elements from diverse cultural origins was actively

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pursued and might include some degree of Western borrowings. Most fundamental, of course, is the whole notion of the "creative artist," one very much espoused by Bagong in reference to himself and to others (see his autobiography, Kussudiardja 1993). For as Bagong and his followers conceive of this category of social identity, it is much closer to recent Western concepts than to the anonymous "bearer of tradition" or "servant of the court" found in Indonesia. Basri has composed music and done so with seriousness and a desire to push into new realms, along with his counterpart in dance Andi Abu Bakar (see below), who also attended Padepokan Bagong Kussudiardjo in the 1980s around the same time as Basri. Basri and Abu Bakar told me that they had moved in the direction of creative composition, whereas Halilintar, despite his degree in dance composition from ISI in Yogyakarta, had gone in the direction of field research. (They did not mention Halilintar's mystical direction, but were certainly aware of it.) In August 1998 I spent several afternoons with Basri as he worked on a new piece that he was going to present at a composers' festival (Festival Musik Indonesia) in Surakarta, Central Java, the next month. His musicians consisted of young men playing instruments one would normally identify as "traditional" South Sulawesian, mostly Makassarese—ganrang, suling, kecapi. Yet he was making music on an invention that he called a pitu-pitu (in imitation of its sound), which involved buzzing and whirring sounds from thin tape attached to flexible wire frames. This instrument was inspired by the lontar (palmyra palm) leaves placed on some South Sulawesian kites and which make a sound as they fly (Mks. dangong). Instead of using lontar, he chose, for reasons not made clear, to use loose audiocassette tape ribbon and long frames comprising three sides and part of the fourth of a rectangle. These "instruments," he discovered, made possible several distinct timbres and some degree of pitch variance, not entirely controllable by the "player"—who was almost a dancer, standing and moving his body, and arms especially, in rhythmic patterns. As he moved with one in each hand, he looked like he were performing a slow martial arts sequence (close to some movements of tai chi). The music produced by the other instruments was a combination of patterns from extant genres and specific items of repertory—known song phrases on the suling, known drum patterns on the several ganrang, and so forth. But in combination with Basri's newly created pitu-pitu instrument, the overall sound was indeed something new and, at the same time, clearly identifiable as local (Makassarese, or at least South Sulawesian). This was not neo-ritual art even of the less radical variety of Nurhadi, but neither was it the light secular art of Bu Nani. This music sought the curiosity of its listeners, at the very least, and attempted to create a kind of haunting sonic atmosphere—suggesting a pastoral stillness (in the soft sounds of the tape vibrations) specific to the lowland South Sulawesi region (indexed by the other instruments). Four years earlier, I heard another piece by Basri, performed immediately after Nurhadi's Balle Sumanga' at the twenty-fifth anniversary of Dewan Kesenian Makassar. The piece was called "Sisila-Sila," a Makassarese term for the singing of improvised verse in alternation, most often between a young man

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and a young woman, usually lasting for several hours and requiring creative ingenuity on the part of both singers as each responds to the verses sung by the other. Basri's piece presented the expected young man and young woman, but their singing was only a small portion of the piece and was not improvised sisila-sila, but instead previously composed words and melody sung in alternation by one female and one male. The whole piece lasted only a little over eight minutes, and much of it was instrumental music. The piece opened with someone imitating the sound of a house lizard (toke), with a chorus of voices responding "tenaja" (Mks.; no, just no). A solo suling took over, with voices weaving in a heterophonic combination similar to the leklek group singing that occurs periodically in the performance of long pakarena dance and music in ritual contexts. The vocal timbre and heterophony suggested, I was told, a kind of ritual or spiritual aura, at least for some listeners. Percussionists playing Makassarese ganrang, large and small frame drums (rebana and marwas), bamboo slit drum (kattok-kattok), and cymbals (kancing) played brief passages of well-known ritual rhythmic patterns, such as the slow tunrung pakballe sumangak, the virtuosic interlocking accompaniment of pakarena, and the ever popular pakanjarak. Interspersed with this impressive traditionally based percussion were sections of kecapi playing either alone or in combination with suling, and later with suling and ganrang. For the last sixty to seventy seconds, the musicians who had been playing kecapi and suling switched to the two-kettle-gong (Mks. kannong-kannong) and xylophone (Mks. tennong). The alternating singing had begun just over three minutes into the piece and ended less than two minutes later. The whole piece was almost unimaginably episodic. Though some of the episodes were either precise excerpts from traditional genres, with ritual connotations, the overall piece was presented as a "work of art," a musical composition conceived by Basri as an audible manifestation of his own imagination. For this he was applauded. And no doubt he was applauded again when he took his pitu-pitu and Makassarese musicians to Surakarta in September. Andi Abu Bakar also has taken his work to other parts of Indonesia. But unlike Basri, he turned his attention in the latter 1990s toward the Torajan uplands. Though not Torajan himself, his dance choreography in 1998 drew so heavily on Torajan movement that he presented his works at Torajan arts festivals in a quest for artistic validation before presenting them elsewhere. Though not averse to drawing on lowland traditions, he felt that Torajan dance and music were underrepresented in the growing repertoire of contemporary works by South Sulawesian "artists," as distinct from the presentations still frequently seen as part of ritual observance in the Torajan highlands (personal communication, 18 August 1998). For music Abu Bakar regularly made recordings of Torajan musicians, which then served as models for lowland musicians to imitate as closely as possible for live performance outside of the Toraja area. In some cases, Abu Bakar simply used his "field" tape as accompaniment for his dance. Although he was not attempting to re-create Torajan ritual, he intended his audiences to recognize and appreciate the Torajan content of his work, although appropriating it and presenting it as his artistic creation.

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Are Abu Bakar's and Basri's works "ritual art"? I would argue that they are not, despite some use of ritually based musical genres and dance movements. Are they "art"? Most clearly, yes, in current Indonesian conception; but they are not newly composed note-by-note, rhythmic duration by rhythmic duration, or movement by movement. In Surakarta, an audience consisting mostly of Javanese, with some musicians and performing artists from other parts of Indonesia and a few from foreign countries, was to hear and judge Basri's new piece for its creativity and aesthetic effect, almost certainly without clear knowledge of the kinds of musical raw materials being excerpted and newly arranged. The ambiguity in the works of Basri is preponderant—what is Basri's, what is Makassarese tradition, what is secular, chosen for aesthetic effect, what is dictated by tradition (which may include ritual tradition)? So also in the works of Halilintar—what is Halilintar's, what is local South Sulawesi tradition, what is "art," and what is "ritual"? For Halilintar, for Nurhadi, for Basri, Abu Bakar, and still others, their acts of decision making resulting in these works are an important kind of local agency. Though varied in emphasis and style, all of these artists (seniman) of the 1990s and since are caught in the web of Indonesian cultural discourse. All have been to the cultural center—Java— presented their works there, studied there, and consider the potential reception by non-South Sulawesians of their work. In this way they follow very closely in the footsteps of Bu Nani and her generation, but now the more powerful local forms find new voice. How do the actions of Halilintar and others index cultural power relations in South Sulawesi? They represent a kind of oppositional discourse, a search for a style, an approach, that sets them off from the usual government-sponsored stage entertainment, as typified in the 1990s by YAMA. Yet they have also sought parity with other artists on a national level, and in this way continue the cultural dialogue with Java, comparing their own accomplishments to those of Javanese and other nationally prominent artists. In response to papers delivered at the seminar held to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Makassar Arts Council (Dewan Kesenian Makassar), one student commented that South Sulawesi had always been "reactive" to Java, not "constructive." He pointed out that South Sulawesi has no budayawan (Ind.; culture expert) with national clout, no one like Javanese author/sociologist/ arts-and-culture commentator Umar Kayam. True enough. But in the persons of Halilintar, Basri, and others I have mentioned, South Sulawesi has a kind of multilevel artist-intellectual cadre that can produce and present performances that serve as "art" and that serve as "ritual"—fulfilling national cultural expectations and resisting them. As we will see in the next chapter, Halilintar also has been able to place some of his neo-ritual art in the patriotic context of National Independence Day festivities, simultaneously celebrating and critiquing the dominant cultural discourse in contemporary Indonesia.

5

Patriotism and Performance

One Holiday, Two Forts, Three Events

Indonesia's Independence day, 17 August, is marked and celebrated annually in myriad ways around the archipelago. Official ceremonies in the nation's capital, provincial capitals, and many districts combine flag raising and militaristic pomp with speeches and Islamic prayers. Yet many events surrounding this holiday each year feature performances of local music and dance, often centering on local and ethnic communities rather than the larger nation-state. In this chapter I wish to consider three events connected with Indonesia's Independence Day in South Sulawesi: one in Tanete, Bulukumba, a village far from the provincial capital (1993); the second in Fort Ujung Pandang (= Fort Rotterdam), in downtown Ujung Pandang (1994); and the third a traveling performance presented in various sites in and around Ujung Pandang (1995). The first was organized by local village bureaucrats, the second by Halilintar Lathief in coordination with Darmawan Mas'ud Rahman (a Mandarese anthropologist in charge of the provincial archaeological museum and college teacher), and the third by Halilintar and his urban artist colleagues, based on ideas of the internationally acclaimed Indonesian dancer, choreographer, and impresario, Sardono W. Kusumo. Each involved a variety of performance genres, but with different emphases with respect to the nation and shared national culture. Certainly this important national holiday would seem a fitting occasion for forms of expression that celebrate national unity, but this was more characteristic of the village 89

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performance than of the other two. This is not to say that villagers have a greater sense of Indonesian identity than urbanites. Rather, performance in each case represented a kind of negotiation of identity—national and subnational. In each, the specter of Indonesian national "culture" —however vaguely conceived—hung as a background against which the foreground took shape: attempting to represent it in some way, or circumvent it, or even defy it. But the local-national dialectic could not be escaped.

FAR FROM THE CAPITAL: 17 AUGUST 1993 It was by my own design that on my first visit to South Sulawesi I spent 17 August in a small village at some considerable distance from Ujung Pandang. I had suggested to Halilintar, who had offered to escort me on a short trip in search of rural arts, that we try to witness an 17 August celebration in a rural setting. We wound up in the small town of Tanete, in Bulukumba, some 185 kilometers from Ujung Pandang, in the kabupaten of Bulukumba (southeastern tip of the South Sulawesi peninsula), after a trip through the boatbuilding town of Tana Beru and an afternoon in the village of Tana Toa, a protected community where the local people dress only in black, speak the unique Konjo dialect of Makassarese, and maintain an identity quite distinct from those in the surrounding areas. Here no celebration of any kind was planned, and no Indonesian flags flew by local residents' houses the way they did (by governmental decree) throughout much of the province. Halilintar and the two other local artists who accompanied us, both Makassarese, commented with some amazement that there seemed absolutely no sense of Indonesian identity here. People appeared to have been insulated from almost any influences from outside their immediate community. No one spoke Indonesian, none were Muslim, all wore black. The songs, drumming, and dance they performed for us were stylistically unique to this one village. The visit to Tana Toa on 17 August was certainly something of a revelation to me, and seemingly to the others as well, that residents of the Indonesian nation-state could very well be indifferent, perhaps even unaware altogether, of this important date and its potential meanings. Arriving in the town of Tanete, a short drive from Tana Toa, we had time to eat dinner and proceed to the auditorium of the local elementary school where the 17 August celebration was soon to begin. Most of the presenters were school-age children from the town and surrounding villages and, in contrast to the Tana Toa villagers, demonstrated familiarity with a range of cultural forms shared by other Indonesians. The evening opened with a chorus of school children singing several Indonesian-language songs in harmony, immediately establishing a supralocal tone for the evening. A separate, smaller group of teenage girls in Muslim veils (Ind. jilbab) followed with qasidah, again in Indonesian language, accompanying themselves on tambourines and directed by a woman conductor.1 With its Middle Eastern-derived singing style and often devotional texts, qasidah is invariably associated with Islam. Thus, already the very much


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larger worlds of Indonesia and Islam had been invoked in the first two items on the program. For the third item, three young couples performed a dance originating in East Sumatra, the Tari Serampang Duabelas, which had been promoted by Sukarno, Indonesia's first president, as a national dance.2 It is likely that at least some of those present were aware of the dance's special significance in the context of a celebration of Indonesian nationalism, though some may have seen it only as a local "traditional" dance from another region of Indonesia. In either case, it is striking that the first "local" item presented was not from South Sulawesi at all, but from the distant island of Sumatra. It was not until the fourth item that the usual themes of struggle and independence were explicitly put forth, as a group of women sang a medley of lagu perjuangan (Ind.; songs of struggle). These are diatonic songs, with Indonesian texts that celebrate the heroism of Indonesia's revolution against the Dutch, and are often performed in contexts of national celebration. The singers were dressed in local formal attire, featuring the baju bodo (Mks., Bgs.; monochromatic short-sleeved blouses) and distinctive local kain (wraparound long skirts) and thus brought the local and national into just the sort of harmony that was encouraged under New Order Indonesian officialdom — maintaining elements of local tradition while fully embracing the national agenda. Still with no hint of local music or dance, the program moved onward with two short fashion shows: pakaian Muslim (Ind.; Muslim clothing), with Indonesian- and local-language dangdut accompaniment on cassette,3 and pakaian nasional (Ind.; national clothing), with Indonesian-language rock music accompaniment on cassette, again invoking larger, supraregional affiliations. The following two items were dances, both relatively recent creations based on older, regional genres: a tari kipas (Ind.; fan dance), accompanied by a cassette of diatonic music likely of West or North Sumatran origin: and tari malattu kopi (Ind./Tor.; picking coffee dance), a piece composed by We Tenrisau Sapada and made famous throughout much of South Sulawesi through Bu Nani's IKS. Remarkably, this first South Sulawesian number was based on neither Makassarese nor Bugis dance, but on the movements of older Torajan dances. Thus, even with the most local component in the program thus far, the performers chose to present something from the South Sulawesian ethnic group most remote from them, both geographically and culturally. The performance continued with another pakaian Muslim fashion show, a reading of three Indonesian poems, and a finale of two Western-style songs with keyboard accompaniment. The evening gave strong emphasis to forms of expression that invoke larger communities — of Indonesia, of Islam, and of South Sulawesi. That musical style often employed Western intervals and instruments should not be misconstrued as an explicit embrace of Western (or "international'Vglobal) culture. Yet certainly no one in Indonesia who aspires to be "modern" can do so without gaining at least a passive familiarity with Western musical styles, as they permeate various national and local musical genres, pop and other. Halilintar commented how this evening's performance did not differ much from those he had

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seen in recent years in Ujung Pandang neighborhoods, except in the total lack of at least some version of a Bugis or Makassarese dance. What surprised him, however, was the high level of familiarity with national forms demonstrated by Tanete's population, in such marked contrast with what we had encountered earlier that day at Tana Toa. ON THE FORTRESS RUINS: 13 AUGUST 1994 The following year, I was in Ujung Pandang during August and witnessed an Independence Day performance of a very different nature than the one in Tanete (or the nonperformance in Tana Toa). It took place a few days before the 17th (the afternoon and evening of 13 August) and involved some seventeen groups, often with several performing simultaneously. The event was conceived by Halilintar and, although in celebration of the national holiday, nearly all of its component elements invoked local identity—well-established local genres of dance and music, a play in Indonesian language but concerning a local aristocrat, and a final rallying cry to the people and spirit of Makassar. Halilintar titled the event "On the Ruins," since the most of the event took place on the unrestored ruins of one fortress and began by the ruins of another. He used Indonesian language (Di Atas Puing-puing), but provided an alternate subtitle in Bugis: Madoko Tanrijampang (Bgs.; Pain Ignored; Suffering Not Attended To). Some young participants enacted the shackling of the Indonesian people by the Dutch and their struggle to free themselves, and a local actor delivered an impassioned invective against colonialism. Thus, the patriotic fervor of an Indonesia breaking the chains of domination was present, fulfilling conventional Independence Day expectations, but this was only one of many layers of activity and meaning in this complex event. Halilintar was able to mobilize, on very short notice, an array of musicians, dancers, and other participants to provide a unique series of activities that were put forth as a single, patriotic "performance." This began with some forty young men and women, many of them students or former students of Halilintar's, assembling in the late afternoon on the grounds of the ruins of the ancient fortress Benteng Somba Opu, a place whose very mention conjures images of heroic intolerance of outside domination. In many of the traditional houses at this park, among other heirlooms and local symbols of power are stored the sacred banners of former kingdoms and small polities. Halilintar arranged to have just over forty of these carried by young men in a procession from Somba Opu across the bridge and through the streets of Ujung Pandang to the other well-known fort: Benteng Ujung Pandang (also known as Fort Rotterdam), a site consisting of buildings in Dutch architectural style and used as a fortress by the Dutch from the latter seventeenth century until the early twentieth (see Sagimun 1993, 135-161). Accompanying the men carrying banners were young women carrying a variety of old Makassarese and Bugis ritual objects, mostly made of bamboo and rattan. All were dressed in local ceremonial garb and drew curious looks from those who saw


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them in the street. There was no way for any onlookers to know that the procession was intended as part of an Indonesian national holiday celebration, other than its occurrence just four days before the 17th. All that was evident was some kind of local ceremony—with local flags and costuming. The parading of powerful objects (Ind. kirab pusaka) is well-known in other parts of Indonesia, including Java. It is a device by which a ruler demonstrates to the larger populace the legitimacy of his or her authority, since possession of certain regalia has been widely held to be not merely a sign but the very source of royal power. Although no specific authority was being legitimated by the parading of these flags, it seemed rather to support a somewhat fuzzy notion of "local power"—understood not as particular towns or kingdoms, but the region of South Sulawesi, particularly the Makassarese areas. The red and white flag of the Indonesian nation, so prominent in most ceremonies relating to Indonesia's independence, was entirely absent. While one could imagine New Order government officials being pleased had a large Indonesian flag been carried at the head of the march, with the symbols of former local rulers following dutifully behind, no such flag appeared at all, suggesting very obviously a concern with local power—not as part of a larger Indonesia but as something that could stand separate from it, valid and awe-inspiring without reference to the Indonesian nation. The main "performance" was to begin at Benteng Ujung Pandang, and did so at dusk, just after the procession arrived at its destination. Torches were lit and placed around the walls of the old, unrestored part of the fort. Halilintar and several of his closest companions (Nurhadi, Ramli Prapanca, and Agus) lit incense in a burner on a wide ramp leading to the upper walls, as one music group played suling (bamboo flute) with soft drumming. The ramp would later serve as the slanted stage for a final dance and flag procession, and was centrally located among the various performance sites within the fort. Several drummers began to play, as Ramli welcomed the audience and introduced Darmawan, anthropology professor and head of the local provincial archaeology office. In a short introductory speech, Darmawan expressed his enthusiastic endorsement of the whole event, acknowledging and praising its spontaneity, and claiming that participation in such a patriotic event brought all involved back to the important traditional values of previous generations, whereby they could best withstand the pernicious effects of globalization. He thanked all the artists for gathering "with one purpose—to join the arts together, build them, and return them to patriotism for the nation."4 Loud drumming marked the ending of his speech, whereupon a number of groups began to perform, each situated in its own small space in front of or on top of the old fortress walls. A roving pair of lighting personnel shone two bright spotlights on different performers, seemingly at will and most certainly not rehearsed. The torch lights remained fixed in a few locations, along with a few weak colored spotlights, but these were insufficient to allow the audience to see what performers were doing. The roving spotlights were essential but could not illuminate all the action that was taking place at any one moment.

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One light turned upward, dramatically revealing the figures of several men moving rapidly along the upper walls of the fort, and a large group of women holding the ritual objects they had brought from Somba Opu. Others high on the walls were beating fringed bamboo (Mks. lae-lae). Beneath them, behind the old prison bars in the wall of the fort, young actors from one of the groups were shouting, seemingly trying to break free. Another young actor, in T-shirt and long pants, read by torchlight from a script decrying the injustices of Dutch rule. At the same time, a group of older musicians and dancers (Ilologading, from the outskirts of Ujung Pandang) began performing ganrang bulo (Mks.; bamboo drum), dancing as they played bamboo idiochord tube-zithers.5 From the top of the fort they descended the ramp, and other music groups began to play unrelated music, as the screams and moans of the actor-prisoners rose to an unearthly fortissimo. The handlers of the spotlights altered their targets frequently, in hopes of illuminating all that was occurring, but only adding to what was truly a confusing conflagration of multiple layers. Four female dancers slowly lined up at the very edge of the high wall, opened their fans, and began to perform a version of the pakarena ballak bulo (Mks.; bamboo house pakarena dance, from the island of Selayar). The loud drumming and puik-puik playing provided by the accompanying musicians sitting far below—Daeng Mile and his group Takbing Siwaliya6—could barely be heard above the variety of other music and dramatic shouting. To the left of the central ramp the older group who had earlier performed a short ganrang bulo put down their bamboo instruments, lit torches, and began the fire dance pepepepe ri Makka (Mks.; fire in Mecca), in which performers demonstrate invulnerability to the torch held near their skin and clothing. The pakarena continued atop the high wall, the dancers flirting with a different kind of danger than the fire dancers, as one false step could have sent a dancer tumbling to the hard ground far below. As these activities began to end, one by one, the spotlights turned 180 degrees to direct attention to a play that was beginning on a small makeshift stage behind the audience. The locally popular drama group Teater Mekar Buana was beginning a humorous play about a local nobleman whose daughter fell in love with a foreign engineer, dressed in white shirt and tie. For the duration of the play, roughly forty-five minutes, the other performing groups remained quiet, allowing all to focus on the play. Musical accompaniment was provided by the actors who were not on stage at the moment. During the course of the play, almost all actors assumed the role of musician at one point or another, playing guitar, Makassarese drum, kecapi (boat-lute), and singing. The main character, the nobleman, made frequent jokes and commentary on contemporary issues (both national and local), complemented by two clown-servants, one of whom dressed as a transvestite priest (bissu) for part of the play. Despite the many non sequiturs typical of this kind of semi-improvised theater, this play represented the most focused and least confusing part of the overall event. The audience laughed at the jokes and followed the action without any competing activity from the other participating groups. Yet there was certainly no "patriotic" element in this play; it was simply an entertainment, loosely constructed around a


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Fire Dance (tori pepepepe) performed by Sanggar Ilologading, Ujung Pandang, August 1998

plot dealing with the conflict between romantic love, parental approval, and acceptance of the outside world—in this case represented by the foreign engineer. As the play concluded, the music of Makassarese pancak (martial arts) drums started up to the left of the ramp, and a large group of young boys began to demonstrate their skills at pancak. Soon Daeng Mile and his group cut in with loud and fast Makassarese drum and puik-puik. They were seated on the edge of the ramp, where two male performers descended, dressed in black, one scattering water from a small vessel, the other waving a fringed bamboo lae-lae and striking it against his other hand. The pakarena dancers moved slowly and ceremoniously from their perch on the high walls to assume positions on the ramp itself and began to dance pakarena again. Soon they divided, with two dancers on either side of the ramp, in order to provide space for flag bearers who marched up the ramp carrying the banners they had brought earlier from Somba Opu. One by one they ascended the ramp to the upper walls, as the pakarena and its accompanying music alternated in usual fashion between loud and fast instrumental music and slow, meterless vocal and puik-puik playing. Once the flag bearers had positioned themselves dramatically along the high walls, the dancers and musicians brought their performance to a close, and Ramli Prapanca appeared to recite an impassioned epilogue, in a mix of Indonesian and Makassarese language, invoking the "soul of the people of

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Makassar" (sukma tu ri tana Mangkasarak) and naming famous local places and their distinguishing features (Somba Opu's ruins, nearby waterfront Losari's water, etc.). Daeng Mile's group played a short drum and puik-puik flourish following Ramli's final words and the performance was over. Audience members registered confusion, and applauded only half-heartedly. Even the organizers, Halilintar and his closest associates, were cautious in their evaluation, stressing its "experimental" nature. Certainly this had not been what Darmawan had stated it to be in the beginning, with all participants united by a single, patriotic purpose. And the spontaneity he had so enthusiastically praised was in this case born of necessity, precipitated by a near total lack of rehearsal time. While each performing group was well accustomed to performing its own repertoire, there had been no chance to gather them together and work out logistics for this multidimensional event. And the patriotic fervor of the artists was certainly not uniform. Some of the younger participants gave impassioned performances as prisoners, for example, and cried out against Western colonialism. Yet older artists from the villages performed music and dance they were accustomed to presenting in village rituals, with minimal alteration and no clearly articulated patriotic agenda. Ramli, who opened the evening by welcoming the audience to a performance "celebrating Indonesia's proclamation of independence," ended the evening with a rousing invocation of Makassarese spirit and strength, but in the face of what? Dutch colonialism, or the more recent attempts at subjugation and control of local affairs by a Javanese-dominated national government? Certainly those who wished to see the event as a show of patriotism by village performers and Ujung Pandang's avant-garde artists could do so, but it involved a number of elements that clearly celebrated local cultural forms and attempted to invest them, as in so many of the recent creations by Halilintar and his closest associates, with a renewed power—the sacred power of ritual. There was no hint of national identity in these ritual elements, but there was a strong local identity, emphasizing Makassarese culture (despite the fact that Halilintar and Nurhadi are of Bugis ancestry, Ramli from Southeast Sulawesi, and Darmawan Mandar). Many of the older performers were indeed Makassarese, such as the Ilologading group (performing ganrang bulo and pepepepe ri Makka), the martial arts group, and the other music groups. The younger performers, members of some of the dance groups and theater groups, were of various ethnic backgrounds and were not especially partial to one or another of South Sulawesi's local ethnicities. Instead, like Halilintar, they espoused Makassarese music and dance as a local alternative to national forms of expression. If feelings of national patriotism were stirred nevertheless, they were undoubtedly mixed with strong sentiments about local culture and its potential power. The staging dramatically framed the old heirloom banners, ritual objects, and local genres of music and dance as part of a powerful enactment which was clearly meant to go beyond entertainment. Despite the official discourse about preserving and developing local traditional culture, this multidimensional event attempted not only to champion local performance but also to (re-)infuse it with a power deriving not from a shared national or Islamic Indonesian culture, but


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from deep local particulars. However it was interpreted, this "experiment" provided the basis for several other major performance events conceived and directed by Halilintar, including a considerably more ambitious event in 1995— again as part of the celebration of Indonesia's independence. DANCE OF GOLD: 15-17 AUGUST 1995 During the summer of 1995 it was difficult to attend any public event in Indonesia that was not billed as part of the country's Golden Anniversary. So pervasive was the expectation of patriotic display not only on 17 August but also during the days, weeks, and months on either side of this date that the whole year could really be seen as the celebration. Of course, the flag raisings, readings of the proclamation, and other official military pomp and circumstance were timed right around the exact moment fifty years after the public reading of the Proklamasi at 10 A.M. on 17 August 1945. And these took place in Jakarta, with successively smaller scale replications in provincial capitals and many kabupaten—the enactment of orderliness a la Suharto's New Order and unique only in scale, rather than content. One of the most ambitious, and certainly one of the most unusual, public displays conceived for Indonesia's Golden Anniversary was the Tari Emas (Ind.; Dance of Gold), an idea of the highly acclaimed and controversial dancer/impresario Sardono W. Kusumo. Text from his original description of his idea is given here, translated from the Indonesian, as it appeared in the Petunjuk Pelaksanaan Tari Emas (Ind.; Dance of Gold Operations Guide) booklet (Lathief 1995): 1. The total number of golden dancers in each area should be at least 50. 2. The number of males and females should fit with the needs/ideas of each choreographer. 3. The form of dance, costumes, musical accompaniment and additional items [dance props, etc.] should fit with the ideas of each choreographer. 4. The movements of the dance should be performed quietly, with nothing spoken, far from anything with an emotional quality. Totally contemplative, not social protest. Also not accompanied by oral or written slogans, reading of narration or of poetry. 5. The costuming and make-up of the dancers is free, but to maintain unity [throughout the archipelago], there should be some dancers who are colored gold. The necessary materials will be sent by the [Central] Working Team. 6. The beginning of the performance is free, but the end must be at exactly 10:00 Western Indonesia Time, with all listening to the reading of the text of the proclamation.7

To this, Halilintar added his own interpretation in a slightly modified list appearing eariier in the same booklet, specifying that not some, but all the dancers must be smeared in gold color (Ind. para penari akan dilumuri dengan warna emas). And he added under the last item that for the reading of the

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proclamation, all the dancers should be silent and motionless, like statues (Ind. para penari diam mematung; Latief 1995, 5). As it turned out, some of the individual Tari Emas efforts around the nation never got off the ground. Difficulties arose among some of the others in fielding a sufficient number of dancers to fulfill Sardono's original design. In Ujung Pandang, however, Halilintar convened a group of close to fifty performers, who danced, played, marched, meditated, rested, ate, and rode boats, vans, and pedicabs together—for a period of fifty hours. They began early in the evening of 15 August and, although they stopped for the reading of the proclamation at 10 A.M. WIB (11 in Ujung Pandang) on the 17th, they continued afterward until well after dark the night of the 17th. Several days later, with a smaller group of the most dedicated performers, he toured around the province for three days, performing briefly in a majority of its twenty-three districts, going way beyond Sardono's original design and baffling local and provincial officials, curious onlookers, and some of the performers along the way. Here I would like to offer an idea of what this South Sulawesi version of the Tari Emas involved, its constituent elements and its meanings as enacted. How might we understand this remarkable project? As patriotic? As protest? As endurance test? To some extent it was all of these and more. But one of its most important characteristics was its revitalization of local expressive culture in an avant-garde and yet ostensibly "patriotic" frame, not unlike works conceived by Halilintar during the previous year. Though Halilintar was identified in the guide booklet as "choreographer" of South Sulawesi's contribution to the Tari Emas, he was also identified, more accurately, as the coordinator for the Sulawesi Area. For what was presented as the Tari Emas in South Sulawesi consisted of a variety of local genres of dance and music, with some of the performers drawn from the ranks of the recognized specialists in local arts, many of whom had performed in at least one of Halilintar's productions from the previous year. The other participants were middleand upper-class students, former students, and performance faculty at the local teacher's college (IKIP) and arts high school (SMKI). Many of the performers had participated in other events organized by Halilintar, with a range of motivations and understandings of what it was they were doing. What they all seemed to share was a devotion to the person Halilintar, who they saw not only as a champion of "the local" but also as a mystically powerful figure, with a unique combination of status and authority owing to a range of contributing factors—from his elite ancestry and ownership of potent old regalia to his national and international experiences as a performing arts troupe leader. The Tari Emas event—or series of events, as it turned out—was an important accomplishment for Halilintar, one to which he devoted much effort in preparation. But as we begin to consider what it actually involved, we find what I will argue is at once a critique of the secularization and festivalization of arts and culture in New Order Indonesia and what Michel de Certeau has called la perruque (literally "wig"), a disguise whereby an official activity is subverted, such as the surreptitious use of company time or company equipment for noncompany ends (de Certeau 1984). In this case the official activity is the fiftieth


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celebration of Indonesian Independence, and the nonofficial ends are the glorification of local arts and expressive culture, along with the further enhancement of Halilintar's own status among artists in South Sulawesi and among other national figures, not least Sardono himself. Preparations began several days before the opening evening of the performance, with musicians and dancers gathering to rehearse at Benteng Ujung Pandang. Here Halilintar discussed logistics for the fifty hours, handed out what turned out to be a tentative schedule of events, and experimented with body painting. The opening of the fifty-hour Tari Emas, however, took place in an open space within the grounds of Taman Miniatuur Sulawesi, on Somba Opu island, arguably the most local of local places in South Sulawesi, abounding in local history and resistance. Dancers and musicians assembled, sworn to near total verbal silence for the next fifty hours. At first they sat and meditated as curious onlookers stared quizzically. The three instrumentalists began with tunrung pakballe sumangak, the slow Makassarese sequence used for weddings, circumcisions, and other village rituals to ensure well-being. Two of the dancers, one a teacher at SMKI, used the occasion to bless their infants, who were present for this first evening. More people gathered as the music filled the air. What, they wondered, were these mostly young performers doing all dressed and painted in gold? Although Halilintar prepared explanatory notes, duplicated and bound into a little booklet, neither he nor anyone else ever handed these out to those who watched. It remained a document shared only among the performers and, out of necessity later, with irritated local police. Later that same evening, the musicians switched to the music that accompanies the slow and stately female group dance pakarena. At times, male dancers who felt inspired began to dance in freely improvised form, ostensibly in trance. And some of them who were trained in local martial arts (pancak) performed to the accompaniment provided by the same musicians, who switched from standard drums to the special small pair used only for martial arts accompaniment. Some of the young women did not dance this first evening, but instead paraded or sat with their gold-painted versions of Makassarese ritual fans and other objects of bamboo and rattan. Moving gradually from one performance genre to another, with meditative pauses in between, the fifty performers continued until the early hours of the morning, at which time they proceeded by minivans back to the dorm rooms at Benteng Ujung Pandang for a few hours of rest and reapplication of gold paint. Around 9 the next morning they began to circumambulate the downtown fort and then proceeded northward (by minivan again) to the city's main harbor, Paotere. In broad daylight and in the midst of the busy city, the troupe made for even greater curiosity than they had the previous evening. Descending from the minivans to the sound of drums and oboe music, they filed over to one of the local sailing boats and quietly made arrangement to board the boat, with some of the young dancers climbing its rigging. At one point the three musicians stopped as two young men beat out the rhythms for the well-known Torajan dance pagelluk on a gold-painted Torajan drum, with one of the dancers, in imitation of Torajan practice, dancing a portion of the dance on top of the drum.

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Elderly dancers improvised on elements of the old Makassarese kondobuleng, the slapstick pantomime portraying a white heron being killed by a hunter with his rifle. From the harbor, they moved to the heroes' cemetery by the main bus terminal (Panaikang), and in the late afternoon to Ujung Pandang's seaside promenade, Pantai Losari. As evening fell, they moved to the small docks just north of Losari, from whence they embarked for an island lying just several hundred meters offshore (Pulau Kayangan), dancing on the boat and upon their arrival on the island. Returning to Benteng Ujung Pandang shortly before dawn, the troupe rested a few hours in the dormitory. The next day began with the application of more gold paint and a short promenade around the fort's inner courtyard, followed by a short ride to the Makassar Mall, a multistoried modern shopping center in the heart of Ujung Pandang's commercial district. Here, among the thousands of shoppers, pedicab, and minivan drivers, the golden dancers paraded around and stopped in the mall's center for the radio broadcast of the proclamation. From the mall they proceeded on foot to the nearby tomb of the Javanese Prince Diponegoro, exiled to Sulawesi after the Java War (1825-1830) and much celebrated as an Indonesian hero for his resistance to the Dutch. Here all participants prayed, after which several male dancers performed slow improvisations with their daggers (keris)—ostensibly in trance. The next activity Halilintar had planned was that all participants would ride in gold pedicabs (becak) from Diponegoro's tomb to the gravesite of South Sulawesi's most celebrated former ruler, Sultan Hasanuddin. The local authorities—the head of the subdistrict (Ind. kecamatari) and the police—were enraged, however, and tried to prevent it. More than twenty drivers had decorated their pedicabs with gold paper, but as they were painting their chests and faces gold, policemen let the air out of many of the tires. As Halilintar learned of this, he confronted the local subdistrict head (Pak Camat), who complained that (1) they had no permit for this odd procession and (2) they were asking the pedicab drivers to go the wrong way on a one-way street. At this point Halilintar produced the printed program, explaining that this was a nationwide artistic celebration of Indonesia's Golden Anniversary and thus a patriotic event. Pak Camat was not convinced, at which point Halilintar pointed to my name in the program as one of the official "photographers." What might the foreign photographer say if Pak Camat prevented them from continuing their "performance"? Pak Camat grudgingly gave in, no doubt rejecting the idea that what he was witnessing was either "art" (kesenian) or "patriotic." With tires freshly pumped and ready to go, the whole entourage wheeled south to Sultan Hasanuddin's gravesite, complete with police escort, arranged by Pak Camat. We reached the gravesite by midafternoon (ca. 3 P.M.). The becak drivers were paid, but many chose to stay and watch the next and final phase of this remarkable performance, already nearly two days in length. Between periods of meditation, the dancers performed pakarena again, as well as trance or trancelike keris dances and martial arts (pancak). The pedicab drivers watched for an hour or so, then made their way back to the city center. Minivans


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Dancers and musicians participating in the Dance of Gold (Tari Etnas), in front of the tomb of Sultan Hasanuddin, August 1995. Musicians, kneeling, from left to right: Nanring (puik-puik), Bombong (ganrang), Daeng Mile (ganrang)

took the performers back to Somba Opu island, where they had begun their fifty-hour performance two days ago. That night they got a full night's sleep in the dorm rooms at Benteng Ujung Pandang and had a wrap-up meeting the following morning. Some were to go on a three-day Tari Emas tour of the province, others back to their jobs or classes. What did this "performance" mean to the participants? What reactions did they intend their many "audiences" to have? For all, this had been polysemic, certainly. Over the course of those fifty hours, dancing ranged from traditional Makassarse and Torajan genres to spontaneous improvisations. The music, however, consisted almost entirely of drumming and oboe pieces known for generations. Yet whether old or new, this "performative content" was framed as an avant-garde artistic mega-event, a kind of ambulatory happening, and at the same time as a celebration of Indonesia's independence. Of course, Sardono's conception certainly encouraged locally unique performances and forbade slogans or verbal messages. The local media gave this remarkable performance minimal coverage, despite advance efforts by Halilintar to attract media interest. Only a brief newspaper article, with one small picture, appeared a week after the 17th, only briefly describing what had occurred and outlining its current itinerary around the province (Anon 1995). Yet the overall performance certainly had much to do with power—most obviously in the confrontation with present-day authorities over the pedicab ride. The emphasis on meditation and the mystical, including trance, represented a South Sulawesi manifestation of a resistant current evident among artists elsewhere, particularly in Java.

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From my earliest encounters with artists in South Sulawesi, I was struck by their ambivalent attitudes toward a range of practices associated with the national center, particularly those identified as Javanese. In the local imagination, the center and "Java" were more or less coterminous, situated at a great psychic distance from South Sulawesi, not only a long journey by ship or an expensive one by airplane, but at a higher, more privileged social and cultural level. Those who command attention at the national level, in the world of artistic expression as well as the world of politics, have most often been Javanese. Halilintar acknowledged his taking inspiration from nationally (and internationally) famous Sardono, as well as other Javanese dancers he knew during his years of study in Yogyakarta. Halilintar's peculiar and precarious position has been to resist Indonesian conformity and Javanese aesthetic dominance, even as he acknowledges inspiration of certain Javanese performers.8 The itinerary for the golden dancers in South Sulawesi took them to numerous places of spiritual potency for local people, although some with larger "Indonesian" appeal (such as the heroes' cemetary and Diponegoro tomb). However, most of the audience only caught glimpses of them in one location, no doubt with various interpretations. I heard several onlookers at the harbor say the dancers must be followers of Buddhism (Ind. agama Buda) because of the gold clothing! How many, then, even understood the gold as a symbol of fifty years, since the actions seemed to have nothing to do with Indonesian Independence? Among the performers themselves, the event represented everything from a chance to earn some money performing their standard repertory (the musicians and other older villager performers were paid a reasonable honorarium) to a good excuse to be away from home for three nights as bold, contemporary artists (many of the student-age men and women still lived with their parents). I myself marveled throughout my observation of this event at how successfully it involved the younger, more privileged "followers" of Halilintar with the top village performers, most of whom were poor, with little formal education. This has been part of Halilintar's project, evident in other of his creative endeavors as well. Indeed, this was a highly public display of what was coming to be known as Halilintar's approach to performance, drawing on the most powerful of older forms and juxtaposing them in unorthodox ways. Was this a patriotic performance? In a certain sense, simply claiming it was does make it so. Yet its persistence in my own memory of 1995 in Indonesia is due to its highly charged ambiguity—from Sardono's broad conception to Halilintar's choice of detail—at once patriotic and critical, avant-garde and traditional, local and national. By combining these in ways that yielded a variety of interpretations it became an especially poignant representation, far more memorable than the countless flag raisings, military marches, and speeches full of the slogans that seem so unproblematically patriotic, but upon reflection represent a celebration of Western-derived ceremony and culture so prevalent in New Order Indonesia. Like much good art and good ritual, Halilintar's golden dance turned things on their heads—or, more accurately, allowed those of us involved to entertain such a notion.


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Like his Di Atas Puing-puing from the previous year, and in contrast to the celebration we had witnessed together in Tanete in 1993, Halilintar's Tan Emas was polysemic and decentering by design, even as it built on a large measure of spontaneity on the part of the performers. Yet as we reconsider the evening in Tanete, we also find some level of contradictory meaning, as different levels of community were invoked, and Makassarese and Bugis genres were excluded entirely. What all these events suggest is a problematized condition of identity in lowland South Sulawesi, and a problematic working through, or around, official national discourse about what constitutes national culture and the place of local expression within it.

6 Sinrilik and Kacaping

Persistence and Adaptation of Two Makassarese Musical Genres

However problematic, the terms moderen (modern) and tradisional (traditional) constitute nothing less than cornerstones in the discourse among musicians, intellectuals, and lay people concerning artistic activity in South Sulawesi, as indeed in many (perhaps all) other parts of Indonesia. In the previous chapters, we have traced the course of an intentional march beyond the "traditional" to stage entertainment, spearheaded by Bu Nani Sapada and widely seen as "modern," and beyond that vision of the modern to more idiosyncratic selfexpression, on the one hand, and postmodern efforts to revitalize performance through re-ritualization on the other. In the course of these fractious developments, numerous genres of music and dance have been affected. Some have nearly disappeared altogether; others have maintained strong continuity with practices generations old and are understood by practitioners and audiences alike to be "traditional." In this chapter we will consider two "traditional" Makassarese musical genres whose leading exponents have variously resisted and accommodated the pressures for change: sinrilik (solo singing of prose narrative, usually accompanied by two-stringed fiddle kesok-kesok), and kacaping (the Makassarese two-string boat-lute, often played in accompaniment of solo singing). My intention is to provide a sense of how each of these genres has been meaningful and the challenges each faces in fitting into the patterns of contemporary life in South Sulawesi, urban and rural. 104

Sinrilik and Kacaping

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SINRILIK: MAKASSARESE ORAL LITERATURE/NARRATIVE MUSIC Asked about important genres of Makassarese performing arts, scholars, artists, and others almost invariably mention sinrilik, a term usually referring to the singing of local narratives, sometimes of epic length, by one performer (always male) who accompanies himself on a spike fiddle. Most often the instrument is the locally made Makassarese kesok-kesok, a spike fiddle with two copper strings and a skin membrane covering a wooden resonator and played with a horsehair bow (Yasil et al. 1986, 90). The instrument is also known as kerekkerek gallang. At least one prominent pasinrilik (Mks. performer of sinrilik) prefers to use a Javanese-made rebab, whose sound is less raspy than most kesok-kesok, but the locally made instrument is the norm. The vocal line and the fiddle line are usually either in unison or in close heterophony, the fiddle playing continuously, even during pauses in the singing. The voice sometimes declaims in a style approaching normal speech, but mostly it employs a narrow to moderate range of focused pitches, with syllabic delivery. Scholars distinguish two varieties of sinrilik. The less common is sinrilik bosi timurung (Mks.; falling rain sinrilik), which is described as a privately performed lament, unaccompanied by any instrument (Basang 1988, 76-77). The main variety of sinrilik, identified by Basang as sinrilik pakesok-kesok (Mks.; fiddle player sinrilik), involving historical stories, instrumental accompaniment, and public performance, often going beyond entertainment to "ignite a revolutionary spirit" through its description of "struggle and heroism" (see Basang 1988,77). Older people who spoke to me about their experience listening to sinrilik stressed the emotional style of delivery—the intensity of the performer, who both sings and accompanies himself on the fiddle. The performers may have studied stories from written sources and memorized many lines, but in performance usually elaborate and re-create the story in the quasi-improvised process typical of oral performance, as outlined by Albert Lord in his classic study of the Yugoslavian "singer of tales" (1960). "Not infrequently, a. pasinrilik may not wish to be too tied to the written word. What is taken is the idea of the story and sequence of scenes in the story, which are then linked together with his own style and wording."1 Who performs sinrilikl In 1983-1984 a team of researchers from IKIP Teachers' College in Ujung Pandang conducted field research in Makassarese villages, interviewing twenty performers of sinrilik and recording their renditions for several of the best-known stories. They found that most performers identified themselves as farmers, several as sailors or salesmen, one as a teacher, and only one as a professional pasinrilik. All but two had learned to perform from listening to other pasinrilik and doing their best to memorize and imitate. And in many people's conceptions of sinrilik this oral method of learning and performing was central in defining the genre. Yet in discussion of sinrilik with villagers and urbanites alike the two performers almost always mentioned were the two exceptions—individuals who have relied heavily on written sources, have composed their own sinrilik in written form, and have

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Mappaselleng Daeng Maggau, playing kesok-kesok and singing sinrilik at his home in Ujung Pandang, August 1995 become well-known as pasinrilik through exposure on RRI and TVRI: Mappaselleng Daeng Maggau (b. 1927) and Sirajuddin Daeng Bantang (b. 1946). Story Repertory Sinrilik centers on emotions that Makassarese often identify as basic to a kind of Makassarese character. While much recent thinking in anthropology and cultural studies has problematized essentialist arguments, we can see, as do Makassarese and other South Sulawesian intellectuals, these aspects of Makassarese character as historically contingent, not "inborn." The first is a kind of melancholy, relating to the sadness of the bosi timurung songs—a deep, underlying sadness or melancholy that Makassarese attribute to centuries of subordination, to the Dutch and the Bugis, and also, since 1945, to the national majority Javanese. In attempting to pinpoint the origins of the Makassarese deep melancholy, local scholars often look to the Makassarese hero Batara Gowa, a messianic figure from the eighteenth century who appeared mysteriously on a ship and led followers in revolt against the Dutch. Said to have been killed and risen from the dead four times before finally succumbing to poison in 1785,


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Batara Gowa personified the defiant spirit of the Makassarese; but following his poisoning, Makassarese found less will to resist their local and foreign oppressors and became demoralized (see Mukhlis 1987; Tideman 1908.) Most of the stories in the repertory of sinrilik pakesok-kesok, however, tell of historic battles, heroic exploits, romantic intrigue, interpreted by most local writers (Parawansa et al. 1984; Basang 1988; Arief and Hakim 1993) as bold and positive reflections of Makassarese strength, integrity, and determination. Some of the sinrilik in the 1970s-1980s were vehicles for government propaganda, such as Sinrilik KB (Keluarga Berencana, Ind.; family planning, birth control), Pamiliang Umunga (Mks.; general election), and Sinrilik P4 (= Pedoman Penghayatan dan Pengamalan Pancasila, Ind.; guidelines for full experience and implementation of the Five Principles, the propaganda training in state ideology required of civil servants and students during the New Order). Others dealt with local particulars of the revolutionary struggle against the Dutch, such as Sinrilik 11 Desember (the date in 1946 marking the initiation of Colonel Raymond "Turk" Westerling's ruthless campaign of terror in South Sulawesi; seeRicklefs 1993, 224). The best-known of the older ("traditional") sinrilik are Kappalak Tallumbatua, I Datu Museng, I Mannakkuk, and I Makdik Daeng Rimakka. These same four titles were by far the most widely known according to the study by Parawansa et al. (1984,232), which reported these stories in all or nearly all of the districts surveyed. In the 1970s and 1980s, opening portions of / Datu Museng and Kapallak Tallumbatua were recorded and marketed commercially. / Datu Museng begins on the island of Sumbawa, where the hero, I Datu Museng, marries the beautiful I Maipa Daeng Nipata. Museng is sent by the king of Sumbawa to Sulawesi to hunt down a pretender to the throne, but he finds that the Dutch ruler of Ujung Pandang wants Maipa for himself. The ruler sends Daeng Jarrek to demand Museng turn over Maipa or be killed. Maipa is prepared to die rather than be forced into marriage with the Dutch intruder. When the Dutch ruler's followers forcefully enter Museng's and Maipa's dwelling, Museng kills Maipa, then dies fighting. / Makdik Daeng Rimakka is the story of a young man unjustly accused of robbery. To protect his good name he challenges his accusors and dies in a raging battle. Kappalak Tallumbatua (Mks.; The Three Ships) is a story of suspicion and the struggle for Makassarese power against Bugis and Dutch forces. The ruler of Gowa, Karaeng Tunisombaya, is considering how to enhance his already considerable power and summons all his nobles (lesser kings) for a discussion. He asks a famous fortune-teller, Bato Lampangang (= Boto Lempangang), about the security of his rule, and is told that there is someone soon to be born who will destroy the kingdom of Gowa. Despite orders to slay pregnant mothers and, later, young infants, it turns out that the threat comes from the ruler's own child, Andi Patunru (who, of course, had been spared in the purges as being above suspicion). Patunru flees, joins forces with the rival Bugis and with the Dutch, travels to Java and even to Holland, eventually returning and helping to defeat the Makassarese in a seven-year war that begins with the arrival of

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three boats (hence the title). The war ends when the forces of Gowa surrender and sign an agreement with the Dutch that effectively ends their political and economic power in the region. I Manakkuk is a story of love, valor, and interisland strife. The hero, I Manakkuk, travels to Bantaeng where he undergoes some remarkable experiences, including dying under a magic spell and coming back to life through the lifegiving powers of mystical knowledge. Later, in Lakbakkang, he and his wife are visited by I Nojeng I Manninggauk from Java, who, after losing a cockfight, attacks Lakbakkang with his Javanese forces. After I Nojeng and his troops are defeated, his father comes to direct the troops, but he also is defeated. Manakkuk and his wife are killed, but his father takes over and attacks Javanese troops on Java, where he finds a Javanese sarong (tubular cloth skirt) capable of bringing people back from death. He takes this back to South Sulawesi, where it restores them to life. Each of these stories involves some form of confrontation leading to lifeand-death struggle and the defeat or death of the protagonist. In three of the cases (all but I Makdik) the confrontation is between Makassarese and others— Bugis, Javanese, Dutch. And in a remarkable revelation of the ambivalent relationship between Java and South Sulawesi, the story of I Manakkuk casts Java as both potent rival (causing death) and source of magic (enabling I Manakkuk and his wife to come back to life). Although none of the artists and intellectuals I spoke with invoked this or other sinrilik stories to describe current cultural relations with the Javanese, it is evident that artistic competition with Javanese and other nationally sanctioned arts has been considerable for some time and that life-giving force (aesthetically speaking) has been drawn from Java, as artistic practices and approaches are studied there, brought to South Sulawesi, and applied locally—like the magic sarong. Sinrilik in the 1990s Perhaps ironically, in light of my remarks about bringing aesthetic ideas and practices from Java, sinrilik is a genre that has resisted the kinds of formal changes that might make it more appealing or "competitive"—either locally or nationally. It is difficult to know the extent of the popularity of this genre in the past, but the lengthy performances described in the literature had become quite rare by the late 1990s. My inquiries in the Makassarese areas where this genre is said to have thrived (Gowa, Takalar, Bantaeng, and Bulukumba) met with shrugs and widespread agreement that most people were simply no longer interested in this genre and it had pretty much disappeared. Instead, sinrilik over the last several decades has become a genre known primarily through occasional short radio and TV broadcasts. As of 1999, the local branch of the national radio station, RRI, broadcast sinrilik once a month for a half hour, and only on its "village broadcast" frequency (see chapter 9). Television broadcasts, on the local branch of the national network (TVRI), took place only once every three months and lasted only for fifteen minutes. These mediated forms of sinrilik contrast sharply with


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the performances in former times that could last nearly all night and sometimes for many nights in succession. The longer, unmediated performances mostly took place in the convivial atmosphere of a family ritual, such as a wedding or circumcision, or house building—with a lively audience that, sources indicate (e.g., Arief and Hakim 1993, 5), was essential to the performance, reacting to the singing and the performer's interpolated commentary, spontaneous and often humorous. In turn, the performer would adjust his delivery in response to audience reaction. In broadcasts, of course, most of the audience is not present. Yet the sinrilik broadcast on radio has, in recent years, usually been recorded, sometimes in the studio, sometimes in a village—and usually with at least some audience to provide response.2 The several television broadcasts I have seen (in 1996 and 1998) consisted of one pasinrilik with two or three others acting the role of "audience," not only responding to the main performer but also providing Indonesian language interpretation. The longevity of this modest commitment of local government media to sinrilik has no doubt exposed some viewers, particularly urban ones, to a genre they might otherwise not have encountered, leading some observers to claim (unrealistically) that "in recent years, sinrilik has found an ever greater place in the people's hearts, especially among the younger generation after stories from sinrilik were shown on ... television" [and that] "sinrilik is no longer the monopoly of Makassarese, but other ethnic groups in South Sulawesi consider sinrilik to be theirs as well."3 An entirely different opinion was shared by the many people I spoke to, Makassarese and non-Makassarese, who invariably pointed to the basis of sinrilik in the words. Interpolated explications in Indonesian, while they might tell the gist of the story and even embellish it with some humor, were incapable of conveying the full meaning of the text, with its varied literary devices (see Parawansa et al. 1984, 5-11). In response to the limits imposed by the emphasis on words, Mappaselleng indicated in a newspaper interview in 1992 that he would like to see the musical dimension celebrated and expanded upon (Yusmanizar 1992b), and he told me the genre would not die out as long as there were still Makassarese speakers. However, he was less than sanguine about its future popularity, primarily, he said, because of the difficulty involved in learning to perform (Yusmanizar 1992a). Yet I would concur with others I spoke with, who suggested that its drop in popularity has been due to the rather lesser instance of humor and instrumental virtuosity in sinrilik as compared to other genres. Mappaselleng is well known in South Sulawesi for his pioneering efforts during the early years of the New Order government to compose new sinrilik with government messages, as noted above. Most famous is his sinrilik on family planning (KB), still mentioned widely by South Sulawesians in the late 1990s, decades after it was first broadcast on the radio. As a civil servant within the Department of Information, Mappaselleng responded to the nationwide program to communicate government messages through local art forms and in local languages. The apparent success of this piece centered on its packaging the message in a local form, making it accessible, if not simultaneously entertaining. Indeed, this and other short "message" sinrilik of the New Order era

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failed to "enthrall" their audiences; they informed and perhaps lightly entertained them, succeeding in spreading the message but not in sustaining the vitality of the genre. Three Examples of Sinrilik Music and Text Included on the accompanying CD are two examples of Mappaselleng performing sinrilik and one example of Sirajuddin. The first (item 1 on the CD) is from a much longer performance by Mappaselleng recorded in the 1980s of the famous "Kappalak Tallumbatua," a version of which he copied from a 163page manuscript in 1953. The portion presented in two sixty-minute cassette volumes represents only a small portion (less than 25 percent) of the total, and the excerpt on the CD represents only a few minutes from side A of the first volume of the cassette release. The spoken comments between some phrases are made by Mappaselleng and several others who had been invited to sit in the studio to provide a minimal audience. Without at least some live audience, he said, it would be difficult to perform with spirit. Below I provide a transcription of a portion of this recorded passage, where the king Tunisombaya asks his followers to help shore up the walls of his fortress, which will later be destroyed by Bugis and Dutch forces. (The musical transcription is by the author, the text transcription by Djirong Basang, and the translation into English by the two of us.)4 The text follows: E Akkanami (e) bate salapanna Gowa, ia kananna gassing apami kutadeng ka ikambemi gassinnu akkana tommi pole(ng), karaenga bate-batea ikambe sipammanakang, ka ikambemi gassinnu ikambe nupammanjengi, na ikaumo, nisomba (e) Appoalimi mangkana, Karaeng Tunisombaya kau tojemmi gassingku, ikau pammanjengangku niak erokku, na taena pakkulleku E na kukanamo'nne kamma, bajiki ia nibentengiang ballakku. [The nine lesser kings of Gowa spoke, these are their words, "Whatever strength [are you doubtful about]? because it is we that are your strength." they also said, the lesser kings, "We are family, because it is we that are your strength we support you, and you are paid obeisance." He answered with these words, the king who is paid obeisance, "you really are my strength, you are my support there is something I would like, and I do not have the ability [alone] so I say to you now, it would be best if you would fortify my dwelling."]

As shown in the transcription, the kesok-kesok and the vocal melody are almost identical throughout, with only occasional heterophonic differentiation when both are sounding. The melodic style involves recitation on a single tone,

Figure 6.1 Excerpt from Sinrilik "Kappalak Tallumbatua." performed by Mappaselleng Daeng Maggau (ca. mid-1980s), from commercial cassette Kappalak Tallumbatua I, Special Record

(Continued)

Figure 6.1

{Continued)


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in some passages moving to one or two higher pitches for one or two syllables. The reciting tone shifts by small intervals (roughly a half step or whole step). The line division is somewhat arbitrary, except in that some cases I have used breaths and short instrumental interludes as cues to represent the end of one line and the beginning of another. When asked about the shift from one reciting tone to another, Mappaselleng indicated that it was based on feeling and that subsequent renditions would almost certainly be different musically. He did not work this aspect out in advance, but said he tended to move to a higher reciting tone for the "more exciting" passages. The momentary move from the reciting tone to one or two higher tones, he said, is based on accentuation, often corresponding to placement of accent in normal speech. But, he hastened to add, not always. The longer excerpt from the commercial recording included on the CD contains similar melodic movement and phrase articulation. Neither the singing nor the kesok-kesok playing suggests any metrical pattern— duple, triple, or otherwise. The approach to rhythm throughout is parlando, with some combinations of two consecutive syllables delivered at an even tempo (eighth-eighth), but others suggesting an uneven pairing of durations, some approaching a triple grouping (quarter-eighth). As the singing seems to move freely between these two poles, I simply note this here, but employ eighth notes consistently throughout the transcription except where a syllable is clearly held (for a quarter or more). And I chose not to attempt to show each articulation of the kesok-kesok when it is sustaining and reiterating the same tone for more than an eighth beat; instead I use a whole note, which should be understood as repeated articulation of that tone until the part moves to a different tone (almost always at the same moment that the vocal melody moves to the same tone). As will be evident by listening to the second sinrilik example from Mappaselleng (item 2 on the CD), his Indonesian language version of the "Sinrilik 50 Tahun Indonesia Merdeka" (Ind.; Sinrilik for 50 Years of Indonesian Independence), the melodic style is similar for the most part, although some passages seem to alternate fairly rapidly between two reciting tones (C and A flat), sometimes with three or four syllables sung on the higher tone. Again the kesok-kesok plays almost in unison with the voice and the rhythm is parlando. The text follows: E kita dijajah Belanda luar biasa lamanya tiga ratus lima puluh tahun lamanya kurang lebih kita diperasnya, tanah air tumpah darah, kita di kuasainya. Namunpun kita pernah melawannya melalui peperangan-peperangan, tetapi kita dikalahkannya dengan akal bulusnya, politik bulusnya— 'Divide et impera' (pecahkan dan jajahlah) ia Nauzubillahi. E Tapi Alhamdulillah sejak tujuh belas Agustus empat puluh lima itu bangsa Indonesia bangkit dengan (a) modal sink na pacce, malulah rasanya, kita melawan mereka, kita mela[wan] melawan penjajah Belanda, bukan saja di Jawa, di Sumatra, Bali, Lombak juga,

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Calling Back the Spirit Kalimantan sama saja, Maluku dan Sulawesi, terutama ya ya di Sulawesi Selatan kesemuanya bangkit melawan penjajah Belanda HICA E. [We were colonized by Holland for an extraordinarly long time, three hundred and fifty years more or less we were squeezed by them, our native land was ruled by them. Yet we opposed them through fighting, but we were defeated by them through their smooth tricks and smooth politics— Divide et impera (divide and rule) God forbid/God protect us. But, thank God, since August 17, 1945, the Indonesian people have arisen drawing on their "shame, then forgiveness"5 shame was the feeling, we opposed them, we opposed the Dutch colonizers, not only in Java, [but] in Sumatra, Bali, Lombok as well, Kalimantan just the same, the Moluccas and Sulawesi, especially, yes yes in South Sulawesi, everyone rose up against the Dutch colonizers HICA.]

Both the older "Three Ships" and the recent "50 Years of Indonesian Independence" sinrilik chronicle events in which local people, either Makassarese or South Sulawesians in general, fight against outside oppressors. In "The Three Ships," the king feels vulnerable, despite the assurances of his noble supporters. In the passage transcribed and translated above, he asks for greater fortifications. Subsequently he takes more drastic measures. As sung by Mappaselleng, the Indonesian Revolution arose out of an intense feeling of shame. And while the people of many regions are mentioned as partaking in the struggle, the point of the latter part of the passage presented above is that it was not just the Javanese, but people from all over and especially in South Sulawesi. Thus, while this recent work celebrates Indonesian Independence, it also brings attention to South Sulawesi and away from Java. In the passage following the one transcribed, Mappaselleng describes the bravery of South Sulawesi's freedom fighters, enumerating the various freedom-fighter organizations in South Sulawesi and naming famous South Sulawesian leaders from the this period. By singing this sinrilik in Indonesian language, which he admitted was a compromise, he intended to reach all those in attendance at the events at which he performed it, in Ujung Pandang in August 1995, including not only others from South Sulawesi but also Javanese and other Indonesians working or stationed in Ujung Pandang. Thus, the emphasis is on South Sulawesi vis-a-vis Java and other islands. The sinrilik example by Sirajuddin (item 3 on the CD) is a short excerpt from a fifteen-minute performance he gave to provide me merely with a sample of his approach to this genre. The singing style, the accompanying instrumental style, and the approach to the text are markedly different from Mappaselleng. Sirajuddin prefers to use a Javanese rebab, rather than a Makassarese kesokkesok, as the sound of the latter is, he told me, "rather rough" (Ind. agak kasar), whereas the Javanese rebab provides a "clearer" sound (Ind. lebih bening). He plays in a more ornamented style than does Mappaselleng, with somewhat

Sinrilik and Kacaping ng

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Sirajuddin Daeng Bantang, playing rebab and singing sinrilik at his home in Katangka, Sungguminasa, August 1995

greater heterophonic differentiation between vocal melody and instrumental melody. Sirajuddin's singing is also noticably different from Mappaselleng's, with only one main reciting tone and a more rapid delivery of the text, at least between the long-held tones. Unlike Mappaselleng, he was not reading from a written text, and often repeats words or phrases, whereas Mappaselleng (who reads or frequently refers to a written text) seldom uses the oral device of word or phrase repetition. Both singers sing their text in a parlando rhythm. For the recording I made, Sirajuddin chose to present a portion of the Datu Museng story, beginning with the Dutch ruler in Ujung Pandang (Tuang Tumalompoa) summoning Daeng Jarrek, ordering him to "go to the south" to seek out Museng and demand the hand of Museng's beloved Maipa in marriage, and ending with Jarrek returning to inform the Dutch ruler that Museng refuses the offer and to suggest to the Dutch ruler not to pursue the matter further (advice he ignores). Thus, it is a portion of the story that takes place in South Sulawesi, among Makassarese, that Sirajuddin presents. Many local place names occur in his text, including the area of Galesong, where Museng and Maipa had been staying. In the brief portion transcribed below the Dutch ruler, described as all-

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powerful, gives Jarrek his orders and sends him on his way, to the south. The musical transcription is by the author, the text transcription by Djirong Basang, and the translation into English by the two of us. The text follows: Na nipannempammo, empoang sama tempana, nipannempammo, empoang sama tempana, rapak empona, i suro Daeng Jarrek, na'ppalampa kana todong, na'ppalampa kana tommi, i tuang Tumalompoa, juru basa malompoa, gassinna lino, bole-bolena dunnia, i rate moncommi ia, manjokjok kairi kanang i rate takbing, mappatoyang-toyang bangkeng tau kamua kananna, sikaliaji makkana, ia kananna, ia kananna, suroa I Daeng Jarrek, daenta Daeng Jumpandang, ae suro, ae suro, ae suro, bajik timborokko ia. Ammentemmi naik, ammmentemmi naik. suroa I Daeng Jarrek tulusuk naung ri bangkenna sapanaya, tulusuk naung ri bangkenna sapanaya ... [So he [the Dutch ruler] struck the chair hard, he struck the chair hard. Steadfastly he sat, the messenger Daeng Jarrek; thus went his words, thus went his words, the great lord [Dutch ruler], great commander of language, the strength of the world, the capability of the world, above a mountain he points left and right, over a riverbank he swings his legs back and forth this is a true person, they say, he only speaks once, so he spoke, he spoke to the messenger Daeng Jarrek, the lord of Jumpandang [Dutch ruler], "Hey messenger, hey messenger, hey messenger, it is best that you go to the south. Stand up, stand up." Messenger Daeng Jarrek straight away descended, down the steps of the ladder, straight away descended, down the steps of the ladder...]

Both Sirajuddin and Mappaselleng, along with others knowledgable about sinrilik, stressed the importance, especially in former times, of intimacy between the performer and the audience, whereby the performer might digress in normal speech at some length, answering questions from the audience and making jokes. And yet, while this interweaving of spontaneous commentary with sung narrative is acknowledged as important, or at least as typical, it is increasingly excised from modern performances. It would appear that thinking about art and artistic categories places the sung narrative in the realm of "art" and the commentary as "digression," which, while it may entertain, somehow detracts from the "art." On television, the interpolated comments in Indonesian are seen as necessary to relate the story to non-Makassarese viewers, and perhaps to retain some sense of the informality of the lengthy village performances. But the fifteen minutes allotted hardly allow for extended commentary or true "digression."

Figure 6.2 Excerpt from Sinrilik "I Datu Museng" performed by Sirajuddin Daeng Bantang (recorded 29 August 1995 by the author)

(Continued)

118 Figure 6.2

Calling Back. the Spirit (Continued)

Sinrilik is not an "extinct" form, nor "nearly extinct," as is so often suggested in official discourse of art forms in Indonesia (Ind. hampir punah). But the form in which many people remember sinrilik and, more importantly, imagine it—as an authentic Makassarese genre—is increasingly rare. Short televised sinrilik, whether they present snippets of older stories (such as Datu Museng, which I heard in August 1998) or newly composed government messages, invoke the tradition and remind viewers of the past, but they cannot do

Sinrilik and Kacaping Figure 6.2

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(Continued)

what sinrilik used to do: keep an audience enthralled for hours, interweaving important local history and legend with ribald humor. As television fare it is much too self-conscious, so marked as "local" and "traditional" in contrast to the shows that surround it and, since the dawn of private television in 1989, are broadcast simultaneously on other stations. Sinrilik and power? The best-known traditional stories center on issues of power and struggle, more specifically, local struggle against danger from the Other. The government has used sinrilik to spread its messages, through RRI and TVRI broadcasts, enabling its power to reach beyond those comfortable with Indonesian language. Mappaselleng's recent composition describes the power of the Dutch and celebrates the rise to power of Indonesians, particularly South Sulawesians—thereby championing local struggle. On another level, the two bestknown pasinrilik, Mappaselleng and Sirajuddin, empower themselves as representatives of this Makassarese tradition, each somewhat disparaging of the other, Mappaselleng claiming that Sirajuddin's melodies are not proper sinrilik but instead an adaptation of royong (Mks.; lullabies, sometimes used for rituals) or dandiyo (Mks.; a kind of unaccompanied song often sung in former days in the rice fields). Yet what both have done with the sinrilik genre, especially Mappaselleng, is to create predictable, short items drawing from a traditional practice that involves much longer and more flexible performances, thereby paralleling in a fundamental way the changes made by Bu Nani Sapada discussed in chapter 3 (though for sinrilik it is Makassarese making the changes). KACAPING; MAKASSARESE VIRTUOSO STRING AND VOCAL MUSIC If sinrilik is now a rare form, known to many primarily through its abbreviated transformations in the media, performance on two-stringed boat-lutes known as kacaping (Mks.), kacapi (Bgs., Mndr.), katapi (Tor.), or kecapi (Ind.), usually in

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accompaniment of memorized or semi-improvised verses, is still relatively popular in village contexts throughout the entire province among all ethno-linguistic groups.6 Versions of the kecapi are played in a number of musical genres and circumstances—solo, duet, ensemble, for dance accompaniment, for narrative and lyrical vocal accompaniment, for village rituals and for a range of stage entertainment, at festivals and tourist productions. The instruments used for most performances currently are two-stringed boat-lutes, with long, narrow bodies,7 and five or six grip (finger posts, or cylindrical protrusions along the neck for stopping strings).8 The six-grip version, as noted in chapter 3, is a recent development—the one used for Bu Nani's sinfoni kecapi and diatonic pieces—but it is also used by villagers playing in the more "traditional" styles, using pentatonic scales (Lathief 1994a). Most playing involves one string for melody and the other for drone—most often, in my experience, a fifth below the pitch of the open melody string, though other intervals are not uncommon (a fourth or a third, occasionally a sixth or a second; see Nadjamuddin 1983, 71-72). When the melody dips below the pitch of the open melody string, both strings are normally stopped and sounded simultaneously, yielding parallel intervals (again, usually a fifth) as the "drone string" is used for melody. My repeated attempts to discover a set of terminology for these strings yielded no term equivalent to "drone" in English. Musicians spoke of the lower-pitched string as the do string (adopted from the Western solfege system now widely taught and used throughout South Sulawesi) and the upper-pitched string by the appropriate syllable, based on its intervallic distance from the do. Hence, the most common was sol, a fifth above. While sinrilik tends toward serious themes and promotes itself as a vehicle for Makassarese oral literature, kecapi playing and the singing it accompanies maintain a distinctly informal, village ethos. Kecapi is a relatively cheap instrument to make (see Hasan, Purmawati, and Rusmini 1995, 20-30) and is found in many South Sulawesian homes. Many people play the kecapi informally, not with the virtuosic technique of the entertainers at weddings and other public ceremonies, but enough to appreciate the instrument and its challenges and to feel at home with it (in ways that they would not with kesok-kesok, the preferred instrument for sinrilik). Kecapi is as close to what we might call a "folk" instrument as any in South Sulawesi, comparable in many ways to guitar in some parts of the United States. But just as American "folk" guitar has its skilled professionals, from blues to bluegrass, so does South Sulawesi have recognized experts who, though paid only modestly, play professionally and are represented in the broadcast and recording media). South Sulawesian scholars have also stressed that the kecapi is and has long been a people's instrument. Hasan et al. outline the uses of kecapi for various village ceremonies—weddings, harvest, circumcision, and childbirth (1995, 34)—and also point out its use in less formal situations in village life. "Kecapi as a traditional musical instrument since it first existed has not been known in royal palaces the way other arts have been.... So basically the kecapi instrument belongs to the peasant society in the villages."9 The emphasis, whether in leisure time or at ceremonies, is on entertainment. Yasil et al. also


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mention playing kecapi while watching one's garden, as well as watching over livestock, sitting guard duty at night (Ind. tugas rondo), and just "chasing away solitude/loneliness" (Ind. mengusir kesunyian; 1986, 87). Several people I spoke with in Makassarese areas mentioned how they loved to hear kecapi at night, either live or from a cassette recording, to keep them from feeling lonely. Kecapi is played both by men and by women, but public performances for an audience are almost always by men and many of the verses sung are flirtatious, teasing allusions (Ind. sindirari), even explicitly sexual (the current term in Indonesia is porno). Men who are skilled at kecapi and singing are thought to have special powers over women, able to seduce them easily. Some kecapi have mirrors inlaid into the end of the neck by the tuning pegs. In former times, when it was considered improper for men and women to look directly at one another in public, a kecapi player could surreptitiously exchange glances with his female admirers by directing the eyes at the mirror. And some kecapi players have used magical strings made from a special metal alloy of copper and gold (Mks./Bgs./Ind. suasa), a fingernail pick, and magic spells to attract and seduce women: "It is said that if the kecapi strings being used are strings made from suasa wire (metal mixed with gold), it will make a girl crazy. Because of many cases of eloping in the old days caused by these suasa kecapi magic spells, this type of kecapi was forbidden [during colonial times]."10 It is not clear how widespread this practice was; those I spoke with said that while one still finds kecapi with mirrors, the practice of erotic magic described by Lathief has disappeared. Nevertheless, the reputation of kecapi players with special powers over women persists. In some kecapi performances among the Bugis, players impress their audiences not only through their playing and singing skills but also through elaborate and often humorous acrobatics. A group of performers from Soppeng at the 1993 Culture Week festival managed to keep playing their instruments even when in a shoulder stand with the instrument behind their neck (cf. description by Yampolsky 1998, 14). The overlap between slapstick comedy and musical performance is not limited to kecapi playing, nor to the Bugis; Makassarese musicians often provide slapstick interludes during long evenings of pakarena. Yet the elaborate acrobatics are most usually associated with kecapi performance among the Bugis. Any attempt at comprehensive coverage of the kecapi in its many variants is far beyond my current purposes. Rather, from this point I wish to recount some of my observations about the use of this instrument and the singing it accompanies among the Makassarese, based on performances I witnessed, analysis of recordings, interviews, and extant literature. While Makassarese may play their instrument (kacaping) without singing, most performances involve one or several players singing in alternation, usually to narrate local legend or present clever verses on topics of love, humor, adventure, and so forth. The skill required of the performer is substantial, as the playing technique on the instrument involves very rapid plucking (Mks. kokbik), mostly combining short melodic motifs in what is often a duple metrical framework, but occasionally extended or contracted. So, too, the singing presents new

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combinations of formulaic verses and lines, sometimes extending beyond the standard number of syllables (eight-eight-five-eight in Makassarese kelong) in what should strike the listener as clever, fresh, sometimes ribald, and never dull and predictable. I was truly enthralled by the performances of this music I witnessed. The first took me by complete surprise. When I was visiting Sirajuddin at his house near the Performing Arts School (SMKI) where he taught, he invited a becak (Ind.; pedicab) driver in to play for us. Pak Serang, the elderly man who had pedaled me from the corner of the main road up to the school earlier that morning, proceeded to dazzle us all as his fingers flew rapidly on the kacaping he had brought with him. Mostly he looked down demurely, only sometimes catching my eye and, recognizing my obvious enthusiasm, giving a modest smile. A week later, at a recording session I arranged, he and a younger becak driver, Daeng Tojeng, played together and alternated singing verses, as is often the practice at long village performances. They often played at family rituals, sometimes in other districts. Serang sometimes performed by himself, but usually with anywhere from one to three other musicians playing kacaping and singing. Never would more than one musician sing at a time, but they would all play simultaneously. They share a repertory of instrumental and vocal melodies, with some individual variation evident when more than one plays at the same time. To these melodies the skilled singer is able to sing and often add to memorized verses. As in other parts of Indonesia, such as Java, particular melodies are often not associated with particular song texts, words and melody being independent. And among the Makassarese, rather than a variety of verse forms (such as the various tembang of Javanese tradition), the vast majority of song texts employ kelong form, which depends only on syllable count and not on patterns of rhyme or final vowels. I heard a number of impressive players and singers, most of whom seemed greatly appreciated by their audiences. Even when I would arrive at a village and request to meet local kacaping (and other) musicians, regardless of the time of day, villagers gathered in considerable number to enjoy the ensuing unanticipated performance, thereby ensuring the players (and me) lively interaction. At performances for weddings I attended, the guests seemed to be eagerly waiting for the kacaping/kelong musicians to begin; they cheered at the instrumental and verbal virtuosity and howled with laughter at the fast-flying humor. Examples of Kacaping and Makassarese Vocals Rather than present one long excerpt of kacaping music on the accompanying CD, I have opted to include a variety—two short ones of Serang and a somewhat longer one of Jamang Daeng Pasang, a blind musician from Bontonompo. These allow fruitful comparison not only with each other but also with the selections on the compact disc recorded by Yampolsky (1998), which include a number of Bugis and Mandar kacapi examples in addition to two Makassarese. The recordings of Serang present a sample of several melodies (Ind. lagu; Mks. tokko). The texts he used were mostly kelong, often with interpolated phrases and vocables

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Serang (left) and Tojeng (center), playing kacaping at a wedding in Lanra-Lanra, Gowa district, September 1995

("meaningless" syllables, such as la, e, to, na, ta, etc.). The first, item 4 on the CD, presents Tokko "Remba-rembaya" (Mks.; intertwining/embracing melody): the kacaping introduction, the first two verses of kelong (the first leading directly into the second), a kacaping interlude, and the next two verses of kelong (third leading directly into the fourth), transcribed below, with text and translation following (with interpolated words and vocables shown in italics). The transcription, by Virginia Gorlinski, shows duple groupings (two eighth notes, four sixteenth notes, etc.) but does not attempt to suggest larger duple groupings with bar lines, as we did not find any elements in the musical performance style (accent, pause, etc.) that suggested a consistent meter throughout (although the orientation seems mostly duple). The text was transcribed by Djirong Basang and he and I collaborated on the translation. The text follows: tona Ia tonji kungaia kubintingang sandalakna kupammalliang jukuk situju kalenna.

[to na] Only the one I like I carry her sandals Ibuy enough fish for her.

Kuballiampako jukuk punna iapa nuerok nutea lalo angitungi ri maraeng.

Later I will buy you fish if that is what you want so that you will not want to rely on someone else.

tonata Maraeng garring ri bapak andik maraeng garring ri ammak maraeng tongi la garrinna tau rungkaya.

Father's sickness is different Mother's sickness is different indeed different is the sickness of one's parents.

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Calling Back the Spirit Ku 'ssengiakubatei garrinna tau rungkaya dongkokna dinging na battannaja narakak.

I can identify the sickness of young people behind they are cold so one just embraces the stomach.

The second excerpt (item 5 on the CD) presents a kacaping interlude and one verse of Tokko Sinrilik, which takes its name from the sinrilik melodic and rhythmic style it imitates, employing a more parlando approach to rhythm of the vocal part, with a triplet feel and some syllables given accent by slightly greater duration than others. Nevertheless, the kacaping playing continues to employ the same kinds of figures as heard in other pieces, short duple motives.

Figure 6.3 Excerpt from Tokko "Remba-rembaya," performed by Serang (recorded Sungguminasa, 27 July 1994, by the author)

Figure 6.3 {Continued)

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The melody covers a different range and has a markedly different contour from the first excerpt. The tonal relationship between the kacaping and the vocal parts in these excerpts moves between unison (at the octave, the voice an octave below the instrument) or very close heterophony and a kind of parallel polyphony, frequently with the voice a sixth below the kacaping. The lower-pitched string on the kacaping, used to sound the drone, is here tuned a fifth below the melody string and is plucked together with the melody string. While Makassarese audiences enjoy the kacaping playing and comment or cheer approvingly when someone plays with technical mastery, such as Serang in these excerpts, it is the musician's skill with words that wins the greatest recognition and without which he would not be popular no matter how virtuosic his playing. In the example transcribed above, Serang sings two pairs of verses of kelong in rapid-fire bursts, with a short interlude in between. The first verse of each pair relates to the second; the second pair starts with a potentially sad or serious reference to illness, but ends with a suggestive reference to a young person needing to be hugged from the front. As Serang sang this for Sirajuddin and me, he smiled at this point, as did Sirajuddin (who might have laughed aloud were he not constrained by my recording the performance). One can get a sense of the way a kacaping player entertains a crowd by listening to the third kacaping example, item 6 on the CD. For this performance, which I commissioned from Jamang Daeng Pasang, a large group of villagers quickly gathered to listen. They were obviously fans of this skilled musician, who had us all in his spell even though he had scarcely slept after an all-night engagement the previous night. Below I provide a musical transcription of his kacaping playing and singing for the opening several phrases of interlude and singing, followed by a transcription of the text for the entire excerpt on the CD disc—one song segment from Jamang's hour-long performance, during which he sang eight different melodies (only some of which were identified by name). The text is not presented in kelong form. Even ignoring the many nonsense syllables and standard filler words (deng, riak, alle, etc.),11 a kelong structure does not emerge. Instead, the text unfolds in lengthy "verses" consisting of an initial phrase, followed by a short interlude, a second phrase of widely variable length, and a lengthy interlude. In most cases, the second phrase is extended through melodic repetition following a short breath. It is at the end of the extended second phrase that he often builds to a climactic punchline that has the audience bursting into laughter. (The musical transcription is by Virginia Gorlinski, text transcription by Abdul Rajab Johari, translation by Johari and myself.) Here is the text of the entire excerpt on the CD: Niak kuukrangi punna kuassengi deng riak I riak dende laku-laku didi karaeng alle punna laku sannak-sannak, daenge. Panraki padeng ka panraki padeng nampa teaki pauang idi langa-langa lia-lia tegedege naga punna teknea gaung na dinging dinging dinging, karaeng. Teknena padeng gollaiya i deng i riak dende laku didi karaeng ala nikoroki rappo gangga, daenge.


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lya amminnyaki padeng kalukua nisantangngi udak dumba dinging-dinging laku dinging, karaeng. Sangge kanangi nicini atinrona kuronronna, kuronronna aknyakrinna, aknyakrinna, ambangunna, ambangunna ammentenna, ammentenna akcandakna, akcandakna akjappana, akjappana kuallena nakuerang ri gurua. Punna erokmo amma lassikana risarikbattanna samaturuki manggena na alleammi rellana aknikkamak siagadang nampa tamamo toayya nampa sulukmo rungkayya punna tenamo nujanda! [crowd laughs] lyako teai barang kucinik i deng i riak dende laku laku dendelo ale tanjaknuko naung nakuerokkamma daenge, Ale batenu angngerang pakmai kungaikamma udadinging dinging dinging batenu angngerang pakmai tena na lakjua alai dengdenga udadinging dinging dinging karaeng Jaiji bakrak ri Alluk, niak minnyak ri tokoa, cauluk ri Tamanroya Ika bellaseng nai, I bakleangi anrai assaraung kodok-kodok nikaluki payung eja tallung bilangngangi rantena. lya lekbak sulanga bajunna akjappa naung ri kotayya angngayongi lipak bate. Attayangi oto manna mamo bendi taniak jappa goroba mami naung nakik angngalle tallu roda. lya angngaleta tallu roda takbalekna i rawangngang luranna i rateangi rodana. Takbalekna kutudukna, kusempakna, kusarena pattinrangngang. Bamparekna erokna baku. Takbalekna akkodokku, akkulantukku, akkadangkanku, nasala tainna! [crowd laughs] [There is something I remember, if I still know i t . . . sir12 It seems you are suffering inside, it seems you are suffering inside but cannot express it/deliver i t . . . if sweet... lord. It's really sweet, that sugar ... and it is given slices of brown-sugarballs, sir. It seems to have coconut oil and is given coconut milk ... lord. Very beautiful to be seen, when she sleeps I wake her, I wake her she is guarded, she is guarded then awakens, awakened she stands, standing she jumps up, jumping up she walks, I take her to the teacher [here, Moslem religious officiant]. If her mother wishes, consult with her brother[s], agree with her father, asking for their willingness [to relinquish her in marriage], I would indeed marry her, let the old go in and the young come out, if you aren't [she isn't] a widow/divorcee! [crowd laughs] Hopefully it is you I look a t . . . it's your face, so I like you very much The way you understand [my] feelings makes me very happy ... the way you understand [my] feelings does not spoil me/causes me no boredom...., lord [There is] certainly lots of face powder in Allu, there is perfume in the stores, cauluk sarongs [red and flowered cotton] in Tamanroya, but it's still far away Over there she goes to the north wearing a Chinese paper-lantern hat, which has a red umbrella with three hundred chains. Those who already have embroidered blouses, walk toward the city, wearing a veil made from a batik sarong. She waits for a car, as there is no two-wheeled carriage, go [slowly] like an oxcart, then later we will ride pedicab When we ride pedicab, the pedicab flips over, underneath are the passengers and on top are the wheels. When it flips over I kick the pedicab driver, I give him

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Calling Back the Spirit a hard boot. But no matter, he doesn't care. When it flips, I bend over, kneel and I reach to grasp [onto something], and [I wind up] holding his excrement/turd! [crowd laughs]]

Jamang has the crowd roaring with laughter by building up the tension over the course of an extended passage, which leads up to a punchline. He and others said that the use of the "decorative" (Ind. hiasan) words and sounds is in part to allow the singer time to remember, or make up, the forthcoming text. Here it is not clear why Jamang uses such extensive "decorative" passages in the text, particularly in the earlier part, but it would seem to be more than just an oral composition device. In fact, the use of such passages can be emblematic of a particular song or melody. (Serang used the phrase "bunganna I Lang Kebok" or some part of it at numerous points during his rendition of Tokko "Bunganna I Lang Kebok.") Yet as he approaches his punchlines, these decorative words and sounds fall away and phrases crucial to the build-up come at the listener at a relentless pace. After the build-up to the first punchline, he has convinced his listeners that he is truly in love with the young woman and aches to marry her, but he pulls the rug out from under us by suddenly uttering the condition—unless she is a widow or divorcee (the word janda in Makassarese, and in Indonesian, can refer to either)—and by switching from the third person to the second. In the second instance, the pedicab has turned over and in his attempt to regain his balance by grasping hold of something, he winds up with the becak driver's turd in his hand. New and Old Kecapi/Kacaping Performance In chapter 3 I discussed the work of Bu Nani Sapada and several of her musicians in combining, apparently for the first time, kecapi with other South Sulawesian instruments, primarily suling (flute) and ganrang/genrang (drum). Inspired by her familiarity with Western art music and a feeling of reverence for the impressive grandeur of an orchestra, she helped to create the sinfoni kecapi performing harmonized arrangements, with many players on each part. It is all too obvious that the result completely eliminated any possibility for spontaneity, either in the instrumental part or in the singing of the fixed songs it sometimes accompanied. Bu Nani sought to create something more "powerful" than the intimate plucking and singing of one or several kecapi players in Makassarese or Bugis villages, but how are we to measure "power"? To be sure, it has been the sinfoni kecapi, or the smaller kecapi-suling ensemble, that has often represented South Sulawesi in national festivals and international tours. And, as we have seen, many of the staged dances employ the smaller ensemble. But its popularity as music among South Sulawesians is questionable. At a music variety concert I attended in July 1994, sponsored by the provincial office of the Department of Education and Culture, the featured group was Musik Ansamble Daerah Sulawesi Selatan (Ind.; South Sulawesian Regional Music Ensemble) with seven boys playing diatonic (six-grip) kecapi, two girls and three boys playing white plastic recorders, two girls playing xylo-

Figure 6.4

Excerpt from Tokko "Deng Riak," performed by Jamang Daeng Pasang

(Continued)

130 Figure 6.4

Calling Back the Spirit (Continued)

phones with thick wooden keys (kulintang), a boy playing stand-up bass, and a boy playing Makassarese ganrang (two-headed drum). The musical arrangements were written out completely, each musician reading from a part, and an elderly man conducting from a score. There were no smiles and only minimal body movement—the musicians looked bored and the music seemed to lack spirit for the audience, whose muted applause suggested politeness rather than enthusiasm. After appearances by several children's choral groups and a qasidah group, the ansamble daerah returned, dressed in traditional Bugis and Makassarese outfits, and played four well-known Bugis and Makassarese songs, each with one or two singers. As the audience recognized each song, they showed their approval through brief spontaneous applause. As they concluded their final song, the curtain closed and it seemed the evening was over. Yet at this point two microphones were set up on the floor in front of the stage and two kacaping players marched out, dressed in full Makassarese traditional attire, and each standing by a microphone and cradling his kacaping in his right arm, began to play and sing in the style typical of village performance. The two traded verses rapidly, and in the course of the ten minutes they performed they had the audience roaring with laughter, applauding loudly and eager for more.

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This was a remarkable way to end the program, and, in retrospect, it was indeed wise to have them appear last, as they were by far the most popular. Programming them before the others, particularly the ansamble daerah, would have only emphasized the aesthetic shortcomings of the ensemble, which was the latest in Bu Nani's efforts to create a province-wide musical ensemble music (beyond the more limited instrumentation of the kecapi-suling or sinfoni kecapi groups). Of course, a large group of musicians on stage looks more impressive than two men strumming kacaping; but for local audiences the "traditional" music was by far the more successful, because the musicians were talented and spirited and, despite the awkwardness of having to perform standing up and with government bureacrats listening to every word, were able to bring to this otherwise sober event some measure of humor and musical virtuosity. Other contexts in which I heard kecapi in the 1990s varied considerably. In the city it was sometimes presented to create a local atmosphere for visitors or to beckon customers, with no expectation of prolonged, attentive listening on the part of an audience. A small trio of recent SMKI (performing arts high school) graduates played (but did not sing) well-known older Makassarese and Bugis tunes on kecapi, suling, and ganrang in the lobby of the Marannu Tower Hotel in downtown Ujung Pandang in 1995. Almost every night during my stay in Ujung Pandang in August 1998 and again a year later, I saw the same forlornlooking man, Gasseng, from nearby Somba Opu island, sitting on a tiny platform outside the new Baruga Sulawesi Restaurant and playing kacaping to attract customers. At the opening of the Arafura Youth Games at the Mattoangin sports stadium in Ujung Pandang (with participants from Australia's Northern Territories and Indonesian provinces in the region of the Arafura Sea), a large ensemble of kecapi players, all girls dressed in orange baju bodo, sat in the front few rows of the bleachers with two female singers, and three older men, playing suling, violin, and Makassarese drum, to perform a medley of wellknown South Sulawesi diatonic favorites (27 July 1996). Here kecapi was but one in a profusion of local and Western instruments, and the players strummed out well-known melodies, rather than engaging in the virtuosic play and singing characteristic of village kecapi performances. Yet it is clear that kecapi is an ubiquitous instrument in modern-day South Sulawesi, familiar to all and played, in one style or another, by many. CONCLUSION In the village styles, represented by Jamang and Serang above, there is clearly great improvisational latitude in the performance of kacaping and its vocal music. Even though named tunes are recogized, the structure each verse takes in performance can vary from the others. And the texts, even if consisting largely of memorized kelong or shorter formulae, are constructed in unique combinations that keep the audience engaged and surprised, often delightedly so. It is almost beyond imagination that the government radio station RRI might ask for a written script for this kind of singing, though I understand that

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they generally did prior to Suharto's resignation in 1998. Here spontaneity is certainly an enormously important aspect of performance. Listening to Jamang in search of even a predictable verse structure would be futile, as he piles phrase upon phrase. Those in the audience the day I recorded him commented to me afterward that he had an enormous range of narrative abilities, that he did not rely on stock verses or well-worn humor. Stepping back from this experience and querying it in relation to sinrilik, which mostly either delivers a more or less fixed message, often written out word-for-word, or reconstructs a known legend or story, it would seem that kacaping and vocal performance would have near limitless possibilities that could include searing political commentary as well as any other topic. Indeed, some of the artist-intellectuals I knew mentioned that political issues, particularly village-level politics were sometimes addressed, although rarely in a confrontational or openly critical manner. And kacaping players and singers often do relate local legend, bordering in this dimension on the function of sinrilik. But kacaping has been by far the more popular and, despite the ubiquitous discourse on the demise of traditional arts and culture in almost every locale in Indonesia, kacaping players are not in yet in anything like the crisis of short supply that can be said for sinrilik performers. In accounting for strength and popularity of a musical tradition, we can point to the prestige it brings its practitioners and its audiences in contemporary Indonesia as "art." Of the genres covered in this chapter, sinrilik would seem to have a greater claim to being the more lofty art form, presenting major historical narratives and didactic messages. Many, including Mappaselleng, refer to it as a kind of teater bertutur (Ind.; didactic theater), even though it is sung narrative rather than enacted. How nonlocal audiences react can be important as well. But where the aesthetic power of a genre is word-bound, as it is for both sinrilik and kacaping, the nonlocal will be unable to understand the words and thus unlikely to be able to appreciate or, more accurately, enjoy it. But for secular genres such as sinrilik and kacaping, aesthetic power and potential for continued support from the people depends on its ability to entertain, to be enjoyed by its audiences. The roars of laughter and spontaneous applause at village performances of kacaping are clear indication of its ability to entertain. Perhaps sinrilik once had a comparable appeal, but apparently no longer. For a select few, who are especially sympathetic and nostalgic about Makassarese culture, even a short performance of sinrilik performed from a written text can have a certain power, but for others it will not be exciting enough or entertaining enough to merit sponsorship or support. Both sinrilik and kacaping (kecapi) persist today and have undergone changes. In both cases the newer forms rely far less on skills associated with oral tradition—memory and ability to create anew in each performance. The older forms have, or have had, considerable appeal among broad segments of the most rural population. Yet South Sulawesi is caught in something of a dilemma, wherein presentation of vocal arts that can be so entertaining and impressive to those with local language skills cannot find more than a brief token appearance at events intended for wider audiences. Thus, on the national arena,


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though other Indonesians may be familiar with the simple harmonized versions of South Sulawesi songs performed on kecapi, they are unlikely to know of the intricate playing and singing of the many fine performers in South Sulawesi's villages. Instead, South Sulawesians struggle in the national arena with larger ensembles that at least make a strong visual impression. Recently, however, they have also been presenting another kind of traditional music that relies only partially on song: the powerful music of Makassarese ganrang ensembles, the subject of the next chapter.

7 Sound and Power Makassarese Ganrang Drumming

As six women slowly entered the open stage in the warm evening air, their dance unfolded with subtle gestures, a steady calm upon each of their faces. To the right, a small group of musicians played fast and furious music, oboe squealing, two drums pulsating at superhuman tempos, and a small gong punctuating, but barely audible through the dense onslaught of drums and oboe. The drummers' eyes stood wide open, staring forward as the tops of their heads bobbed rapidly back and forth, left to right; they shook their heads horizontally, seemingly as fast as their two hands alternated between the left and right heads of the drums. And at moments, to everone's delight, they also rapidly raised and lowered their shoulders (ammikkik; unless otherwise noted, all foreign terms in this chapter are Makassarese) and occasionally came to an abrupt halt in their drumming as they placed their elbows on top of their drums. This was a staged performance of Makassarese pakarena, presented as part of the Culture Week festival I attended only three days after arriving in South Sulawesi for the first time, in July 1993 (see chapter 2). This utter contrast between exuberant music and restrained dance is widely recognized by Makassarese and other South Sulawesians themselves as an aesthetic puzzle, some interpretations of which will be elaborated below. The lead drummer and director of this group was Abdul Muin Daeng Mile, who was to become a friend and inspiring teacher. He referred to this music 134

Makassarese Ganrang Drumming

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Daeng Mile, leading a group of drummers in an atraski ganrang, Ujung Pandang, August 1999

simply as musik ganrang (music of the double-headed Makassarese drum), a term encompassing a variety of small ensembles, provided a minimum of two Makassarese double-headed drums (ganrang) are included. Most ensembles include one oboe (puik-puiK) as well, played with circular breathing, often with one gong and sometimes with additional idiophones: kattok-kattok (bamboo or wooden slit gong), anak baccing (metal concussion plates), kancing (cymbals), and lae-lae (fringed bamboo). The power attributed to Makassarese ganrang is not limited to their extraordinary sound alone. They are also considered to be the most sacred of all Makassarese musical instruments, comparable to bronze knobbed gongs in Java. Although Makassarese have knobbed gongs, they do not occupy the prominent position that they do in Java, where gongs are the instruments most often considered spiritually potent and musically the most powerful source of sound. Gongs among the Makassarese—and among others in South Sulawesi —are of lesser importance, musically and spiritually. Most of the gongs that I saw in South Sulawesi were relatively small compared to the large and booming gong gede of Java or Bali, and many were made of iron, crudely painted, sometimes rusty, and handled as any normal secular object. Not so Makassarese drums, which are often held to be sacred objects, treated with care and reverence. Even local government ceremonies are opened by an official sounding a ganrang, not (as in Java and Bali) a gong. Makassarese ganrang have long played an important role in ritual, both in villages and, prior to Indonesian independence, in the royal courts. And while it can be suggested that some prototype of this drum was brought, along with the oboe, into South Sulawesi from elsewhere in the archipelago,1 it is widely accepted as an indigenous (Ind. asli) instrument. If at one time its power was

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attributed to foreign, possibly Javanese, origin, it now represents a local force, powerful aesthetically and spiritually. In recent memory, ganrang have been used not only to accompany various dances, including the ritually powerful pakarena and salonreng (see below), but also for ritual purification of persons and objects, for building a house, launching a ship, cleansing a house in which someone has recently died, and blessing persons about to undergo an important ritual (marriage, circumcision). Pakarena dance and drum music have served in curing rituals for serious diseases, such as cholera, and even are said to have helped the legendary ruler Batara Gowa come back to life after being poisoned in 1785 (Mukhlis 1987, 12; see also Tideman 1908). Lathief relates a Makassarese legend concerning the origin of the ganrang, attributing it to supernatural forces, not to foreign visitors: I Lolo Bajo Karaeng Sanrobone had a contest: "make something that brings benefit." The winner of the contest told a story about a large drum that was made from the trunk of a mango tree whose circumference was 100 fathoms. The skin used was the skin of a male water buffalo whose horns could [were big enough to] provide a place for someone to sit cross-legged on top of them. The rattan used to tie [the skins to] this drum was very long, seven times around the circumference of the world with some left over. It is said that this enormous drum was hung from a large and tall platform house. The height was pictured as if an egg had just come out of its mother and fell from above the house to the ground, the egg would have already hatched by the time it hit the ground. And the person who hit this drum was someone very large and could step over a mountain. Whenever the drum was hit, all the people came to hear the wishes of the king, which could be a command or an announcement. After hearing this story, I Lolo Bajo ordered [his people] to make entertainment that incorporated ganrang as one of the instruments.2

In present-day South Sulawesi, one finds three varieties of ganrang, with some overlap in the kinds of music and occasions for which they are played. Largest and considered the most spiritually powerful is the ganrang Mangkasarak (Makassarese drum), also known as ganrang lompo (large drum), ganrang kalompoang, or ganrang gaukang (Lathief 1996b, 16), measuring a meter or more in length. This kind of drum was formerly used at ceremonies to bless the royal regalia and heirlooms: kalompoang and gaukang. These two terms remain in common use today among Makassarese, though their precise meanings are not universally agreed upon. Kalompoang is formed from the root word lompo (large, great) and is often understood to mean regalia and magical heirlooms, such as weapons, crowns, and flags and banners. Gaukang, from the root word gauk (make, action, ceremony, feast), also may refer to magical heirlooms, apparently not only those of royalty. Villages have gaukang that are believed to contain the spiritual source of power that enables the village to thrive and to resist famine and disease. These gaukang objects might be an old wooden plough, or a collection of nonutilitarian bamboo objects (Djirong Basang, personal communication, 22 July 96) or sacred stones (Rossler and Rottger-R6sslerl987, 1). The drums referred to as ganrang gaukang, however,


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were closely associated with royalty, and drummers who own a set of these are very likely to treat them with reverence. Slightly smaller are the drums known as ganrang pakarena (around eighty to eighty-five centimeters in length), whose primary use was the accompaniment of various Makassarese dances, including the group female dances currently designated by the term pakarena. The smallest ganrang, usually measuring about sixty to sixty-five centimeters in length, are ganrang pamancak, used to accompany Makassarese martial arts (mancak, see Anon. 1978). Drum makers still produce ganrang pamancak and ganrang pakarena with some regularity, but not the (larger) ganrang Mangkasarak. GANRANG CONSTRUCTION The variety of ganrang most widely used in contemporary South Sulawesi is the ganrang pakarena (hereafter referred to simply as ganrang)—whose construction, symbolism, musical patterns, and performance contexts I will elaborate in some detail for most of the remainder of this chapter. The teacher I studied with, Daeng Mile, had a fine set of these, and filled orders from various individuals and institutions, mostly for the same kind of drum. The ganrang consists of two leather drum heads, laced to each other with thin rattan, with sliding rings made either of metal or rattan for adjusting the tension of the lacings, thereby controlling the pitch of the drum heads. The drum shell, referred to as kale (body, self) or sanrangang (basic form) is basically cylindrical, but with one end somewhat larger than the other. The larger head, referred to as ulu (head), is often made from thick goat hide, whereas the smaller, known as paja (hind, buttocks), is made from thinner goat hide. Local scholars point out that one of the heads uses male goat hide and the other female, but there is disagreement over which is used where: Qamar writes that the skin on the larger head is female (1994,74-75); Lathief indicates that it is male (1996b, 19). Daeng Mile, who makes drums himself, said there was no hard-and-fast rule, but he agreed that the idea of gender complementarity permeates the symbolic interpretation of drums, their sounds and also the interaction (and extreme contrast) between drum music and dance. Lower-sounding strokes may be contrasted with higher sounding ones as female (lower) vs. male (higher). And in a set of two drums, one, identified as the male, is usually slightly higher in pitch than the other, identified as the female (cf. elsewhere in Indonesia, such as Bali). Often a thin rectangular strip of metal (simpek) is inserted underneath the lacings on the surface of the drum's shell so that the player can strike it with his buffalo-horn beater (bakbalak). Making a drum is more than a physical activity. Not unlike the ritual practices and spiritual beliefs surrounding the forging of large gongs (gong ageng) in Java (see Kunst 1973, 137-140), the making of a set of ganrang requires certain ritual preparations and the resulting instruments are believed to be spiritually potent. Some woods used in construction of ganrang are considered to be

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magically charged: ganrang made of cempaka wood, I was told, should be treated with special respect. Like the sacred instruments of certain Javanese gamelans, they are not to be stepped on, stepped over, or sat upon, and are only to be played for certain occasions. Like some Balinese drums, ganrang are often adorned with a cloth covering most of the drum shell, and these may, as in Bali, represent particular spiritual associations. During the repressive campaigns of Kahar Muzzakar and Darul Islam of the 1950s and early 1960s, and Muhammadiyah's Operasi Taubat of the middle and late 1960s, in which reform-minded Muslims enforced their intolerant stance against any practice or belief seemingly at odds with Muslim doctrine, ganrang and their players came under special persecution. Not only were the drums forbidden to be played, but because even their silent existence represented a challenge to Islamic beliefs, they were often destroyed when discovered by vigilant Muslim groups. And those daring enough to play ganrang in those times risked bodily harm, even death. Before the 1970s there were only a few years (1961-1965), during which this persecution was not so vigilant as to make life dangerous for such village practices. However powerful the particular wood and cloth visible on the outside of the ganrang, it is inside the drum shell that the most potent symbols of the drum reside. The drum makers often place a number of small objects believed to enhance the spiritual power of the drum. Known as syarak-syarak (= siaraksiarak, Mks. scattered pieces), these can be heard rattling around when the drums are being moved about, but in playing position, these objects rest inside the drum shell and make no sound. These items each must be gathered from certain places (some of them at certain times of day) and in sequential order. Here I offer a summary from Lathief's study of Makassarese drums, and corroborated in my many conversations with Daeng Mile, with whom Lathief also consulted. 1. A packet of palm sugar from the Pattallasang market. Pattallasang means "life" and the package of palm sugar symbolizes the "binding up of happiness." 2. Small pebbles from the village of Balaburuk. Balaburuk means "pile," "heap." These pebbles represent the piling up of good fortune for the owner of the drum. 3. Pieces of wood from the village of Balumbungang. The name of this village derives from akbalumbung, which also means "to pile up," and carries the same symbolic meaning as the previous item. 4. Some water from the well in the village of Timbuseng, famous for its spring that never runs dry. The water is drawn in a bucket without a rope attached and is used to drench and cleanse the drum, symbolizing the unbroken flow of good fortune for the owner. 5. Pieces of wood from the village of Kalaserena, a name deriving from the word passereang, which means "unity" or a "large group of people." These objects are believed to contribute to the uniting of good intentions on the part of the drummer. 6. Berasak. Rice (uncooked), representing the main staple food, the source of strength to live.


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7. Kalomping/Pakrappo. Mixture of areca nut and betel leaf, representing the hope for fertility: giving forth leaves and fruit. 8. Sapiri. Candlenut, symbolizing maturity and energy. 9. Bunting-bunting. Braided lontar palm leaves fashioned into a representation of a wedding couple. 10. Kaleleng tambungmaek. A wooden vine that wraps around a large tree and winds back to its point of origin, here symbolizing the hope for return engagements and the continual flow requests coming back to the same drummer. 11 . Doek riolo. Old metal coins, representing the hope that the leather of the drum heads will last for a long time. (Lathief 1996b, 31-32)

To my knowledge, drum makers will not always go to the trouble of acquiring all of these syarak-syarak each time they fill an order. Drums sold to elementary and secondary schools for their music programs, for example, are likely to be empty, or nearly so. But when making a drum for oneself, or another respected drummer, all or most of these will be included. Once such a drum is made, it is to be treated with reverence, stored in a special place, and periodically given blessing through the burning of incense and the reading of magical charms (pattuik, doangang). The ceremony and symbolism surrounding the making and storing of the ganrang itself is matched by the ritual initiation of a drum student and, of course, the varied contexts in which the music is performed. In contemporary South Sulawesi, those interested in learning to play ganrang may simply try to pick up as much as they can by ear, avoiding the complicated set of obligations involved in setting up formal apprenticeship. But those who wish to master the complexities of pakarena and other dance accompaniment, or the long sequences used in ritual drum and shawm music such as tunrung pakballe (see below), must develop a sustained relationship with a teacher. The master musicians who are most appropriate to serve as teachers are known as anrongguru, a word translatable as "chief," or "head" (cf. Cense 1979, 21), but deriving from the two words anrong (mother) and guru (Mks./Ind.; teacher). The path taken by many aspiring ganrang players involves an informal apprenticeship playing the supporting instruments: at first kattok-kattok and later gong. Once this player has convinced the anrongguru of his basic musicality and understanding of the sectional organization of extended performance items, such as pakarena accompaniment, he might then begin to play the simpler of the two ganrang parts and at this point be initiated as a student. For the initiation ceremony, the prospective student is expected to provide various items of symbolic significance in the ceremony. These items, sometimes referred to as syarak-syarak (the same term applied to the small objects placed inside the ganrang), may vary from one anrongguru to another, but are likely to include food and money. I had the great privilege to be apprenticed to Daeng Mile early during my second visit to South Sulawesi. Below, I wish to outline some of what I learned from Daeng Mile—from the specific sounds, techniques, and patterns of playing, to the contexts in which drum music is performed. Among these contexts

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Daeng Mile (right) and local religious officiant in prayer at kakdok minyak (Mks.; rice and oil) ceremony to bless his two ganrang (in background), at his home, Kalaserena, Gowa district, 9 August 1995

are not only the family and community rituals but also a range of new public events that incorporate Makassarese drum music as emblematic of South Sulawesi in the larger context of the Indonesian nation.

TECHNIQUES OF GANRANG PLAYING To play ganrang is to engage in an intense and often electrifying interaction with one other musician: the other ganrang player. If other musicians are playing—kattok-kattok, gong, puik-puik—they must construct their parts in relationship to the drumming. The drums do not accompany the puik-puik melody; rather, the puik-puik improvises melody that, in the words of several puik-puik players I interviewed, "supports the rhythms of the drums." The interaction between drummers is very clearly unequal, in the sense that one player is assigned to play the basic, repetitive patterns, mostly short ostinati, as the other plays more complex and varying patterns that interlock with and play off the ostinati. The basic part is often taken by a student, apprentice, or less experienced drummer, while the other, which is the lead part, is taken by the anrongguru—


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that is, the leader or director of the ensemble. These two parts are distinguished by a number of oppositional terms. Daeng Mile first described the simpler part as the dasar (Ind.; basic, fundamental) part and his more complicated and variable part as the pariasi/fariasi (Ind. variasi — i.e., variation) part. In other instances he and others spoke of the "front" or "head" ganrang (ganrang pauluang) and "back" or "rear" ganrang (ganrang ri boko), since the positioning of the instruments for most performances has the player of the basic patterns sitting behind the other player, both facing in the same direction (rather than looking at each other). This enables the player in the rear to use his eyes as well as his ears to discern when the other drummer is making transition from one rhythmic section to another, a decision made solely by the lead drummer, who sits in front and does not need to see the player of the basic part. But both must listen intensely to one another to maintain as steady a rhythm as possible in order that the two parts combine in seemingly perfect synchronization—requiring a strong sense of shared pulse and the ability to make micro-adjustments from one stroke to the next. Another set of terms Makassarese often use for these two drums, emphasizing the difference in the level of activity of each, opposes the "calm" part (pattannang, attannang) with the "running" part (palari, appalari). While the combined result is anything but "calm," and both drummers feel the excitement of their musical engagement, Daeng Mile and others told me that, aside from following transitions effectively, the main challenge to the player of the basic ostinati is to maintain a calm steadiness as the other drummer fires off rapid variations generously peppered with off-beat accents. Tunrung and Tumbuk In addition to the drum itself, a drummer has ready a buffalo-horn stick beater (bakbalak), which is used in some patterns to strike the larger drum head. Drumming that employs the bakbalak is referred to as tunrung (hit, strike), and the named patterns (lerassang) include this term: tunrung pakanjarak, tunrung rua, and so forth. For some lengthy performance items, such as the nondanced sequence known as tunrung pakballe, the entire sequence — all patterns —require the use of the bakbalak. For the accompaniment of some dances, especially the pakarena, the drummers alternate between tunrung and the style known as tumbuk (pound, thump), in which all strokes, left and right, are made by the bare hand and the bakbalak is not used. As for tunrung, most of the named patterns include this term (tumbuk sekre, tumbuk rua, etc.) While some tunrung can be flashy and fast, it is, overall, more reserved than tumbuk playing. Indeed, all of the austere sequences are tunrung throughout (though one section of pakballe may involve occasional substitution of the hand instead of the beater on the large head). Tumbuk playing is almost always rapid, exuberant, and very often can involve humorous antics by the drummers, most characteristically the rapid raising and lowering of the shoulders (ammikkik) and the striking of sudden still poses— facing down, or to one side, often with one or both elbows placed on the top of the drum. In both tunrung and tumbuk, drummers use

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a combination of left and right hands to produce a variety of named drum strokes: small head, large head, and both hit simultaneously. Most drummers play the smaller head with their left hand and the larger with their right. Drum Notation While sporadic attempts may have been made in previous years, it is only since the early 1980s that musicians, especially music teachers, in South Sulawesi have attempted to notate Makassarese drumming. As of this writing, twenty years later, no standard system has been widely adopted. A music teacher at SMKI, Syamsul Qamar, contributed one of the most influential approaches, using letters from the indigenous Makassarese writing system: hurupuk lontarak (manuscript letters). As these must be added by hand to typed documents, others have preferred to use Roman letters as equivalents. A table showing the stroke name, sound(s), "manuscript letter," and Roman equivalent is given in figure 7.1. Among music teachers, drum notation is a topic of hot debate. While some are in favor of using distinctly local symbols, the manuscript letters, others complain that the use of these symbols constitutes an unnecessary impediment to the learning process and may discourage young students from studying drumming or attempting notation on their own, since most of them are not already familiar with this now obsolescent alphabet.3 It remains to be seen how widely this or any notation system will be used. As is so often the case in oral traditions that have recently been introduced into an academic setting, those who gain the greatest facility on the ganrang are those who learn through intensive observation and close tutoring by an accomplished anrongguru outside of the academic setting. Drum Patterns and Sequences Makassarese distinguish by name a number of lerassang—drum patterns identified by the ostinato played on the ganrang pattannang (the supporting drum). The player of the ganrang palari (the lead drum) plays variations that interlock with the repeating ostinato, which also may vary, but only slightly, as it must constantly confirm the identity of the particular lerassang. It is the leader who decides when to move from one lerassang to another, and he signals the other musicians with a warning pattern (usually very brief) and then establishes the next lerassang before launching into more variations. The ganrang pattannang player must be ready to switch from one ostinato to another with very little warning. In most cases, the sequence of lerassang will be predictable or, sometimes, entirely fixed. The number of repetitions of a particular lerassang, however, is usually not set prior to performance except in the accompaniment to the short, fixed choreographies, such as those pioneered by Bu Nani Sapada and her students. Below I offer the reader the ganrang pattannang part for several of the lerassang I learned from Daeng Mile, along with ganrang palari playing tran-

Makassarese Ganrang Drumming figure 7. /

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Makassarese ganrang drum strokes

No.

Name of Stroke

1.

tumbuk

2.

palappek

3.

Sound Made

Mnscrpt Letter

Roman Letter

dung (or deng) tak

D

tempo

kak (or kung)

K

4.

pamaccing

plak

P (or PL)

5.

tunning

tung (or dung)

T (or D)

6.

balakbak

dak, cak, cis, plek

S

t (or b)

Brief Description hand hits near edge of large drumhead hand hits near center of larger drumhead, without immediate release hand slaps near edge of smaller drumhead combination of tempa (K) and palappek (t) stroke with beater near middle of larger drumhead stroke with beater on wood of drum shell, or on metal plate (simpek)

Source: After Qamar 1994, 79-83; Lathief 1996b, 45

scribed from recordings I made of him. I wish to emphasize that these transcriptions can only offer a very limited sampling of the wealth of variation in Daeng Mile's playing. My choice of notation system below uses the Roman letters rather than the Makassarese manuscript letters, and it organizes patterns rhythmically with the strong beat at the beginning of the line or measure unit, rather than the end (the latter having long been routine in notating Javanese and Sundanese gamelan music). The choice of Roman letters, while likely disappointing to those Makassarese who wish to encourage the spread of the manuscript letter notation, is likely to be much more accessible to all other readers, and it has the practical advantage of being easily producable on a computer keyboard. The dots represent "rests" (beats that are not articulated). The tempo markings ("MM =") give the speed of the fastest pulse. Except where explained otherwise, I have notated eight of these fast pulses per "measure," each measure represented by a rectangular box. When ganrang palari and ganrang pattannang are shown on successive lines, as in the "Introduction" and "Signal to end" for the first pattern given below, the parts are played simultaneously. I have chosen not to include the many repetitions of the ganrang pattannang patterns for each line of ganrang palari, but in performance these variations would be heard as they interlock with the repeating ostinato of the ganrang pattannang.

144

Calling Back the Spirit Tunrung Pakanjarak

Many dram sequences, whether danced or not, begin with a rousing tunrung pakanjarak played loud and fast. I have heard this one pattern played at the opening of sporting events, college anniversary formalities, festivals, contests, many dances and dance-dramas, as well as longer instrumental sequences performed for circumcision and wedding ceremonies. It is initiated by the ganrang palari (GL), joined by ganrang pattannang (GT), usually after the opening passage has been played once or twice. The signal to end is initiated by the ganrang palari player; the ganrang pattannang player is still playing the basic ostinato for the first measure of this signal, then alters his playing for the last two measures, as shown in figure 7.2. Seeking to understand something of the variability of the ganrang palari part, I recorded Daeng Mile playing tunrung pakanjarak again four days after the version transcribed in figure 7.2. The introduction was identical and the ending signal nearly so, although he had earlier shown me several variants for the ending signal, and commented that still other variants were commonly used by other musicians (see figure 7.3). But in the main section, where the ganrang pattannang repeats the basic ostinato pattern, most of his playing involved eight-beat patterns not heard in the earlier version and the few he used before occur in different sequence (with one exception, discussed below). Daeng Mile said neither he nor any other drummers, as far as he knew, distinguished any of these ganrang palari patterns by name. They all were simply tunrung pakanjarak playing. On each of the two occasions represented in these transcriptions, Daeng Mile repeated some eight-beat patterns: for example, the first two measures in the GL Variations section of both versions and the third and fourth measures in the first version. Another pattern, the third measure of the fourth and six lines of the GL Variation section in the first version, occurs with one additional stroke (tung on the eighth and final beat of the measure) in the second version (third measure of the third line of the GL Variation section). Quite intentionally, the two measures immediately preceding the signal to end are identical in both versions. For Daeng Mile they constitute a preferred preparation, at the end of his relatively free playing, for what he and others identify as the actual signal to end. In a fuller study of Makassarese dramming, whether of Daeng Mile's style or a broader sampling of accomplished drummers, with analysis of lengthier and more numerous instances of tunrung pakanjarak, I am quite certain that a repertory of eight-beat patterns would emerge, few if any of them occurring only once. But the sequence in which the drummer performs them would not be predictable, as it is here that the accomplished drummer demonstrates his improvisational skill, dazzling his listeners—including his fellow musicians— by inventive surprise. It is in this skill that the best ganrang palari players, usually anrongguru, empower themselves and hold aesthetic power over their audiences. The tunrung pakanjarak notated and discussed in figure 7.3 is perhaps the best known, most widely played of the many Makassarese ganrang patterns. A

145

MakassareseGamangDrumming

Figure 7.2 Tunrung pakanjarak: Makassarese drum pattern, version 1, as played by Daeng Mile, 25 July 1996 Introduction: GL

MM = ca. 480 T . . . K . K .

GT

T . . .K .K .

T . . . K . K .

Main Pattern: T K .K .K .K

T K .K . K .K

(etc.)

GT

T K . K . K .K

GL Variations:

(25 July 1996)

(Version 1)

GL

T .K . K .K .

T .K .K .K .

T . . .T T ..

GL

T . . .T T ..

T . . .T T ..

T . .T . .T .

GL

K T .K T .T .

K .T .K . .T

K .T .K . K .

GL

K T .T .K T .

K T .K T . ..

K T .T .K T .

GL

K T . K T .T .

K . T .K T ..

K .T .K .T .

GL

K .T . K .T .

K .T . K .T .

K T .T .K T .

GL

K T .K T . .T

K T .T .K T .

K T .K T .T

GL

T .K T .K T .

GT

T K . K . K .K

T .K .T .K

T . . .T K T K

T

GL

T .K . K . K .

T .K .T .K

T . . .K T K T

K

Signal to end:

variant, played at a much slower tempo (MM = ca. 200), but with the same ostinato part played on the ganrang pattannang, is used in a long sequence known as tunrung pakballe. Daeng Mile referred to this slower drum pattern as tunrung pakanjarak langkarak (widely spaced, sparse). Pakanjarak langkarak normally leads directly into the fast pakanjarak, as the ganrang palari player pushes the tempo at an appropriate point up to the rate at which it becomes the fast pakanjarak. When talking about these two pakanjarak in my lessons, Daeng Mile usually used the term pakanjarak kapalak (thick) for the faster one. Other Tunrung Patterns A second drum pattern usually played at slow tempo, tunrung renjang-renjang is the pattern normally played for processions, such as the parading of flags and banners, and for walking sections in dances and, in recent years, dance-dramas. In everyday Makassarese, renjang refers to loosely plaited wicker or weaving work, as in a basket or rattan panel; in reduplicated form, renjang-renjang, it can refer to a kind of walk or gait. Characteristic of this pattern are rapid repetitions of the same stroke (especially kak and tung). Although many Makassarese drum patterns consist of thoroughly duple rhythms (groupings of four or eight beats), one of the most frequently played tunrung patterns, called tunrung rua (two) is in triple meter, with duple subdivision. The term rua here refers not to the meter but to the number of tunrung strokes in one statment.

146


Figure 7.3 Tunrung pakanjarak: Makassarese drum pattern, version 2, as taught and played by Daeng Mile, 29 July 1996 Introduction : GL

MM = ca. 460 T . . .K .K .

GT

T . . .K .K .

T . . .K .K .

Main Pattern: T K .K .K .K

T K .K . K . K

GL Variations :

(29 July 1996)

(Version 2)

T . K .T T K .

T . K .T T K .

T

K . K T T . T .

K .T .K . T .

K .T T .K T .

GL

K . K T . K T .

K . K T . K T .

K T . T . K T T

GL

K .T . K T .T

K . K T . K T .

K T .K T .T .

GL

T . K T .K T .

GT

T K . K . K . K

GL GL

(etc.)

. K T . K T .

Signal to end: GT

T K . K . K .K

T ... T

...

T . K .T K T K

T

GL

T . K . K . K .

T . K .T . K .

T .K .K T K T

K

MUSIC FOR RITUAL: TUNRUNG PAKBALLE In South Sulawesi in the 1990s, at least in some parts of the city of Ujung Pandang and the districts to the south, families frequently hired a small ensemble of musicians to perform ritual music for a wedding or circumcision. The ensemble consists minimally of two drums and one puik-puik, sometimes with a small gong and, more rarely, a kattok-kattok. The music performed is referred to as tunrung pakballe (medicine drumming), or tunrung pakballe sumangak (medicine for the spirit drumming), item 7 on the CD. The music itself consists of anywhere from three to seven sections, most of them repeatable, the choice being based on the social status of the family hosting the event. For families with no royal or noble lineage, the "common people," referred to by Makassarese as tau samarak (normal person, common person), tau maradeka (free person), or tau bajik (good person) the music is to be limited to playing three patterns: tunrung rua, tunrung pakanjarak langkarak, and tunrung pakanjarak kapalak. For those with noble lineage, a category sometimes referred to as anak karaeng palilik (surrounding children of the prince [Rossler and Rottger-Rossler 1996, 37]), these same three patterns are to be used, but preceded by a lengthy and slow pattern known specifically as tunrung pakballe, played only once, and a second, slow transitional pattern (no specific name). For those with direct royal lineage, a longer sequence is prescribed, beginning with tunrung pakballe, played two or more times, several slow tunrung patterns, a transitional pattern, and then the usual three tunrung rua, tunrung pakanjarak langkarak, and tunrung pakanjarak kapalak.

147


The overall progression is from slow and sparse to fast and dense, although the tempos of tunrung rua and tunrung pakanjarak langkarak are essentially the same. Most of the patterns are repeated before moving on to the next pattern, with the exception of the first pattern, which is only to be played once per sequence for noble families. In the course of a ritual ceremony the same sequence can be performed at intervals throughout the day, usually coordinated around the five Islamic prayer times: tunrung pakballe "appiwattu" (coordinating with the time of day). According to Daeng Mile, the music for royalty would not stop for prayer time. Often he was called on to perform the sequence appropriate for those of noble descent. It is widely acknowledged among Makassarese nowadays that this lineage-based social hierarchy is becoming more ambiguous and less a determinant in patterns of social life than it once was. Yet the musical pattern served to affirm noble lineage—"announcing" to those aware of the music's code of social indexing, that the family was of noble descent.4 In figure 7.4 I notate the slow tunrung pakballe part, as taught by Daeng Mile. The meter is, for the most part, a slow triple, with duple subdivision, but with some irregularity in repetition, determined by the palari drummer during performance. Otherwise, neither the palari nor the pattannang are spontaneous, as this is a fixed, repeatable pattern for both ganrang parts. The feeling of this slow, introductory passage of tunrung pakballe, heard in rituals for those above "commoner" status, is solemn, hallowed, even sad. Several individuals, including Bu Rajab, at whose home I stayed during most of my visits, said they were sometimes moved to tears when they heard this portion. The sadness, they said, was not in the musical sound as such, but in the associations of the sound with the event. Especially for weddings, this music made them think of the important changes marriage brings to an individual's figure 7.4 Opening section of Tunrung pakballe for Anak Karaeng/Karaeng: Makassarese drum pattern, as taught and played by Daeng Mile, 14 August 1995 Introduction

MM = ca. 72

GT

T . . .T .

GL

T . K KTTTTT

GT

T

. . K .

. . . .K .

. . . . K .

. . . . K .

GL

T . K . ..

K t K tkt .

K t K t k .

K t K . k .

GT

. . . . K .

. . . .K .

. . . . K .

GL

K t K . k .

KKttKKtKk .

K K DDKKkKDK

GT

K . . . T .

. .T .

GL

t .K .T .

K KTTTT

GT

K . . . T .

T .

GL

t . K KTT KT

T T

148


life and the feelings of the parents, as a young bride prepares to leave her family to start a family of her own. The sound of drum and oboe music— tunrung pakballe or portions of it— is heard throughout the many stages of a multiday circumcision or wedding ceremony, at the most ritually significant points. Others include akbukbuk (cut or arrange woman's hair, for marriage ceremony only), akkorontigi (darken palms with betel leaf mixture, for marriage and circumcision), akkatterek (cut hair, for circumcision), angarik (place golden ring briefly in boy's mouth, for circumcision). The medium tempo tunrung renjang-renjang accompanies processions, such as the walk from the groom's house to the bride's, and the parading of the water buffalo before slaughter, concluding with a brief and spirited tunrung pakanjarak kapalak. Drumming also accompanies appassili, a ritual to give prayer and cleansing water to persons or objects, which is practiced in a wide number of circumstances, not only weddings and circumcisions but also in preparation for working the fields and for harvests. Tunrung Salonreng Aside from tunrung pakballe, the other music in tunrung style most often heard among Makassarese today is the accompaniment for a dance known as salonreng or pasalonreng. Although dictionaries (Cense 1979; Arief 1995) define this term only as a kind of dance, its prominent use of an enveloping shawl suggests etymological links with the Makassarese term salendang (Ind. selendang), meaning "shawl" or "stole."5 Salonreng is a slow, ritual dance performed immediately following the slaughter of live water buffalo at a rite of passage, such as wedding or circumcision, and intended to assure that the spirit of the water buffalo left peacefully, rather than lingering and bothering the people involved in the ritual ceremony. In the short version I learned from Daeng Mile, the salonreng drumming sequence is comparable in tempo and relative sparsity to that of tunrung pakballe, although the patterns are easily distinguished. Recent attempts to present this dance and its music as part of a staged performance, outside of its former ritual contexts, has not been widely acceptable. Even the ten-minute version by the group Mahligai, which met weekly at the large pavillion at Somba Opu, struck passing local viewers I spoke with as "exceedingly slow and uninteresting." It appealed only to a small number who interpreted it favorably as klasik (Ind.; classical). Instead, it was the phenomenal drumming of Serang Dakko that had everyone's attention rivted: playing that usually involved tumbuk playing. Tumbuk Drumming Accomplished drummers must be ready and eager to play a variety of patterns, but for the three Makassarese drummers I came to know— Daeng Mile, Serang Dakko, and Naba, all from the district of Gowa —playing the tumbuk patterns was the most fun. It was here that they felt the interaction between the two

149


drummers was the most spirited, particularly with the group of patterns that lead to an abrupt and temporary halt, with rapid undulation of the shoulders. Most of the patterns are showpieces for the palari drummer, playing off short ostinati provided by the ganrang pattannang. Not only do these patterns make up a substantial core of the musical accompaniment for pakarena dance, but they are also combined into skillful displays of virtuosity in drumming contests (Ind. lomba) and entertaining "attractions" (Ind./Mks. atraksi ganrang). Table 7.5 offers notation for one of the most widely used tumbuk patterns, tumbuk rua. This and other patterns are named according to the number of tumbuk strokes (bare hand on large drum head) per statement in the ganrang pattannang part: sekre (one), rua (two), and tallu (three). Tumbuk rua involves a very simple pattannang part, but generates excitement by its combination with syncopated palari playing at extremely fast tempo. Moreover, it often leads into the tumbuk ikkik playing, a favorite of audiences because of the sudden stops and the physical antics of the drummers. Shown in figure 7.5 is an example of tumbuk rua, with its ending, followed by a tumbuk ikkik pattern.

Figure 7,5 Tumbuk rua, followed by short example of tumbuk ikkik'. Makassarese drum patterns, as taught and played by Daeng Mile, 3 August 1994 Introduction:

MM = oa. 480-492

P . t K t K t K

t . t . K D . K

. . . .D .D .

GT GL

Main Pattern: K . K . D .D .

K .K .D .D .

GL Variations:

(3 August 1994)

GL

t . k . K D .K

t .k .K D .K

t .k D t K t K

GL

t .k K .D .K

t . t K .D .K

t . t K . d . K

GL

t . t K . D . K

t . t K .D .K

t .K D . K .k

GL

t K .D . K t k

t K .D .K t k

t K . D . K . K

GL

t .K .K D .K

t . . . K K .k

GT

K . K . D .D .

(etc.)

Signal to end: GT

K . K . D . D .

K . K .D . D .

K . K .D .D .

GL

. K .D . K .D

. K .D . K .D

K .K t K D .K

K t

GT

Alternative

ending:

K .K .D .D .

K ...

...

K . . .D .D .

K

. K .D K K .k

t K t K t K t K

t . K . K D .K

t

K

Tumbuk ikkik: GT

K . K . . K . .

K . K .D . D .

K

GL

P.P.

.P ..

P . P . K D .K

t

150


ACCOMPANYING PAKARENA It is widely acknowledged by Makassarese musicians that accompanying pakarena dance is the most exciting, also the most challenging, of all types of Makassarese musical performance. Here the two drummers must navigate from one pattern to another for long stretches of time, the pattannang player skillfully responding to the pa/an drummer's subtle signals for seamless transitions and occasional stops. Joining them are a puik-puik and often a gong (also called dengkang) and kattok-kattok. In former times, when pakarena was performed for royalty, other ceremonial instruments were also played: kancing, anak baccing, and lea-lea/lae-lae. Nowadays these are occasionally used for families of royal or noble descent, or in honor of distinguished visitors, the effect being to conjure images of sacred, court ceremony. All instrumentalists must be thoroughly attuned to the palari drummer's signals ready to change patterns instantaneously. Though the number of repetitions and even the sequence of patterns are not set prior to performance, experienced musicians, particularly those who play often with the same ensemble, know to expect certain patterns in a certain sequence within a particular section of the whole dance. When hired to perform at a wedding, circumcision, or nazar (Ind.; vow), musicians and dancers are often expected to perform over a period of many hours, sometimes even several days. Lathief and Sumiani describe a three-day wedding ceremony in which pakarena dancers and musicians play a central role (1995, 197-214). On the first two days, musicians are considerably busier than the dancers. The first day involves the singing of royong (lullabies) by several old women, often accompanied by puik-puik and ceremonial percussion instruments, such as anak baccing, kancing, lea-lea, and gong. (In this context, the royong are not sung to put an infant to sleep, but to ensure the well-being of the wedding couple.) The texts of the royong are mostly concerned with protection and with religious teaching, and the instruments are also associated with keeping away malevolence. Following the royong, the musicians play tunning pakballe sumangak (see above) periodically throughout the day. On this first day, the bride and groom, each in their own parental home, undergo a ceremony known as appassili, in which an officiant—sanro (healer) or anrong bunting (wedding mother) symbolically purifies them, using bunches of various leaves to splash them with drops of consecrated water and uttering magical incantations or prayers (doangang, pattuik). The instrumentalists (drummers, puik-puik, and any other percussion) frame and punctuate the appassili portion of the ceremony. On the second day, water buffalo are cleaned and bathed, paraded around the neighborhood, and slaughtered; and the musicians and dancers perform salonreng. In the evening, the bride and groom have their fingernails reddened in a ceremony called akkorong tigi, receiving blessings from family members and close friends, with tunrung pakballe sumangak played periodically. On the final day, the dancers are readied for a full night of performance, as their leader, the anrongguru, recites magical incantations. They may begin to dance their first number as early as mid-afternoon. According to Lathief and Sumiani, this is called appaulujaga (to precede or initiate guarding), a kind of


151

Makassarese female dance, pakarena, accompanied by puik-puik and two ganrang (with rebana players sitting on the right), 1930s. (Photo number 29760, Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunke. Used by permission.)

supplication for strength and protection as performers, hosts, and guests prepare for an entire night without sleep (1995,212). Performing through the night is intended not only to entertain, but also to provide a kind of show of power against all manner of misfortune—illness, pestilence, malevolent spirits. So close is the association between performance and guarding against the dangers of negative forces, supernatural and natural, that the root word jaga (guard) was formerly a general Makassarese term for dance or performance involving dance.6 The appaulujaga may last for two hours, after which the older women may sing royong as the performers rest before the full night of performance, which will consist of a number of different pakarena dances, culminating in the pakarena "Jangang Leak-leak" (see below), begun just before dawn. As on the previous two days, the musicians also perform tunrung pakballe sumangak periodically on this final day. And additionally, the musicians accompany the groom as he is escorted to the home of the bride for the completion of the wedding ceremony, exchanging vows and signing official documents. The relatively high costs of hiring performers for such a lengthy period, coupled with the cost of providing guests and performers with food while they are present, have made such ceremonies increasingly rare. Nowadays, those who still wish to involve traditional musicians and dancers in a central way (rather than having traditional musicians for a brief period, and other forms of music, such as dangdut bands, other local pop bands, or tanjidor brass bands) will usually invite pakarena dancers and musicians for a day and a night. At

152


performances I witnessed, and others that were described to me, the performers began in the late morning, with music. Dancers who would later present a series of pakarena dances, performed first the slow salonreng immediately following the slaughter of water buffalo, whose meat would later be served to those in attendance.7 Then over the course of the night, from evening until dawn, the musicians and dancers alternated between periods of rest, slapstick entertainment (see below), and pakarena dances, each named after the text of the core poem sung by the anrongguru. Daeng Mile's group performed four pakarena dances: "Samboritta" ("Our Land"), "Makbiring Kassik" ("On the Beach"), "Sanro Bejak" ("Traditional Healer for Babies"), and "Jangang Leak-leak" ("Crowing Rooster" or "Untrustworthy Rooster").8 The musical activity reaches its height in the night-long accompaniment of pakarena dances, each lasting from forty-five minutes to over one hour. For each item, numerous drum patterns are used, interspersed with solo and group singing. The dancers respond to certain cues in the music, and are usually led by one dancer positioned in the front, facing the musicians (in most configurations, at least). The other (three or five) dancers, who may not know the drumming as intimately, are expected to follow the lead dancer in order to keep the ensemble as uniform as possible in its movements. Within the dance there are substantial sections during which the dancers are completely immobile. Even in their most active moments, the dancers never make sudden gestures, slowly rising, articulating their wrists, or opening and closing their fans, the only dance prop, with subtlety and grace. They move in and out of seated position, but mostly remain in the same floor position throughout the dance, the emphasis in their movements being primarily in their arms, hands, and head. Though the dancers may be immobile for minutes at a time, the music is constant—sections of instrumental music, often lengthy, alternating with vocal music. Within what musicians identify as a single instrumental section, several patterns (lemssang) may be performed, sometimes in alternation. In the section I learned as tunrungpappadang, the drumming in fact alternated repeatedly between tunrung (with beaters) and tumbuk patterns, requiring constant vigilance on the part of the musicians following the anrongguru, particularly the player of ganrang pattannang, who must be constantly ready either to pick up or drop the beater as he moves seamlessly from one technique and pattern to the other. For some of the most lively instrumental sections, the dancers stop moving altogether, surrendering all attention to the mighty virtuosity of the drumming —sections now referred to by some local practitioners as demonstrasi ganrang (Ind./Mks.; drum display/show-off; see Lathief and Sumiani 1995, 289, 293). Correspondingly, many of the dance movements are executed to the passages of vocal music, sung mostly in free rhythm, with no discernible pulse. Throughout, the dancers follow the music, rather than musicians the dancers. Terminology for the singing is not fully standardized, but in the performances I have heard by Daeng Mile's group and discussed with him and with others, he identifies three categories. The first is dondo, sung by the anrongguru


153

alone (no other voices or instruments), in which the text associated with the particular dance is sung, usually in a melismatic style, in free rhythm. These are in kelong form (four phrases of eight, eight, five, and eight syllables), with some interpolated words and syllables. Usually after one or two verses of dondo, the puik-puik begins to play along with the anrongguru and the other musicians and dancers join in and sing in a style known as leklek, also in free rhythm, with either further text or simply reciting syllables. The texture is a thick heterophony. Leklek can be sung without an initial dondo, as, for example, in the opening portion of an entire pakarena sequence. A third category of singing, with a fixed pulse and more unison texture, Daeng Mile and others simply referred to as kelong. These consisted of optional songs, in kelong poetic form (like almost all Makssarese songs old and new), chosen by the anrongguru. As an example of the sequence of musical events within a performance, table 7.1 outlines a performance I witnessed and recorded of Daeng Mile's group performing pakarena "Samboritta" (10 August 1995).9 It was part of a blessing ceremony for his drums and to which he referred as kakdok minyak (rice oil), named after the core food prepared and served as part of the ceremony. Table 7.1 represents Daeng Mile's analysis of his own performance. Excerpts from a similar rendition of this pakarena can be heard on the accompanying CD, items 8-12 (a better performance, according to Daeng Mile, than the one at his kakdok minyak ceremony). Having not witnessed a large number of renditions of this or other pakarena performances, I am spared the opportunity to suggest, even for Daeng Mile's group, a normative traditional pakarena (as opposed to Bu Nani's). Yet certain prominent features of the performance described above were evident in others I saw, as well as in the one analyzed by Lathief and Sumiani. And I have discussed with Daeng Mile the characteristics of different pakarena. First, the performances begin with slow, meterless singing (leklek) and end with extremely fast and loud instrumental music. Paklekbak, though less varied and interesting than some of the tumbuk playing that occurs earlier, is furiously fast and deafeningly loud. Yet the overall sequence does not lead gradually from slow and soft to fast and loud. The passages of rincik early on can be nearly as exciting as the ending. Moreover, the dancers, when not immobile altogether, are not moving with any greater dynamism at the end than at the very beginning. And while the specific sequence of dance and musical patterns varies even in different renditions of the same pakarena, song and instrumental music are interspersed, with dancers sometimes moving during the singing and sometimes immobile during the instrumental playing. Moreover, dancers contribute to the music by joining in the singing of leklek and kelong, and musicians move their shoulders and wave their arms, entertaining as much by their movements as by the musical sounds they produce. In contrast, consider the sequence of drum patterns used for Bu Nani's altered "Tari Pakarena," as it has been performed in recent years (see table 7.2). This sequence takes less than ten minutes to perform, in contrast to the fortyfive-minute minimum for Daeng Mile's (and others') traditional pakarena.

154


Table 7.1 Sequence of musical events in Pakarena "Samboritta," Daeng Mile, 1995 Pattern or Section

Commentary

leklek tunrung

rincik

tumbuk rua tumbuk rincik

tunrung rincik

tumbuk reknyakreknyak tunrung pakrangkipasak dondo "Samboritta " leklek kelong

tumbuk tallu tumbuk rua and tumbuk ikkik tumbuk sekre tunrung pappadang leklek tunrung pakdekdong paklekbak

short vocal section, no words; dancers, in crouching position, begin to move, fans open, then stand and dance slowly, close fans fast and loud; some striking of shell of the drums and metal plaques (simpek); dancers move, fans closed with some stops and extended patterns; dancers stand immobile as drummers executive virtuosic patterns, with shoulder movements slower and not as loud as previous tunrung rincik; but like tunrung rincik, it involves some striking the shell of the drums and simpek long section, with some very fast patterns (tunrung pakdekdong and tunrung paklekbak); dancers pause in middle, then move again a moderately fast pattern; this pattern more prominently featured in the pakarena "Jangang Leak-leak" fast playing; although pakrangkipasak translates as "close fan" (Mks.), the dancers' fans are open at this point Daeng Mile sings solo, melismatic verse; dancers continue to dance, with knees deeply bent dancers join in singing; puik-puik plays two songs, initiated by Daeng Mile, joined by the dancers (standing still) and other musicians: "Gandariya ri Bulang" and "Pakarenaya" resumption of instrumental play (with ganrang)', slow and brief section with fans covering their mouths, dancers stand immobile as drummers show off and entertain with their shoulder antics fast drumming; dancers begin to move again long section, drummers alternate between fast tunrung pappadang and tumbuk labakbalak, five sets; dancers move, with fans open short song, with kelong text, "Bunga bunga tunggeng tea"; dancers join in the singing fast and loud; dancers move, with fans open, but stop briefly as drummers complete virtuosic passage, then begin to move again very fast, alternating between tunrung and tumbuk; dancers conclude their movements in a standing position, each with fan on right hip

Dancers move continuously throughout, with much greater mobility across the dance space and less demure composure. There is little overlap between the patterns (lerassang) used in Daeng Mile's pakarena "Samboritta" and Bu Nani's "Tari Pakarena," the latter being much slower musically overall.

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Makassarese Ganrang Drumming Table 7.2

Sequence of musical events in "Tari Pakarena," Bu Nani Sapada

Pattern/Section

Commentary

tunrung pakanjarak tunning renjang-renjang tumbuk tallu and sekre lagu Dongang-dongang tumbuk rua tunrung balakbak tunrung tallu tunrung renjang-renjang tunrung pakanjarak

fast and loud, for entrance slow tempo, processional pattern slow and fast, in alternation (x 3) metered song sung by musicians in unison fast drumming involving striking drum shell and simpek slow tempo slow tempo, processional pattern fast and loud, for exit

Used in "Samboritta"?

no no yes no yes (similar)

no no no

How does the structure of a pakarena "work" aesthetically? Bu Nani spoke about her desire to have a fast and exciting entrance and exit, using tunrung pakanjarak, and a limited set of lerassang with the core being the alternation between a slow tumbuk tallu and fast tumbuk sekre, leading into a song with clear meter and melody, in contrast to the kinds of dondo and leklek characteristic of traditional pakarena music. It is clear that Bu Nani's pakarena is a very deliberate exception whose structure contrasts fundamentally with the vast range of traditional pakarena. While practically everyone readily enthused about the contrast between the refined, understated dancing and the frenetic music in traditional pakarena, no one I spoke with had a ready interpretation for the sequence of patterns. Daeng Mile and others praised its flexibility, that a pakarena may incorporate various kelong, that sections can be interpolated, repeated, truncated, even played in somewhat different sequence, but it seems the overall structure does not lend itself to facile verbal interpretation. Manda, widely acknowledged as an authority on pakarena and other Makassarese dance lore, spoke to me about the symbolism of different body parts in relation to four primal elements: earth, represented by the skin (on the thighs, body, forearms); fire, represented by armpits; wind, represented by the nose; water, represented by sweat and urine.10 Within the scheme of directional opposites underlying ancient Makassarese and other South Sulawesian belief systems, earth and water have the quality of going down (appanaung) and fire and wind of rising up (appanaik). Yet even this knowledgable master, whose mother had been a servant at the court of Gowa in its final years, did not see a direct narrative connection between these bodily symbols and the specific movements and sequences of particular dances. If these dances were ever conceived as narrative, however stylized, that source of meaning has long since vanished. Practitioners and scholars who are deeply affected by pakarena now understand the movements to be abstract, mystically powerful, but not symbolically referential. So, too, the music, veering from plaintive song to frenetic drums and oboe, is widely felt to be the most

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spiritually powerful of all Makassarese music making, without any identifiable correspondence between a given pattern and either the dance movements or the spiritual realm. Even a pattern known as "close fan" (pakrangkipasak) can sound while the fan is open, as well as when it is closed (it accompanies both in the performance analyzed by Lathief and Sumiani, 1995, 290). Some Makassarese spoke with dismay about the deterioration of tradition, beginning with the imposition of tight Dutch rule in the early twentieth century, continuing through the Japanese occupation and Indonesian revolution in the 1940s, followed by the disruptions of Kahar Muzakkar and Darul Islam 1950-1965, the violent birth of the New Order, and the period of Muhammadiyah Muslim reformists in the late 1960s. Not only were many items of repertory and whole genres of performance "lost" as a result of such an extended period of cultural turmoil, but meanings ("original" meanings) were lost for some that survived. I heard this opinion from performer-teachers, such as Sirajuddin, and from a range of lay people of various local ethnic backgrounds. As each pakarena is identified by a particular song text (a verse of kelong, though usually performed as dondo), it seems possible that the dance movements might relate to some aspect of the song, either narrative or illustrative; but such a relationship, if it ever existed, is no longer evident. As old meanings fall away, whether in response to cataclismic socio-historical circumstances or gradual, peaceful change, it is axiomatic that new ones must emerge for any genre of performance to persist. But these need not be of the same type or order. An old narrative need not be replaced by a new narrative, for example. Instead, whether or not it once represented a story, or celebrated the beauty of abstract movements, a genre such as pakarena can find new meaning through its very association with "tradition," embodying it, expressing it in subtle dance, in otherworldly vocal timbres, in unabashedly earsplitting drum and oboe playing. DRUMMING FOR MARTIAL ARTS: TUNRUNG PAMANCAK As in some other areas in Indonesia, local martial arts in South Sulawesi are accompanied by a small ensemble featuring one or more drums. Among the Makassarese, the martial art known as mancak is routinely accompanied by a pair of ganrang pamancak, to which may be added a small gong (dengkang) and pair of horizontally mounted kettle gongs (kannong-kannong). The oboe, though widely used with ganrang in other Makassarese genres, and widely used with drums and gongs for martial arts in other parts of Indonesia, is not used for Makassarese martial arts accompaniment (except on the island of Selayar). According to Daeng Mile, only a few pamancak drum patterns are still widely practiced today, whereas earlier generations knew a great number. The three that he taught me, and that he and a second drummer played in public performances of pamancak I saw in 1994 and 1995, are all in triple metrical grouping: tunrung rua pamancak, tunrung tallu pamancak, and tunrung baweang.


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The first two simply utilize the Makassarese numbers, indicating how many tunrung strokes per statement of the pattern (two or three). The last is associated with sailing, the term baweang maybe deriving from the name of a small group of islands (Bawean) between South Sulawesi and Java. Daeng Mile also mentioned other styles of mancak that were once practiced among the Makassarese, each identified as a particular karenang ("playing," from the root karena, which is also the root of pakarena). These include, in addition to karenang Mangkasarak (Makassarese), karenang Melayu (Malay), karenang Cina (Chinese, of which he said there were numerous varieties), and karenang toya (involving boxing movements). Mancak, as much as any martial art, is an art of power. Those who practice it combine mental concentration with physical strength to project an aura of personal power and invulnerability. The music both enhances and transforms this display by framing it and setting it apart from other formalized activities that might be labeled "play" or "sport"—casting it in the realm of performance, which can be not only entertaining to watch but also ritually powerful to experience. Indeed, mancak is sometimes performed at weddings and other personal rites of passage, where it adds to the efficacy of the whole event by its engagement with displays of power. The extent to which musicians and martial artists interact on a technical level is difficult to pinpoint. One expert pamancak with whom I spoke, Mappajari (in Bantaeng), said that the martial artists follow the musicians at first, but once they are fully engaged in their performance, it is the musicians who must follow the martial artists, responding to transitional movements. Yet several drummers told me that the details of their drumming, especially the variations played by the ganrang palari, are not determined at all by attempts to coordinate with the martial artists. Instead, they choose from a vocabulary of variations more or less spontaneously, intending to keep the music interesting and inspiring, neither drawing attention away from the martial artists nor reinforcing their particular movements. The musicians here do not attempt, as they do in some other musical martial arts (such as Sundanese pencak silat), to create in their playing a kind of aural equivalent of the movements. Nor are the variations intended to dazzle listeners, as in some pakarena patterns and other drum practice. Here the focus of attention is on the martial artists more than on the musicians, but all agree that it would not be right without the music, and that the constant pulse of the drums enhances the powers of the martial artists, focusing their concentration and empowering their movements. The music, one martial artist told me, "inspires" (Ind. menjiwai) the martial artists; without it they could not perform. DRUMMER AS PERFORMER Even in the slow tunrung style, Makassarese drummers may move their heads and torsos to a limited degree. In the fast playing, such as pakanjarak, the

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anrongguru (on ganrang palari) may show off his skill in manipulating the beater, passing it from hand to hand when the music allows, and even twirling it in the air a few times between strokes. In tumbuk playing and in the patterns involving striking the drum shell or the metal plaque affixed to it (tunrung rincik and tumbuk rincik), these drummers seem to combine the roles of musician, dancer, and comedian—most obviously in the humorous ammikkik movements, but also in sudden turning of the head to the side, bobbing, nodding, and extending and flexing the arms in movement patterns resembling male dance and martial arts. To be an effective drummer, one has to incorporate these movements into one's public performance, helping to build the excitement and entertainment level for the audience without detracting from the rigorous demands of the musical sound. Even during parts of the performance in which no music is played, the drummers and other musicians may also engage in an informal kind of slapstick, sometimes with pakarena dancers standing in graceful stillness, struggling to hold back a laugh as, right in front of them, the musicians writhe and lurch. According to Daeng Mile, the musicians imagine themselves during these episodes as romping water buffalo, having a friendly tussle, butting heads and pushing each other to the ground (or floor of the stage). This humorous interlude is referred to as paklaga tedong (fighting water buffalo). When I saw Daeng Mile and his group perform in Takalar (ca. sixty kilometers south of Ujung Pandang), the audience howled with laughter as the five musicians (two drummers, one oboe player, one gong player, and one kattok-kattok player) launched into their antics between sections of a pakarena dance, at about 1 A.M. The young kattok-kattok player had been drinking heavily (locally made rice wine) and his limp body was easily passed over, under, and through the limbs of the other four. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the combination of music making with other physical movements, such as the contortionist acrobatics of some kecapi players, is widespread in South Sulawesi. Sometimes one finds a counterpoint of emotional states as a group of musicians performs, as for example at a 1998 performance by virtuosic drummer Serang Dakko and his group. On stage the audience saw and heard Serang's younger drum apprentices (two), serious demeanors on their faces as they paid keen attention to Serang, listening for transition and ending cues, and making sure to keep a very steady pulse against Serang's mighty syncopations. Sale Rani on puik-puik looked almost relaxed, certainly at ease with his part, despite the physical rigors of the circular breathing technique required on this instrument. Serang himself affected a wild, almost crazed look, eyes wide open, head turning suddenly and locking into place, staring as if defiantly at the audience, only to shift instantly to a wide smile as his head bobbed back and forth. Several times, with a sideways glance to assure the audience's attention, he rubbed the drum beater against the skin of the drum in a silent and overtly phallic gesture. Meanwhile, the kattok-kattok player, with few if any remaining teeth, managed to twist his face into truly remarkable contortions. Audience members pointed to him and laughed uproariously. Though this kind of stage behavior is not unusual, this particular musi-


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cian's facial flexibility was nothing short of virtuosic. Asked whether ammikkik and facial contortions were recent developments, musicians told me that performers have been entertaining their audiences—and themselves—with such movement and humor for as long as they could remember. I encountered several opinions concerning the significance of these humorous elements in pakarena performance. Several older drummers, including Fachruddin Daeng Romo, felt that the musicians' antics were, at least in part, intended to test the composure of the female dancers. As mentioned, they stand in close proximity to the musicians, facing them for much of their performance, and indeed are not expected to break out laughing. The humorous behavior not only added to the staged contrast but actually required the dancers to develop a strong sense of self-control and composure. Daeng Mile, however, said the musicians' behavior, while it might test the dancers, was intended primarily to entertain the audience.

GENDER IDEALS IN PERFORMANCE The contrast between the slow, meditative, introverted pakarena dance—in which long passages involve complete stillness, as the dancers stand in place, a fan demurely covering most of each face—and the extroverted play of puikpuik and ganrang that accompany it is widely recognized by people in South Sulawesi. Comparing it to other music and dance genres in Indonesia, many lay people I spoke with backed off from symbolic interpretation, other than to celebrate its uniqueness, giving Makassarese arts a special characteristic (Ind. ciri khas). Within the cultural rhetoric of New Order Indonesia, local cultural diversity in the arts was encouraged, albeit within certain constraints, as a patriotic fulfillment of Indonesia's image as united but culturally diverse. As we have seen in chapter 3, Bu Nani Sapada saw this contrast as too unusual, and proceeded to restructure a dance she simply called pakarena that involved much greater movement on the part of the dancers and less exuberant musical accompaniment. In contrast to Bu Nani, Romo, who had been an important source for Bu Nani and even drummed for her group in its early days, felt that the older versions that he knew from his youth in rural South Sulawesi (Takalar) were much more powerful, both in their effect on human audiences and within the spiritual realm. This power, he asserted, came from the extreme contrast between the male and female elements—opposites in nature here juxtaposed in performance. Romo was adamant that the musicians (all male), in their frenzied drum music and in their stage antics, epitomized overt strength, wildness, and masculinity, whereas the pakarena dancers (all female) needed to appear calm, demure, unaffected by this masculine onslaught, epitomizing inner strength, self-control, and femininity. Moreover, he qualified these essential gender representations as particular to Makassarese culture and did so proudly. The pakarena dance symbolized and enacted the ideal Makassarese female type as the ganrang drumming and puik-puik playing did the ideal Makassarese male

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type: females should be halm (Ind.; refined, smooth, subtle, soft); men should be keras (Ind.; hard, strong, loud, firm). Romo stressed how each pakarena dancer hides most of her face, even part of her eyes, with her fan and must gaze downward, no more than three meters in front of her.11 Romo also stated, with characteristic Makassarese male assurance, that the pakarena dancers must be beautiful. No one (male or female) wants to see ugly or even average-looking dancers, he said. Interspersed with his statements about gender and aesthetics in pakarena performance were remarks about what it meant to be keras and how he exemplified this himself. One had to be courageous (Ind. berani), resolute, and unafraid of death. He had been arrested and imprisoned a total of eight times, during Dutch colonial times, the Japanese occupation, the revolution, and the Sukarno era. The governor of South Sulawesi, H. Z. B. Palaguna, used this same Indonesian term (keras) to describe the basic character of "orang Sulawesi Selatan" (South Sulawesi's people), not narrowing this group to males or to one ethnic group. He explained that they are indeed keras (as at least Bugis and Makassarese are widely reputed to be), but in the good sense of the term— keras in their determination to follow through with something once initiated, and keras in their devotion to religion. Palaguna himself is Bugis, and the Bugis certainly would not concede that Makassarese (male or female) are stronger or more resolute than the Bugis. Yet many I spoke with in South Sulawesi noted a greater concern with refinement and sophistication among the Bugis than among Makassarese, who were "fast to anger, but fast to forgive." Clearly the quality of keras-ness figures prominently in Makassarese thinking about self-identity, particularly male identity. Dutch writers of the colonial era, prone to essentializing interpretations of the various Indonesian peoples they encountered, noted this quality (in both negative and positive light) from Admiral Speelman in the 1660s (reported in Blok 1817, 90) to administrators in the twentieth century (see Tideman 1909, 5). While other South Sulawesian peoples were also routinely decribed as fundamentally tough, Bugis sometimes less so than others (e.g., Blok 1817), the Makassarese were reputed to be exceptionally so. Makassarese drumming, especially the fast and loud playing that accompanies pakarena, is undeniably keras, and is interpreted as an artistic symbol of masculinity. Although girls now study drumming as part of the curriculum at the performing arts high school (SMKI), I know of only one woman who, in the judgment of accomplished drummers such as Daeng Mile, has mastered the full range of ganrang playing necessary to accompany pakarena. (She was not a student at SMKI but learned from her father, an angrongguru.) But aside from this one notable exception, and although a sign of changing attitudes about gender, all the drummers I heard or heard about were male. Earlier in this chapter we have seen that the binary contrast between the two drum heads and between the two slightly different sizes of drum that make up a pair are conceptualized as gender opposites (male and female). Here in the context of performance, not only do males perform the music, but their sound and their physical behavior while performing symbolize an ideal Makassarese


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male type. This plays off the dance, which is not only performed by females but also creates through the movements, stances, and costuming what is, for some at least, an ideal Makassarese female type. Offering a slightly different perspective than Romo, Mukhlis Paeni, a wellknown cultural specialist of mixed South Sulawesian ancestry, expressed his interpretation of pakarena not so much as an art of contrasts, but as an art of energy and intensity. In his view, the musicians create the energy and excitement that "enters" the dancers, who concentrate it and express an inward intensity, very focused and powerful. Thus, he sees the musicians (male) as the animating force, as it were, to which the (female) dancers respond. However, this notion is not purely gender-based, as others have viewed the musicians as animating male performers, as mentioned in the discussion above of martial arts. The symbolic associations of drum music with local ideas about gender and sexuality are further evident in the very word for drum itself. For ganrang is the root of the verb akganrang, a slang term in Makassarese for sexual intercourse. This verbal form can also mean "to slap" and "to give someone a piece of one's mind," "take a firm line with someone" (see Cense 1979, 223). My efforts to elicit an exegesis linking the instrument and its manner of performance with the act of sexual intercourse were not especially fruitful. People either laughed or denied any close link. But it would seem that the action of male hands, sometimes holding a horn beater (whose slight curve could be likened to an erect penis) against a membrane, might easily suggest sexual intercourse, particularly given the discourse of gender surrounding these instruments and their performance. CONCLUSION: DRUMMING IN THE LATE 1990S For much of this chapter I have sought to provide an understanding of the ways in which Makassarese drums and drumming have been "powerful." Yet, along with nearly all forms of indigenous musical practice in most parts of Indonesia, this music is widely seen to be rapidly declining in popularity. Even before the economic crisis that hit Indonesia in late 1997, top drummers such as Daeng Mile and Serang Dakko were complaining of a decline in paid engagements. In 1994, for example, Daeng Mile's group only had occasional requests for full three-day wedding, for which he could only charge Rp. 300,000 (ca. US$140). Though still called from time to time to represent their district in provincial festivals (often without remuneration) and occasional international tours, they did not receive enough invitations to perform for local family rituals, despite their being widely acclaimed as superb musicians. The situation deteriorated still further in 1998, as fewer families could afford what is increasingly seen as a vestige of former times. But Daeng Mile reported an increase in paid engagements in 1999, as South Sulawesi began to prosper economically from exports of major agricultural products. Choice of music for rituals is determined by a number of complex factors. It is not, in most cases, simply a matter of taste or musical preference; it is a

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public statement about one's social position, about negotiating one's place within a social environment in which choosing traditional music and dance may set one off from one's more modern neighbors. Thus, even those with the financial means to hire a good pakarena troupe, for example, may seek out a popular musical group, one that can play dangdut (see chapter 9). Moreover, the best known dangdut musicians charge considerably more than a top pakarena group, making the dangdut more prestigious as a display of wealth, regardless of any choice between tradition and modernity. If its popularity is waning, can Makassarese drumming be "powerful"? I would contend that economic support is not the sole indication of aesthetic response, however unfortunate for those who would make their living as professional drummers. Many Makassarese, and other South Sulawesians, young and old, male and female, acknowledged experiencing some intense emotion hearing Makassarese drum music. Those who watched drumming groups with me at various events, ranging from traditional weddings and circumcisions to avant-garde theater and spectacles, were openly enthusiastic about what they were hearing, sometimes gasping, even laughing in disbelief, as top drummers such as Daeng Mile and Serang Dakko went all out. And the less ostentatious drumming of tunrung pakballe continues to touch listeners' emotions by its close association with important family rituals. The extent to which this music and the instruments themselves remain powerful in the supernatural sense—affecting a spiritual realm somehow outside the reach of Islam—is difficult to determine. Certainly what are often identified locally as "pre-Islamic" beliefs are still widespread. While pressures of reform and orthodox Islam have reportedly challenged these beliefs, they are still very much in evidence, even if public ritual surrounding them has dropped off dramatically (as everyone would readily admit). Halilintar readily concedes that Makassarese drumming is the core of his various experimental presentations. With good drumming, usually provided by Daeng Mile and a few others, Halilintar is confident that his audiences will have something of clear excellence to behold, often providing the firm basis on which to build unusual performative material, dance and theater, which might not stand so well on its own or with equally unorthodox musical accompaniment. Daeng Mile himself is largely positive about these experimental contexts in which Halilintar invites him to perform. While not always comfortable in interpreting their meaning (I am not sure Halilintar is either), Daeng Mile enjoys the challenge of trying to find some fit between his "traditional" drum music and the various choreographical and theatrical creations of Halilintar and his group. He told me he found this far more rewarding than playing the fixed accompaniment for Bu Nani's pakarena—the dynamic in these modern experiments, after all, is rather similar to that in accompanying traditional pakarena, requiring close attention from all musicians as the anrongguru subtly signals transition between patterns in performance. Makassarese drums are used in a variety of contemporary contexts, ranging from the virtuosic variations of pakarena and atraksi ganrang (wild, exciting, keras) to the subdued enhancement of kecapi and suling ensembles or gui-


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tar and vocal groups, the latter heard in a variety of contemporary theater and dance presentations in Ujung Pandang during the 1990s. Makassarese drumming has taken on a new kind of "power" in the last several decades, representing local culture—Makassarese, and more generally, "South Sulawesian"—in various contexts. Without relying on comprehension of Makassarese language, as does song, or favorable apprehension of particular melodies, it makes an immediate impression, capturing an audience both by its sound and by the readily observable physical skill required to produce it. It is for this reason, I believe, that many non-Makassarese hold it in such high regard, vis-a-vis other local "traditional" arts. Those from other regions of Indonesia are quick to recognize its brilliance, as are foreigners. In Surakarta, Central Java, in July 1995, under the banner of Salokoa ri Gowa (the Crown of Gowa), more than two hundred participants from South Sulawesi took part in the first annual court arts festival in Indonesia to invite representatives from former court cultures far from Java. This large contingent presented a range of cultural performances, many with no plausible court connections. Makassarese drum music, which does indeed have court associations, accompanied much of the group's activity, including a grand procession around the perimeter of the palace (Jvn. kraton). As part of the festival, the finest and most sacred heirlooms of the Gowanese court, including a stunning solid gold crown, were carried in the procession for all to see. It was with some qualms that the descendants of the royal family agreed to allow these objects to be brought from the safety of Sungguminasa (near Ujung Pandang) across the sea to Java. The local organizers assured the family that all possible precautions would be taken to ensure the safety of these irreplacable objects. Central to their plan was that Daeng Mile and his musicians would perform periodically throughout the day and night for the duration of the boat trip from Ujung Pandang to Surabaya, and on the return. All went without incident, with drumming serving not only as one of the main public offerings in Surakarta but also to protect the powerful objects that give a court its legitimacy. Even as the drum music finds new audiences and new meanings in contemporary Indonesia, then, its long-standing association with magical protection and blessing persists, not only in well-established ceremonies but also in contexts as unprecedented as travel to a national festival.

8

Institutionalizing Performance Schools, Sanggars, and the Government

It was less than twenty-four hours after I first arrived in South Sulawesi in 1993 that I found myself sitting at a music and dance rehearsal in a large studio at Ujung Pandang's Teachers College (Institut Keguruan Ilmu Pendidikan, acronym IKIP).1 Only gradually, as the weeks went by, and as I returned to South Sulawesi nearly every year for the next six, did I realize how this rehearsal encapsulated much that was current and in some ways contradictory about the institutionalization of performance in South Sulawesi in the 1990s and how it helped shape a major line of inquiry in my research. I had gone to IKIP in search of Halilintar Lathief. The person who greeted me as I entered was his Javanese wife, Niniek Sumiani, who was leading the rehearsal, in which a group of ten dancers and five musicians were polishing or reviewing a series of short South Sulawesian dances whose movements and musical styles varied significantly from one another. My first encounter with performing arts in South Sulawesi found a Javanese, albeit a very talented one, in charge. None of the items being rehearsed were Javanese. Instead, as one performer kindly explained to me, they were arrangements of music and dance based on traditional music and dance from various ethnic groups (he used the term etnis as a noun) from South Sulawesi. Already, this first day, I had met students of various ethnic backgrounds—mostly from South Sulawesi, but not entirely—rehearsing under the watchful eye of a teacher trained in Java (and in 164

Schools, Sanggars, and the Government

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this case actually Javanese). They were working on short items appropriate for presentation on stage, whether for tourists or as the entertainment portion of a reception for a government function or a private wedding. Many questions arose. How did an expert Javanese dancer come to be directing performers, mostly from South Sulawesi, to perform music and dance explicitly identified as local (South Sulawesian), some of it (the dance, at least) arranged by the Javanese? How much did it matter that Sumiani was leading this group, given that she was not seeking to substitute her own heritage of Javanese dance on these non-Javanese performers, but rather helping them polish items created and inspired locally? What other apparent contradictions might emerge as I sought out some of the trends and details of performing arts education in South Sulawesi, given the highly centralized nature of Indonesian government bureaucracy under Suharto's New Order? I often heard people in South Sulawesi complain of Java-centrism, of the frustration of having so much dictated by a central government whose models were little informed by any acquaintance with local customs, traditions, sensibilities. I spent considerable time talking with teachers and faculty at IKIP and at the high school of performing arts SMKI (Sekolah Menengah Karawitan Indonesia), as well as leaders and participants of various private music and dance performance clubs (Ind. sanggar), and, less often, government officials in various units of the Department of Education and Culture (Depdikbud). The interaction between these different arenas is so constant that a focus on one inevitably involves the others. The permanent teaching staff at IKIP and SMKI are, of course, civil servants (Ind. pegawai negeri) and thus, government employees themselves. Some of the "government officials" are performers, participating in or even leading sanggars. Thus, while much of what I wish to cover in this chapter involves the contradictory pressures on the two educational institutions, IKIP and SMKI, at least some background on sanggars and the arts and education government bureaucracy becomes essential. The official discourse on "preserving" (Ind. melestarikari) and "developing" (Ind. mengembangkan) the arts was so pervasive during much of the thirty-two years of Suharto's New Order that one inevitably confronts these two potentially contradictory categories when talking about performing arts in Indonesia over the last three decades. Performers, choreographers, composers, critics, teachers—all who have anything to do with those arts with a basis deemed indigenous or regional or traditional—have been caught between the dual emphases on preserving traditions (the plurality of local practice) and developing national culture (ultimately building a shared culture). Individuals and private groups may have their own strong preferences for pushing in one direction or another, but the government-sponsored institutions and activities have needed to appear, at least, to be doing both, somehow to bring these apparent opposites into alignment. My approach to the institutionalization of performance in South Sulawesi attempts to weave between diachronic overview, current or recent "hard" data, and descriptive vignettes. I hope to convey a sense of the social world at the main institutions and representative sanggars, the forces that have shaped

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them, and the challenges faced by teachers, students, even the government officials themselves. It may be tempting to propose grand narratives of local resistance to national hegemony, of impoverishment at the margins so removed from Indonesia's financial and cultural center. Yet the story—or more properly the stories—are complex and contradictory, shaped as they are by individuals too numerous to name, even to count.

ORIGINS AND VARIATIONS IN INSTITUTIONALIZING PERFORMING ARTS Little can be said about the institutionalization of performance prior to the early 1960s. It is generally agreed that some kinds of music and dance, such as pakarena, were taught and performed at the royal courts during the nineteenth century (Matthes 1859, 46; 1875,126), and probably before (Lathief and Sumiani 1995). The process whereby this dance was disseminated among the general populace would be fascinating to discover, but appears impossible to trace in currently known sources and almost certainly took place outside the confines of a formal educational institution. Private clubs and societies, such as the one Bu Nani sang with in the 1940s, were devoted exclusively to music of Western origin. The government radio station (RRI) sponsored local musicians in the 1950s playing mostly Western-style music and some local genres, such as sinrilik, though not institutionalizing its transmission. As we have seen, it was Bu Nani and her associates who were largely responsible—first for teaching dance and music in classes in the 1950s and subsequently for forming the extremely influential Institut Kesenian Sulawesi (IKS) in 1962. IKS spread the approach and style of Bu Nani throughout much of the province with its many branches. Equally profound an influence, however, was the spread of the very notion of formalized classes in local music and dance, not only legitimizing performing arts among those who formerly viewed them with contempt (as low-class, morally corrupting) but also establishing a standardized method for their transmission. By late 1965, as Muhammadiyah began its purges under the guise of anti-communist zealotry, IKS and other formal institutions devoted to local music and dance were well established. And the arts that they taught and performed, though not explicitly "Muslim," were sufficiently separated from their spiritual origins that they did not undergo the same persecution that was faced by village performing troupes. In 1964 one of Bu Nani's most talented students, Ida Joesoef Madjid, established Yayasan Anging Mammiri' (YAMA), which has remained an active performing arts organization through the 1990s, teaching and performing local music and dance. Strictly speaking, neither IKS nor YAMA were governmentsponsored, at least in the sense that either received a regular budget from the local or national government. But both Bu Nani and Ida Joesoef were extremely well connected, both married to important government officials, and thus were often called upon for government functions.

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Even outside the exceptional example of YAMA, which has enjoyed special privileges for years, the other private performing arts organizations in the city of Makassar and in outlying villages varied considerably in their approach to membership, transmission, repertory, and engagement with government officials. Those headed by Sirajuddin (Sanggar Sirajuddin in Sungguminasa) and Munasiah (Sanggar Bunga Biraeng in Makassar) offered regularized instruction, following a weekly schedule. They openly recruited students, employed some form of written instruction (such as dance notation, with floor patterns), and (like all groups) sought remunerative performance opportunities. These contrast with groups such as Daeng Mile's Takbing Siwaliya, which is really not a sanggar but a professional troupe of accomplished performers. He and other anrongguru gave instruction and even formally initiated new students, but as a private arrangement. During the 1960s, those drawn to the new secular versions of local music and dance found opportunities through IKS and YAMA. For those interested in arts less clearly tied to local traditions—painters, playwrights, poets, and other performers—this was a fractious period. The Indonesian economy unraveled in the final years of Sukarno's rule (early 1960s), making government support for the arts all but meaningless, despite a growing feeling that "Indonesian" artists, in South Sulawesi and elsewhere, needed to be supported. As the economy began to improve under Suharto, a group of artists and intellectuals living in the city (still known as Makassar) spearheaded a successful effort to establish an organizational body with government funds intended primarily to support new creative work in the arts, even though a division between modern/contemporary (Ind. kontemporer) and traditional (Ind. tradisional) was never formalized in writing. On 1 July 1969, their efforts culminated in the formal opening of the Dewan Kesenian Makassar (Ind.; Arts Council of Makassar). Makassar here refers to the city in which it was located, rather than the ethnic group. This council, known as DKM, supported work by artists of varied ethnic backgrounds, emphasizing "Indonesian" work (poetry and drama in the national language, for example), painting, and some dance and music, enhancing the artistic life of the city.2 In the more than thirty years since its founding, DKM has helped to fund an enormous variety of activities, many taking place on the grounds of the Benteng Ujung Pandang (Fort Rotterdam) in downtown Ujung Pandang/Makassar, or the RRI auditorium next door.3 In a seminar and festival celebrating DKM's twenty-fifth anniversary in July 1994, criticism was aired by younger artists concerning the lack of focus and the lack of accountability on the part of those controlling the funds (not an uncommon complaint in Indonesia, but voiced openly at this public forum). Among those presenting papers at the seminar, whose work had been supported by DKM, were the heads of two current music and dance sanggar (Ibu Andi Ummu, head of Sanggar Batara Gowa, and Sirajuddin Daeng Bantang, head of Sanggar Sirajuddin). Some of the younger creative artists in attendance grumbled that DKM should be more supportive of original work, less tied to local traditions than the activities of these and other sanggar. Not wishing to

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disparage traditional arts, they argued nevertheless that other sources existed for support of the obviously locally based music and dance, however creatively arranged and choreographed. They pointed to the Badan Koordinasi Kesenian Nasional Indonesia (or BKKNI; Ind.; Coordinating Body for National Arts of Indonesia), along with various other programs sponsored by Depdikbud, whose facilities at Taman Budaya (Ind.; Culture Garden) in Ujung Pandang included a large auditorium where performances were frequently held. Somewhat ironically, this board for "national arts" (BKKNI) was formerly intended to support regional, traditional expression—as part of the New Order's notion of national culture consisting of various regional cultural forms, which could and should be "developed," but should retain distinctively local traits. But despite the former division in orientation between DKM and BKKNI, the kinds of activities they have supported in recent years have overlapped to such an extent that in the 1990s it was no longer possible to characterize DKM as a source for "modern artists" and BKKNI and Depdikbud as sources for "traditional artists." In the small, three-story building nestled in a corner of the recently restored Benteng Ujung Pandang that has been the office of DKM for some years, creative work continued in the late 1990s. I attended a number of rehearsals there, watching and listening as Basri Baharuddin Sila composed a new piece and Andi Abu Bakar choreographed a new dance in August 1998, both of them "teaching" their work as they created it, in preparation for presentation elsewhere—at national festivals held in Java. Some may question the wisdom or even the right of DKM to help fund arts activities to appear elsewhere, as these would seem not to be enhancing the local arts scene in Ujung Pandang. But it has been widely acknowledged among urban artists, at least, as I have pointed out in previous chapters (especially 3 and 4), that South Sulawesi needs greater presence nationally. Using DKM funds to prepare performers to represent Ujung Pandang, or South Sulawesi, at a national music festival or dance competition, was a matter of local pride. Thus DKM, as much as any of the arts offices of Depdikbud, devoted significant portions of its budget (it would be next to impossible for any researcher to determine how much) to this kind of promotional work. At the seminar commemorating DKM's twenty-fifth anniversary I heard again and again the call for greater recognition of South Sulawesi at the national level—in Jakarta, in Java (Yogyakarta, Surakarta), in Sunda (Bandung). Clearly, DKM and the provincial Depdikbud4 considered it part of its mission to go beyond supporting artists working and performing locally. They were engaged in the cultural politics of representation: what to represent of South Sulawesi and how. Often the choices seemed haphazard and, as elsewhere in Indonesia, tangled up in a plethora of personal alliances, rivalries, obligations, and financial shenanigans. Along with the direct support of specific artistic activities under the Arts Section (Ind. Bidang Kesenian) of Depdikbud, the Education Section (Ind. Bidang Pendidikan) supported training in plastic and performing arts at two formal educational institutions: the high school for performing arts (SMKI) and the teachers' college (IKIP). Teachers and faculty at these two institutions, diverse as they have been in specializations and artis-


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tic and professional goals, have played a central role in artistic endeavor and the representations of South Sulawesi and its component, cultural "parts" (etnis, subetnis, tradisional, moderen) to the residents of South Sulawesi, to the nation, and to foreign audiences. SMKI: SHIFTING VISIONS, BETWEEN PRESERVATION AND PRAGMATICS Peopled with teachers and students of widely varying interests, talents, and levels of ability, SMKI is a remarkable testament to the rupture between central design and regional execution. Since it became one of Indonesia's seven official SMKIs in 1977, it has, like other SMKIs outside the Javanese-Balinese cultural center, been an institution with multiple visions, often in crisis or on the brink. After years of experience visiting SMKIs in Central Java (Yogyakarta and Surakarta) and Bali, which are certainly not without their problems, I was totally disheartened on my first few visits to South Sulawesi's SMKI (still called SMKI Ujung Pandang, despite its move in the 1982 to the nearby town of Sungguminasa). Classes were in session, but many of those scheduled were not being taught. The library, an enormous room with ample shelf space for thousands of books, was practically empty, aside from multiple copies of government publications (mostly Depdikbud) on regional arts in other parts of Indonesia (Javanese shadow puppetry was well represented), a few old books in English on Western music theory and history, theater, and so forth, and a small collection of senior projects, mostly describing field projects with one of the four or five preferred sanggar in Sungguminasa or Ujung Pandang. A few teachers sat and relaxed in the teachers' lounge (Ind. ruang guru). Some students were heard in a practice room trying out the newly acquired electric guitars and drum sets. In one music room, Makassarese ganrang drums lay scattered about in disrepair, some totally unusable due to split membranes, others with loose heads in need of professional tightening. Despite this dismaying first impression, I made numerous visits to SMKI during my stays in South Sulawesi, speaking with many of the performing arts teachers and getting to know some of them well. From my conversations with them and from the meager written data I was able to gather, I offer below neither an exhaustive history of SMKI nor a comprehensive description of it in the mid- to late 1990s, but rather an outline of its origins, the changes in its mission and vision, and some glimpses of current and recent activities. The public school now known as SMKI (though officially as Sekolah Menengah Kejuruan Negeri I—Somba Opu)5 is a direct outgrowth of a school started by Bu Nani Sapada in 1972 on the grounds of the old Dutch Fort Rotterdam (Benteng Ujung Pandang). Aware of formal high school-level "conservatories" of dance and music in Java and Bali, Bu Nani determined that South Sulawesi needed something comparable, even if it were not to be officially recognized and funded by the government at first. As a direct outgrowth of the classes taught in the various branches of IKS since the early 1960s, she founded

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the school, called Konservatori Kesenian Sulawesi (Ind.; Conservatory of Sulawesi Arts) and funded by IKS. Like IKS, the conservatory's name did not specify any particular region of Sulawesi, suggesting that it might promote the arts of various peoples throughout the entire island. But just as the repertory of IKS was almost entirely based on music and dance of South Sulawesi, so were the offerings at the conservatory. Bu Nani and Munasiah Nadjamuddin both taught dance from the beginning, soon joined by two teachers who remained on the staff through the 1990s, Pak Manda (Makassarese) and Bu Elis Patasik (Torajan). Musical instruction was given on ganrang, kecapi, suling, and occasionally other South Sulawesian instruments. In addition the school offered instruction in Western-influenced music, such as local and national styles of kroncong (singing accompanied a small ensemble consisting guitar, ukulele, bass and/or cello, and often flute or violin) and kulintang music from Manado, North Sulawesi (an instrumental genre consisting of xylophones tuned to the Western diatonic scale). After only two years, the conservatory's bid for public status (Ind. status negeri) was granted. Consistent with Indonesian nomenclature elsewhere at the time, the name of the school was officially changed to Konservatori Tari Indonesia (Ind.; Indonesian Conservatory of Dance, or KONRI) in a decree from the Indonesian Minister of Education and Culture dated 30 October 1974. This was a major step in winning legitimacy for South Sulawesi's performing arts, particularly dance—something Bu Nani had been tirelessly working at for two decades. Yet in the opinion of some, including several who were students at the time, the change in status brought with it some unfortunate consequences. Most dramatically, once the school had public funding, all the teachers had to be pegawai negeri (Ind.; civil servants), with proper formal educational background. Expert musicians and dancers with little or no formal education were forced out of their job, and new teachers, often less competent in local performing arts, were brought in. Moreover, the curriculum changed from a focus mostly on local arts, taught by and to Makassarese, Bugis, Mandar, and Torajans, to a broader focus, not only incorporating the courses required of all public high schools but also gradually incorporating various kinds of dance and music, determined in part by the experience and abilities of the teachers hired. Where the original school had been designed to train performers skilled in the secular performing arts pioneered by Bu Nani, KONRI had to conform to national expectations developed around the already established high schoollevel conservatories of dance (KONRI) and indigenous music (Konservatori Karawitan, or KOKAR), mostly in Java and Bali. These institutions has focused primarily on performing arts with clear local origins, inevitably emphasizing certain arts (notably the refined courtly arts) and excluding others (most of what could be called "folk" or "popular," and any genre with overt connections to Islam). Some practical training in the arts of other regions has also been frequently offered, but nowhere near to the extent originally envisioned when the first of these (KOKAR in Surakarta) was founded as a kind of laboratory for exposing students to a wide range of expressive forms from Indonesia's vast archipelago in order to stimulate the development of national, Indonesian arts.

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Similar institutions elsewhere in Java, as well as West Java and Bali, followed similar paths, as in each locale some variants of gamelan music, dance, and wayang theater could be taught as core local tradition. When institutions were founded in places other than Java and Bali, the central government saw little need to develop a different model of what constituted the proper focus of such schools. In the spirit of a central standard inspired by Javanese-Balinese artistic realities, the national government decreed that all high schools devoted primarily to the traditional arts should offer concentrations in music (which it called karawitan, a Javanese word for refined, courtly Javanese gamelan music), dance, and puppetry or drama. The Java-Bali mind-set emerges clearly in the language of the preamble to the official 30 October 1974 letter from the Minister of Education and Culture: The art of Karawitan actually cannot be separated from the arts of Dance and of Puppetry (in areas where there is puppetry art). Really what is meant by Karawitan is the arts that make use of small and refined [rawit] ornamentation as a basic element adding to the beauty. In areas where Music has already been so much influenced by diatonic [Western] Music that Slendro and Pelog scales are no longer used,6 people dance, play music, paint, and carve [works] full of ornamentation that is refined [ngrawif], so that it can be said that practically all traditional arts in Indonesia are arts of Karawitan. It is clear that the task of the Indonesian Dance Conservatory is not merely to conserve (care for and nurture) the art of Dance alone, or the Indonesian Conservatory of Karawitan only the art of Karawitan (in the sense of traditional Music), but each has the duties of caring for and nurturing/developing the [related] traditional arts, i.e., Karawitan, Dance, and Puppetry.7

One can see in this passage the awkward maneuvering around the notion of karawitan, a term with obvious Javanese associations, and one very little used in South Sulawesi today— even within the offices and classrooms of the institution that KONRI was to become in 1977: SMKI, whose K stands for Karawitan. Both within the institution and among the larger populace, various forms of music, whether Western-influenced or not, are referred to generally as musik, a loanword from Dutch. In the 1990s some musicians distinguished musik diatonis (employing a Western major scale) from musik nondiatonis or musik tradisional (employing some other scale, usually pentatonic), although for some the criteria distinguishing "traditional" was not scale, but type of instruments, or context. Moreover, in the absence of any local puppetry or traditional theater in South Sulawesi, SMKI has developed a theater concentration offering Westernstyle drama, almost always employing Indonesian-language scripts and proscenium-stage presentation. The first group of students at KONRI had started at Bu Nani's private conservatory, KKS. They were few in number, but included some students who would go on to become teachers of some prominence in the local arts world. But shortly after the transition from KKS to KONRI, the attraction of a degree from a government-sponsored institution and the associated opportunities for

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employment caused class size to grow, rising well above the twenty-five minimum they had struggled to achieve in order to qualify for the change in status. Within only three years, this school changed its name once again, to conform with the name being given to all former high schools of performing arts elsewhere in Indonesia: Sekolah Menengah Karawitan Indonesia (1977), the name until the late 1990s, when it was changed to Sekolah Menengah Kejuruan Negeri I—Somba Opu (Ind.; National Vocational School [Number] One [located in] Somba Opu). Over the years the school has been under the direction of various headmasters (Ind. kepala sekolah), few of whom have had any direct knowledge or abilities in South Sulawesi's performing arts. The outgoing kepala I interviewed in 1993 (Pak Ladori) was a former teacher of Indonesian language. He outlined for me the basic profiles of the three concentrations (Ind. jurusan): tari (Ind.; dance), the most popular by far, and largely populated by female students; karawitan (in this case, "music"), less popular and mostly populated by male students; and teater (Ind.; theater) with very few students. For the 1993-1994 year, the total number of students was 255, girls outnumbering boys 228 to 27. The traditions represented in the "Karawitan" Department (Ind. Jurusan Karawitan) did not seem to reflect the local profile. Western music and Western-influenced, "diatonic" music had substantial presence. H. Sharifah Alang taught Western chorus; M. Tinungki, from Sangir (North Sulawesi), taught kulintang (an ensemble of Western-tuned xylophones used widely throughout Indonesia for rendering Indonesian and Western tunes with simple Western harmonies), as well as Western-tuned angklung (an ensemble of shaken bamboo idiophone). Courses in traditional music of South Sulawesi were being handled by two nonpermanent staff members, Tomy Simson, born in Manado, raised in Makassar (Moluccan father, Central Sulawesian mother), and Darius Jemparut, from the island of Flores. Both were former students at SMKI and learned Western music before they became interested in Makassarese and other musics. Sangkala, Syamsul Qamar, and Yohanis Ali Palimbong were the regular teachers of traditional music, but were on leave for three years to undergo a nationally funded training program held in Yogyakarta at the Center for the Development and Training of Arts Teachers (Ind. Pusat Pengembangan Penataran Guru Kesenian, or P3GK). No one had extensive background in Bugis, Torajan, or Mandar music, although most of the music teachers with training in Makassarese traditions also knew at least some elementary traditional music from other South Sulawesian ethnic groups. From about 1984 to 1987, SMKI had been able to provide students the opportunity to study with expert performers outside the school. They were referred to as nara sumber (Ind.; source persons) and included Daeng Mile and Daeng Serang Dakko, neither of whom had the educational credentials to be accepted as full-time teachers at SMKI, but who were widely known to be among the most skilled players of Makassarese instruments. Owing to the school's location within the predominantly Makassarese town of Sungguminasa (Gowa district), most of these source persons were Makassarese. The nara sumber pro-


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Darius Jemparut, from Flores, teaching ganrang and kecapi at SMKI, July 1994

gram was initiated at all SMKIs throughout the nation, but was only funded for a limited period, despite the great opportunities it provided in the teaching of performance traditions and associated knowledge. Had it continued and been more even in its representation, SMKI might have become the site of excellence in traditional music and dance it was intended to have been. Teater was struggling along, in search of a purpose and a larger cohort of students. This concentration was headed by permanent teacher Ram Asia Prapanca, a talented poet and actor born and raised in Buton, Southeast Sulawesi, but a longtime resident of South Sulawesi and doing his best to provide local aspects in the acting he taught, such as the development of scripts about local history and issues. Tari (dance) was comparatively in better shape, with a teaching staff of twelve, representing expertise in various South Sulawesi dance traditions, as well as some from elsewhere in Indonesia. Dance teachers included the wellknown Sirajuddin Daeng Bantang, Makassarese dancer, choreographer, and musician, with his own sanggar, and Torajan Elis Patasik, a dance teacher since the days of KONRI (1976) and who taught dances of Toraja and of South Sulawesi's ethnic groups (e.g., Bugis pajogek). No dance teacher, I was told, restricted his or her teaching to the styles of only one ethnic group. Some even taught dances from other islands. Manda, an expert in Makassarese dance, especially pakarena, had studied in 1986 at Bagong Kussudiardjo's Arts Retreat (Padepokan Seni) in Yogyakarta, where he was exposed to a wide variety of Indonesia's regional music and dance genres. At SMKI he has taught Balinese and Minangkabau (West Sumatran) dance, in addition to local dances of South Sulawesi. Sitti Nurhayati, herself a graduate of SMKI Ujung Pandang and of the Akademi Seni Tari Indonesia (ASTI, Indonesian College of Dance) in Yogyakarta, also taught dance styles from outside

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South Sulawesi, including Minangkabau. And Sirajuddin's wife, Rukanti Kresnaningsih, born in Purwokerto, Central Java, and longtime resident of Surabaya, East Java, taught several dances from East Java: (ngremo, a heroic, macho dance; and gandrung Banyuwangi, a flirtatious social dance). Several of the dance teachers had obtained college degrees in performance without leaving South Sulawesi, by completing the coursework in dance education at IKIP Ujung Pandang. Photographs on the walls documented a recent SMKI annual festival/recital, revealing a substantial amount of Balinese dance in addition to Bugis, Makassarese, Mandar, and Torajan, as well as some Javanese and Minangkabau (West Sumatran). During the late 1980s, nearly six hundred students applied to SMKI each year, with eighty accepted (personal communication, Ladori, 31 July 1993). But by 1993, the numbers had dropped dramatically (fewer than one hundred applicants, and only about thirty-five accepted), owing at least partially to the problematics of job placement. Graduates of SMKI were eligible to teach in elementary schools, but required higher degrees to teach secondary school. And at the elementary level, music and dance were taught by the general teaching staff; positions at this level were not reserved for SMKI graduates or others with formally recognized artistic abilities. As originally conceived, SMKI was intended to train performers who would seek their livelihood as professional musicians and dancers, but it was becoming increasingly apparent that the demand was insufficient for even the most talented graduates. The national Depdikbud had envisioned this SMKI (the only one east of Bali) as a school for performing artists from all of Eastern Indonesia. A directive from the director general of education in 1994 pronounced that new measures should be taken to attract students from all eastern Indonesian provinces, but evidence of its success by 1999 was slim. The musical offerings range from simplified Makassarese drumming and basic Islamic qasidah to harmonized Indonesian songs sung by a chorus or played by an ensemble of Western-tuned xylophones. Are these diverse offerings supposed to create musically well-rounded graduates who will then be able to make a living as they begin to merge these diverse musics into something newly "Indonesian" or "Eastern Indonesian"? Are they effective in ensuring the continuity of any local performance traditions? How does one evaluate the success of SMKI in the 1990s? To judge from the curriculum, which has included courses in history, anthropology, mathematics, science, religion, "citizenship," sports and physical education, arts appreciation, and a range of practical and theoretical courses in the arts, SMKI has been fulfilling its role as a high school, but not in both the directions envisioned by the national government: to train artists for the populace (vocational track) and to prepare students for tertiary education in the arts (academic track) (Punagi 1975, 6). Despite the recent change in the school's name to include the word Kejuruan (Ind.; Vocational), it has been increasingly unable to place its students in employment, and only a few can afford to go on to college. This unfortunate reality not only cut deeply into the student interest in SMKI but also caused the headmaster I interviewed in 1995, A. Rahim Halim

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A qasidah study group at SMKI, September 1995

(known as Rahim),8 to rethink the kinds of course offerings in performance. In a lengthy interview I conducted with him (15 August 1995) he acknowledged the paucity of job opportunities for SMKI graduates, particularly in music. They certainly could not make a living from playing kecapi or ganrang no matter how good they were. And only a few graduates had been getting work as teachers in the school system. For ten or twenty places there were several hundred applicants. In recognition not only of the Java-centrism of the word karawitan, but also its broader meaning as "traditional" or "indigenous" music, Rahim changed the name of the music concentration to Jurusan Musik, effective 1995-1996. Although some school documents for that year still carried the term Musik Daerah (Ind.; Regional Music), the curriculum included a variety of Western music offerings. Table 8.1 lists all courses offered for students concentrating in music during the first semester of academic year 1995-1996. (The school week then had only five days, reverted back to the usual six the following year.) The orientation, he said, had shifted from an emphasis on "traditional" music, albeit broadly conceived and unevenly represented, to an even balance: "50% traditional music, 50% modern music" (Ind. 50% musik tradisi, 50% musik modereri). By "modern music," he explained, he did not mean the kulintang and angklung, which used indigenous Indonesian instruments to play pieces with diatonic scales and harmony, but music that employed guitar, keyboard, drumset, and was appropriate for nightclubs and hotels. The teachers of this music were professional performers, hired at SMKI on a part-time basis and paid honoraria, thereby obviating the need for them to give up their lucrative professions in order to become full-time civil-servant staff (Ind. pegawai negeri). He felt that this compromise—maintaining some training in local traditional music, but adding a significant new component in commercial, popular

Table 8. 1 Course offerings for students in music at SMKI, first semester, academic year 1995-1996 Day

First Year

Second Year

Third Year

Fourth Year

Mon Basic Instrumental Practicum English Language

Mathematics

Physical Education Notation

Vocal Music

Overview of Arts & Culture — Tues Moral Education in Pancasila (State Ideology) Mathematics

Basic Instrumental Angklung Practicum Vocal Techniques — Management History

Orchestra/Combo Rehearsal

Wed Religious Education: Islam English Language Music Theory: Harmony Basic Instrumental Practicum

Thur Mathematics Music Theory: Harmony National History Solfeggio Fri

SKJ & 5 K

Physical Education Indonesian Language Religious Education: Christianity

History

Organology

Materials & Instrument Care Basic Instrumental Management Practicum Indonesian Language Music Theory: Dance Accompaniment Harmony Religious Music Education: Islam Composition Overview of Acoustics Arts & Culture Stage Indonesian Technicalities Language Suara Orkono Practicum Solfeggio

Moral Education in Pancasila English Language English Language Kulintang Cooperation Management (Koperasi) Music Physical Education Moral Education Religious Education: Islam in Pancasila Religious Religious Education: Education: Christianity Christianity — —

Source: Data charts at SMKI

Stage Technicalities — — Music Composition

Angklung —

English Language Acoustics Stage Presentation —

Notation Dance Accompaniment Simponi Kecapi — Kulintang — —

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SMKI students in a pickup rock group, practicing at SMKI, September 1995

music—would serve the students best without abandoning altogether the mission of each SMKI with respect to local tradition. The curriculum now included small orchestra/ensemble conducting, harmony, Western instrument care, dance accompaniment, sovejio/solfegio (Ind.; solfeggio), and group singing, as well as basic indigenous instrumental playing. On the subject of serving student needs, Rahim was vehement. To him, preparing students for a career or further academic work was more important than using SMKI, its students, teachers, and resources, to advance the cause of South Sulawesian visibility. Too many teachers at SMKI, he complained, devoted most of their efforts to outside activities: traveling to festivals in other parts of the country or accepting invitations to perform overseas; running their own sanggar, often with SMKI students comprising most of the performers. Routinely, he said, teachers either exploited the students or left them for extended periods with no instruction when school was in session. He failed to acknowledge the numerous instances in which students and teachers are obliged by SMKI to miss classes in order to fulfill local performance needs, such as conference and sporting event openings, welcoming distinguished visitors, and providing entertainment for a range of official functions, often on orders from the governor or other powerful government figures and rarely providing sufficient compensation even to cover transportation. However willingly or reluctantly Rahim and his successors at SMKI accepted such engagements, their refusal would lead to a host of difficulties, disadvantaging the school even more. For the 1995-1996 academic year, SMKI had admitted 48 new students, the entire student body (of four class levels) numbering only 161 in all concentrations, as shown in table 8.2. Only nine new students were entering the theater concentration, always the smallest of the three. While in previous years the

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Table 8.2 Number of students by class level, concentration (major), and sex, at SMKI Ujung Pandang, as of August 1995 Class Level

I I I I II II II II III III III III IV IV IV IV

I II III

IV

Concentration (Major) Music Dance Theater Subtotals Music Dance Theater Subtotals Music Dance Theater Subtotals Music Dance Theater Subtotals Summary Totals All concentrations All concentrations All concentrations All concentrations Totals

Boys

Girls

Total

9 0 0 9 7 0 2 9 4 0 2 6 3 0 1 4

14 16 9 39 9 25 6 40 5 14 3 22 8 14 9 31

23 16 9 48 16 25 8 49 9 14 5 28 11 14 10 35

9 9 6 4 28

39 40 22 31 133

48 49 28 35 161

Source: Data charts at SMKI

number of students concentrating in dance exceeded the number of students in music (karawitari), here the figures were reversed, with 23 in music and 16 in dance. As of 1995, there were no boys in the dance concentration at all, although there had been in the past. In performances requiring male dancers, male students from music and theater would be obliged to participate. In defense of the introduction of "modern music" and other curricular experiments at SMKI, Rahim reflected that the philosophy of SMKI is to "develop" (Ind. mengembangkan) the arts. As an example, he mentioned a group of ten students and teachers currently preparing for a festival in Bali, where they would present dance and music that combined Torajan and Makassarese elements into a new work. Like most of Bu Nani's dance and music pieces, which are part of the core curriculum at SMKI, the piece was short and secular. Yet its self-conscious combining of elements from different ethnic groups, now almost routine in the creative work at SMKI and elsewhere, was cited as a progressive step, taking arts beyond not only their ancient, traditional roots but also the earlier creations pioneered by Bu Nani. At the conclusion of our interview, Rahim added that the basis for students in music and especially in dance, was "tradition" (which he left undefined). Students need to learn about tradition, he said, even if it is not SMKI's job to preserve tradition.


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Dissatisfaction with the name SMKI owing to the incorporation of the word karawitan met with resistance for many years at the higher levels of decision making. Though the change of name for the music concentration was an internal decision, it would have been much more difficult to change the name of the institution under the centralized system of bureaucracy that characterized the Suharto era and is still largely in place several years later. The new name, Sekolah Menengah Kejuruan Negeri I, is not only vague, eliminating any reference to arts or performance, but its designation of the school as vocational belies the unmarketability of many of the skills in which it offers training. On the other hand, to the relief of many, it is certainly less Java-centric than the earlier name.

TEACHERS AT SMKI The backgrounds, skills, and personalities of the teachers at SMKI cover an extraordinary range. With more than fifty teachers on the payroll, and others offering occasional instruction, it would be impossible in the scope of this chapter to discuss all even briefly, or in great detail even a few. Rather, I would like to focus on a few of them, offering some glimpse of their lives and the artistic issues that matter most to them. My choice should not be construed as resulting from special evaluation of any of them as better, more important, or even more representative. Circumstances enabled me to speak at length at SMKI with male teachers and only briefly with female teachers, hence the severe gender imbalance in the following several pages. But I should stress here that the teaching staff, numbering fifty-seven as of August 1995, was predominantly female, the women outnumbering the men almost two to one (thirty-six to twenty-one). Even in music, which is almost exclusively the domain of men within the traditions of South Sulawesi, the balance was even, if we include the three teachers pursuing training in Yogyakarta (Syamsul Qamar, Yohanis Ali Palimbong, and Sangkala), at six men and six women. Syamsul Qamar: Music Teacher, Composer-Arranger, and Researcher Syamsul Qamar was born and raised on the island of Selayar, an overnight boatride south of Bira, at the southeastern tip of the province of South Sulawesi (district of Bulukumba). Selayar is the Makassarese area farthest from the city of Makassar and, perhaps owing to its geographical isolation, the home of a number of unique local variants of Makassarese music (kacaping and gambus playing, batte-batte singing, and pakarena accompaniment, among others) and Makassarese dance (pakarena ballak bulo, characterized by dancers leaning backward at about a sixty-degree angle with the ground, and a similar dance known as pakarena bonto bangu). Qamar was not raised in a family of performing artists, and thus did not begin learning traditional music early in life. His earliest musical activity

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involved Western music (diatonik), but he became fascinated with traditional music as he reached his teen years. After completing high school, he was accepted at Ujung Pandang's best-known Islamic university, Institut Agama Islam Negeri (National Institute of Islamic Religion), but realizing that his interests in performing arts outweighed his academic interest in Islam, he dropped out in 1974 and enrolled in the first class at KONRI. After completing the four-year program at KONRI (by that time known as SMKI), he was immediately hired to teach Makassarese music, although not as a full-time civil servant. He left after several years to teach arts at a junior high school in Selayar, again only for a few years. In the early 1980s he enrolled at IKIP Ujung Pandang and earned a degree in administration. As Qamar searched for ways to involve himself more centrally in the artistic world not just of Selayar but also of South Sulawesi, he managed to secure funding in 1986 from the provincial government to attend Bagong Kussudiardjo's performing arts course at the Padepokan Seni in Yogyakarta. There he was exposed to a rich variety of music and dance from around the archipelago. He taught others the basics for playing kecapi and ganrang, and in turn was introduced to Javanese, Balinese, and Sundanese gamelan music, various regional singing styles, and some instrumental music from North and West Sumatra. The emphasis, he said, was on learning new approaches to creativity, rather than mastering other regional performance styles, although it was widely assumed that the exposure to those styles was also intended to provide materials for future creative work. After returning from Yogyakarta, Qamar was hired as permanent staff at SMKI and has offered instruction there in praktek karawitan (Ind.; indigenous music practice), later praktek musik daerah (Ind.; regional music practice), specializing in Makassarese music and dance accompaniment. He also composed using local instruments. His most outstanding musical work of the late 1980s was the accompaniment for an extended dance-drama, "Tari Badong," named after a ritual Torajan dance, but in this case relating a Torajan story. The instrumentation included twenty pieces of bamboo (struck with beaters), one Torajan gandang, one gong, and one Torajan suling lappe (long bamboo flute). The emphasis in the piece was on bamboo percussion, but it also involved episodes of vocal music, sounding similar to the polyphonic funeral singing (Tor. ma 'badong) which gave the work its title. Completed and performed in January 1993 was a work entitled "Pa'dekko" (Mks.; a ritual dance practiced primarily in Gowa), which involved kite noisemakers (dangong)9 and a mix of other instruments: five ganrang Mangkasarak, one Torajan gandang, and one puik-puik. He felt no incentive to incorporate other instruments or stylistic features from regions outside South Sulawesi, but acknowledged that the inspiration for the unusual combinations was at least partially attributable to his experience at Bagong's Padepokan Seni in Java. In 1996, Qamar was in charge of arranging music for a tari massal (Ind.; mass dance), assisted by Darius, with hundreds of students, from SMKI and


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Students and faculty from SMKI accompanying mass dance at Arafura Youth Games, Mattoangin stadium, Ujung Pandang, August 1996. Syamsul Qamar on ganrang

other high schools, who were to perform at the opening of the Arafura Youth Games10 at Ujung Pandang's Mattoangin stadium. He had only two weeks in which to compose the music and train the students and was not pleased with the results. Like other works of his, it combined Torajan and Makassarese drumming as its basis, emphasizing the characteristic Torajan rhythm (D..DD.D.D..DD.D., etc.) for lengthy sections, alternating with Makassarese tumbuk rua (see chapter 7, figure 7.5), and using two Torajan gandang, four Makassarese ganrang pakarena, four kattok-kattok, one gong, one suling alternating with puik-puik (same player), one kannong-kannong, and two sets of lae-lae. The dance movements combined Torajan and Bugis elements. Qamar told me he enjoyed creating musical pieces and dance accompaniment under less pressured circumstances, but he found little artistic reward in arranging tari massal, whose purpose is to impress by means of large numbers. He gained greater satisfaction from his research in Selayar and other parts of South Sulawesi. He was intrigued by local musics, not the more famous ones of Java, Bali, or other Indonesian islands. It is not surprising, therefore, that he viewed his participation in the three-year training program at the Center for Development and Training of Arts Teachers (P3GK) in Yogyakarta with some cynicism. Backed by government funding, released from teaching for three years, and certain of a promotion and salary increase, arts teachers are unlikely to turn down the opportunity to participate in the P3GK study program. Qamar took the opportunity when it presented itself, as did other teachers from SMKI. He stopped short of dismissing the whole program as a waste of time and money; for some teachers in some arts fields, he thought it had much to offer. But he

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confessed that the emphasis for those in his category, musik nusantara/karawitan (Ind./Jvn.; music of the archipelago/indigenous music), on teaching techniques and on learning the basics of other regional musics offered little of use to him as a teacher of regional musics of South Sulawesi. The regional music program at P3GK was directed by a Javanese trained in gamelan performance, Pak Suyanto, whom I interviewed in 1996, and another gamelan musician, Pak Katwharso; both have degrees from the Indonesian Arts Insitute (ISI) in Yogyakarta, with majors in karawitan. Their musical interests clearly remained Javanese, along with many of the other participating student-teachers, few of whom showed much interest in seriously studying the musical practices from South Sulawesi that Qamar attempted to share with them. In addition to musik nusantara/karawitan, P3GK had four other programs in performing arts: tari (Ind.; dance), musik diatonis (Ind.; diatonic music), teater modern (Ind.; modern theater), and teater tradisional (Ind.; traditional theater). Much of the curriculum was the same for all programs, including courses in education, administration, psychology, sociology, Indonesian language, English, religion, and (until 1998) pancasila (Indonesian state ideology). The participants in the musik nusantara program had one two-credit course in Western music but otherwise devoted much of their study time to Kreativitas Seni Musik Daerah (Ind.; Creativity in Regional Musical Art), from two to four credits each semester, and Ketrampilan Seni Musik Daerah (Ind.; Practical Skills in Regional Musical Arts), from three to four credits each semester. In these courses he and other students struggled to learn how to perform and even how to compose in various regional traditions, learning from participants from the different regions. Suyanto and Katwharso, however, seemed to Qamar to be reluctant to encourage instructional methods and notation other than the Javanese ones they were accustomed to using. For example, the kecapi and ganrang rhythms that did not fit the rigidly binary rhythmic model (even, duple meter) were incorrectly notated and ultimately discouraged. The drum notation that he had developed some years earlier, employing letters of the Bugis-Makassarese alphabet in script, was deemed too challenging for use in such cross-cultural teaching and thus rejected. And more subtle matters of aesthetics, Qamar complained, were in this context difficult to communicate across regional boundaries and were consequently largely ignored. Experience at P3GK, in the Javanese heartland, had brought him prestige, an additional credential, and job security, but it also emphasized to Qamar how marginalized South Sulawesi's arts remain in contemporary Indonesia. Sirajuddin Daeng Bantang: Dance Teacher, Musician, and Sanggar Director Sirajuddin was born in 1946 in the village of Taing, subdistrict Somba Opu (not the island), district of Gowa, the Makassarese heartland. His parents were not performing artists, but he started learning local singing and instrumental playing early on: ganrang, suling, kacaping, and for sinrilik, kesok-kesok. In the late


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1960s and early 1970s, he spent several years in Yogyakarta and learned to play some of the simpler Javanese gamelan instruments. Though he did not study Javanese rebab (two-stringed spike-fiddle), he became enamored of its sound and has consistently used a Javanese rebab rather than Makassarese-made kesokkesok to accompany himself when performing sinrilik, claiming simply that the rebab tone is better and not concerning himself with maintaining an image of local authenticity. Sirajuddin is more basically a dancer, he told me, than a musician. And in Yogyakarta he not only studied Javanese dance but also sought inspiration and ideas for dance choreography from well-known Javanese dancers affiliated with the Indonesian Academy of Dance (ASTI). It was in Java that he met his wife, Rukanti, also a dancer. He has certainly been open to influences from outside of South Sulawesi, including Java, and has taught about various dance styles in the academic courses he offers at SMKI. During his stay at the international exposition in Vancouver, Canada, in 1986, he combined Makassarese and Balinese dance and music. Several years later he proposed to Libel Record, South Sulawesi's most active recording company (see chapter 9), to produce a cassette of music combining traditional instruments from South Sulawesi with pop music instruments, but Libel refused on the basis of poor sales projections. From an aesthetic standpoint, then, Sirajuddin has supported the idea of creative change, of cultural mix, and of encouraging at SMKI the notion of "developing" the arts, rather than merely perserving them. Yet in his capacity as director of one of South Sulawesi's best-known and most active sanggar, Sirajuddin also knows the value of "tradition" and resistance to creative experimentation under the rubric of "art." This is not to say that his sanggar members have not presented new and even daring works, but the bulk of their professional activity can be summarized under two categories. The first is performance for weddings, circumcisions, and other rituals. His group has also been frequently hired to provide dances for entertainment at receptions— somewhat different from the ritual use of pakarena described in chapter 7. In these cases, his sanggar, like most others, offers a conservative sampler of "ethnic" dances and music, comparable to dances arranged and choreographed by Bu Nani and her followers. The second category is tari massal—"mass dances" performed at countless official functions, from welcoming dignitaries at the airport to the opening of a new office. In the month of July 1994 alone, he provided tari massal for three major events, he told me proudly, with hundreds of dancers and as many as fifty musicians (his sanggar, augmented by others). The emphasis in these performances is, of course, on large configurations and loud music, rather than the subtle dance movements and complex musical virtuosity characteristic of the smaller, traditional performing forces. It would seem to offer little artistic satisfaction to those who must choreograph, rehearse, and produce them. Yet the very fact of being invited to provide a tari massal is a sign of recognition from the powerful officials who sponsor them and hence an indication of one's stature not only as an artist but as a ranking member of Indonesia's official cultural project.

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Calling Back the Spirit SMKI AND "TRADITIONAL" (VILLAGE) ARTS

Most teachers at SMKI expressed unbridled enthusiasm for what they categorized as "traditional" arts. It seems, however, that SMKI has been unable to teach or to "preserve" these arts, seen by practically everyone to be fading in popularity, even though those who still carry the skills are not only widely known but, in most cases, would be honored and delighted to teach at SMKI. I have outlined what the headmaster Rahim had to say about too much emphasis on traditional music instruction at SMKI, based on the school's vocational training mission. Would it detract from the balanced approach, with diatonic pop and local traditions receiving more or less even weight in the curriculum, to require intensive study of the complex techniques involved in the kind of pakarena music or kacaping and singing still practiced and enjoyed by villagers? Is it incongruous with the goals of the school? Is it incongruous with the curriculum structure, teaching methods, and the very ethos of the school? It seems the answer in all cases is yes. Formal education at institutions such as SMKI is most fundamentally concerned with molding young people into being good Indonesian citizens (cf. Parker 1992). At a high school for performing arts, of course, one has to be taught performing arts. But to learn kacaping playing and singing that had any hopes of satisfying contemporary audiences would require not only the memorization of risque lyrics but also ample instruction and rehearsal in spontaneous singing in alternation. Within the government-sanctioned view of the arts as attractive and sanitized, rather than seductive or powerful, this kind of musicand-risque-song may still be tolerated, but is not appropriate for cultivation and instruction at a government-sponsored school. And even if it were, teaching music that has hitherto existed almost entirely in oral tradition presents enormous challenges within the context of a formal school. More basically, the very unpredictability of this kind of music, where any topic may suddenly be taken up, goes against the pressures for fixity and standardization that underly much official discourse on arts education. Through the late 1990s, basic drumming patterns (lerasssang for the ganrang pattannang) were taught in several classes, usually with the aid of notation. Whether or not the students actually needed to read the notation for these patterns is another question; for those with even modest aural ability, direct imitation of an example played by the teacher would suffice. It seemed to those teachers who used notation that it held the promise of representing in learnable symbols the complex drumming of the lead drum (ganrang palari), thereby facilitating the study of complex Makassarese drumming. A few of the students at SMKI in the mid- and late 1990s could play ganrang palari with some variation. Yet they had not learned their palari variations at SMKI. Instead they either already knew how to play or learned from skilled masters outside SMKI. The problems of teaching the aural arts of ganrang playing, or kacaping and singing, are considerable, and in the context of SMKI, formidable. But it certainly could be attempted at SMKI with additional personnel and a much


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more flexible approach to teaching. A program emphasizing these or other comparable musical genres would be only for a select few whose talents and prior experience qualified them for efficient and productive learning. SMKI would have to hire the very best performers, pay them honoraria (thus obviating the requirement that teachers be civil servants with certain levels of formal education), and give them ample time to work closely with small groups or individual students. The senior thesis, which during most of the 1990s involved participant observation in one of only a handful of urban-based sanggar, could be written about experience with a village troupe, even though that troupe may have had very few performances during the field research time. Were the administration at SMKI seriously committed to the "preservation" mission as stated at the founding of its predecessor KONRI, it could, with some radical but legal steps, support substantive efforts at passing on what so many South Sulawesians still recognize as the best of their indigenous arts. But even in the post-Suharto era of reformasi (Ind.; reform, reformation), in which radical change has suddenly become openly championed on numerous fronts, it seems extremely unlikely that SMKI will attempt to teach the complex village arts as they still exist. There was no plan to move in that direction when I interviewed the new headmaster, Drs. Anwar Nur, in August 1999. The reasons have already appeared here and there in the discussion above. Indonesian cultural policy has stressed the cultivation and development of secular arts, suitable for entertainment and the commercial marketplace. The headmaster of the school wanted to prepare students for college or for performance careers as entertainers, not as ritual specialists. We must sympathize with the focus on tangible benefit for students, but I would ask how much better at least some students would be served if, in addition to pop singing and electric guitar, they were obliged to master a fifty-minute pakarena sequence, or to sing and play kacaping for several hours in the style of village sisila-sila. This would indeed constitute an institutionalization of local arts — arts admired by many but bearing the labels tradisional (implying old-fashioned, not modern), rakyat (Ind.; folk) and kampungan or desa (Ind.; village, rural). But what has occured instead is the institutionalization of secularized, urban arts — folkloric rather than folk, aesthetic rather than ritually efficacious. IKIP: BETWEEN PERFORMANCE TRAINING AND TEACHER TRAINING Among South Sulawesi's colleges and universities, including Universitas Hasanuddin, the most prestigious university in all of eastern Indonesia, none are devoted to the performing arts. Hasanuddin does not even have an arts faculty or department. Those wishing to pursue formal study in the performing arts either have had to do so elsewhere, primarily in Java, or at Ujung Pandang's teachers' college, IKIP. Within the Faculty for Education in Languages and Arts (Fakultas Pendidikan Bahasa dan Seni) at IKIP Ujung Pandang, students could specialize in performing arts: drama, dance, and "music." Although IKIP Ujung

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Pandang has had several Western music specialists on the faculty since the 1980s, it opened a major in music only in 1994, as several recent graduates from the Indonesian Arts Institute (ISI, Yogyakarta) joined the faculty: Sukasman and Solihin. As at other IKIP campuses throughout the country, students in performance chose one concentration as their major (dance, drama, or music). But in response to a decision made in 1994 at the national level, all students initiating studies in performance as of mid-1995 at IKIP campuses had only one possible major: Sendratasik (short for Seni, drama, tan, musik, as it combined studies in the arts of drama, dance, and music). The rationale for combining these was to produce more versatile teachers. The official purpose of studies in performance at IKIP, I was told by several of its upper level administrators, was not to produce performers, but to produce teachers with skills in the teaching of performance (Zainuddin Taha, personal communication, 3 August 1994; Hapsa J. Nur, personal communication, 31 July 1995). But in actuality, many of the students at IKIP have been primarily interested in performing and have done so both while they are students and after they graduate, fully aware that only the lucky few will find teaching jobs.11 The IKIP faculty in music was small. Three teachers offered music courses, a fourth was in charge of instruments and equipment. At IKIP since the 1980s, Bagus Susetyo holds a degree in Western music from IKIP Yogyakarta, where he studied keyboard and violin. He is Javanese, but he was born in West Sumatra and has lived outside Java for several decades, first in Kendari (Southeast Sulawesi) and then in Ujung Pandang. While growing up he learned some elementary Javanese gamelan music, but was, in his words, more drawn to "diatonic music." In the mid-1990s he taught Western music skills at IKIP: keyboard, singing, and notation, as well as a course in kroncong, perhaps Indonesia's most durable Western-influenced music. For many years, his only musical colleague was Jalil Saleh, a Bugis artist from Soppeng district who assisted Susetyo and took care of the instruments. Saleh and Susetyo were joined in 1993 by two music teachers, both Makassarese, both graduates of SMKI Ujung Pandang, but with contrasting musical backgrounds. Sukasman, born and raised in Bantaeng district, is primarily a Western musician, but is keenly interested in vocal music of all kinds and enthusiastic about research on singing among other ethnic groups. Solihin, born and raised in Gowa, has long specialized in Makassarese ganrang and related Makassarese instruments. Both Sukasman and Solihin majored in Etnomusikologi at ISI, Yogyakarta, under Wayan Senen, a Balinese musician resident in Yogyakarta since the 1970s. At IKIP they both shared in the teaching of the course Musik Nusantara (Ind.; Music of the Archipelago), which may and often has included music of South Sulawesi, but could also include music from any other region. And because they had studied Javanese gamelan at ISI, they have occasionally offered gamelan instruction as part of this class. Yet Sukasman also taught Western vocal music and theory. Thus, the balance in course offerings as of the late 1990s was not yet even, with two of the three full-time music teachers concentrating on Western and Western-derived music.


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The dance offerings at IKIP have been stronger than those in music, with a dance major and specific courses in local dance well instituted since the 1980s. Through the 1990s, dance clearly continued to be strongly stigmatized as an activity for males, in part because of the predominance of female dances in the Bu Nani era, in part because of the association of male dancers with the transvestite priestly tradition (bissu). Prior to the initiation of the combined Sendratasik major, dance had drawn no male students since 1991.12 Halilintar Lathief, the enigmatic champion of alternative, ritually inspired dances and events, has been the only male teacher of dance at IKIP. His colleagues include Niniek Sumiani (his wife), Padalia, Jamilah, Nurlinah Syahrir, and Heryati Yatim. All of these teachers completed degrees at ISI Yogyakarta in Dance Composition, with the exception of Sumiani, whose degree was in Dance Literature, with a specialty in classical Javanese dance. Though born, trained, and college-educated in Yogyakarta, Sumiani has delved deeply into the dance traditions of South Sulawesi and Bali. At IKIP, she has offered on a regular basis general courses on movement, as well as Central Javanese and Balinese dance. In addition, she codirected the sanggar Latar Nusa with her husband, and remained active as a choreographer of dances ranging from classical Javanese works to dances drawing heavily on South Sulawesi's traditions. Her fusion of Javanese dance techniques with those of South Sulawesi has met with mixed reactions in Ujung Pandang, as many dance enthusiasts have found her pakarena, for example, interesting and even exquisite, but somewhat strange owing to the fully flexed arms and fingers, body stance, and certain leg movements. Padalia has specialized in the dances of Mandar and Toraja. Her parents, both Mandar, moved to Makassar before she was born. Her first dance training, however, was in Mandar dances, but she learned other dances of South Sulawesi when she enrolled at KONRI. Immediately after graduating (from SMKI) in 1979, she moved to Yogyakarta, where she studied Javanese, Balinese, and Sundanese dance styles. She told me the hand positions and other physical aspects were not difficult for her, despite their contrast with the dances she had learned in South Sulawesi. It was the "feeling" (Ind. rasa) of these dances that was most challenging, and most different from any of the dances of South Sulawesi. She was emphatic that the basis of her creative work in dance has been South Sulawesian, despite years of study and residence in Java. She worked from a South Sulawesi basis, but explored a wider range of expressive possibilities in the use of space, without requiring the dancing bodies to become now Javanese, now Sundanese, now Mandarese. For both her required final recitals in Yogyakarta she chose South Sulawesi themes and basic movement vocabulary, which were danced entirely by women, most of whom were Javanese and hardly any of whom were from South Sulawesi. The other dance teachers came from Makassarese or Bugis backgrounds, but taught a variety of dances. Jamilah, though Bugis, taught dances of Sumatra, particularly Minangkabau (West Sumatra), her area of concentration at ISI. Yet she also taught Bugis dance, and Heryati, a Makassarese, taught

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Makassarese dance. Dance faculty shared in teaching the regular course devoted to the dances of Bu Nani Sapada. By decree from Depdikbud most government-funded IKIP campuses were upgraded to university status, a transformation that was formalized in Ujung Pandang with a ceremony on 17 August 1999, changing the name of the institution to Universitas Negeri Makassar (Ind.; State University of Makassar). One of the contingent changes expected by performing arts teachers is the abolition of the combined Sendratasik degree and the reinstitution of separate majors in music, dance, and drama. Nevertheless, the kinds of performing arts courses are not likely to change, and the place of local music is likely to remain extremely limited. SANGGARS IN SOUTH SULAWESI AND BEYOND Curricula at both SMKI and IKIP have aimed at producing a graduate with broad knowledge and a range of performance skills, but neither has required the development of these skills to the level readily observable among professional performers. In fact, for those students seeking professional skills in traditional music, and possibly dance, neither SMKI nor IKIP have been equipped to offer what they need. They must pursue such study privately, outside the institution. Learning directly from a top musician or dancer is one means, probably the best, for improving one's skills and deepening one's local cultural knowledge, but matters personal and financial may make this difficult or impossible for some. Another means, one quite evident at least in greater Ujung Pandang in the 1990s, has been to join a sanggar dance and music organization. At all the main sanggar, the performing forces have consisted of a mix of students and more experienced performers. Often they have accepted new members wishing to learn local dances, or to play and sing local music, requiring an initial audition and the payment of a small monthly fee that permits them to take part in group instruction provided by the sanggar leader or another longterm member. After the new member has learned some of the repertory of the sanggar, he or she joins in public performances and receives compensation for performing. As the member masters a larger part of the repertory and no longer needs to attend regular instruction, the participation can become somewhat more lucrative, although no one, as far as I could determine, has been able to make even a meager living from performing with a sanggar. Sanggar have clearly served as important institutions for transmission of dance and music, and they have mostly focused on received tradition of South Sulawesi and on creative work with a strong and immediately recognizable basis in that tradition. Halilintar's and Sumiani's Latar Nusa has been the most notable exception, though most of its repertory and even some of its most experimental works have a strong basis in South Sulawesi's traditions. The wellknown sanggar, such as YAMA, have avoided popular, Western-derived music, for they have been primarily geared toward dance presentations of local origins. Thus, guitar, keyboard, and other Western instruments other than


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Members of Yayasan Anging Mammiri' (YAMA) perform new dance based on Torajan and Mamasa traditions

violin have not been used. Some sanggar have performed local music known as orkes turiolo, involving violin, rebana (Ind.; frame drum), gong, and often additional instruments. But they have not performed kroncong or any form of pop music. I witnessed the rise and near demise of an alternative sanggar, Mahligai (Ind.; palace), which prided itself in a less commercial orientation than others. This sanggar was organized not by a leading performer, but by Mukhlis, the well-known literature professor who moved to Jakarta in 1997. The membership in most sanggar has been rather flexible, but in Mahligai it became unmanagably so. In 1994, when I first witnessed one of their rehearsals, I was stunned by the high quality of musicianship and the subtlety and grace of the dancers. The group rehearsed each week at the large audience hall (Mks./Bgs. baruga) on the grounds of Taman Miniatuur Sulawesi, Somba Opu island. Among the musicians was the remarkable drummer, all-round Makassarese musician, and park security guard (satpani) Serang Dakko. Others included an excellent young drummer (Sirajuddin; not Sirajuddin Daeng Bantang of SMKI), a puik-puik player (Sale Rani, Serang's brother), a suling player and singer (Mappuji), a violinist and singer (Bunduk), and other percussionists (including Solihin), playing lae-lae, rebana, kattok-kattok, gong, and tenong-

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tenong (three-keyed xylophone). This was a spectacular line-up, a large ensemble, all the musicians in firm command of the music they were making. The dancers, numbering fourteen and all female, were graceful and obviously advanced. The repertory ranged from Bu Nani creations to a dance described by Mukhlis as a pakarena klasik (Ind.; classical pakarena), choreographed by SMKI teacher Manda. The group was relatively new and working to create a distinctive identity among the many competing sanggar. They hoped to be invited to various national festivals and contests representing South Sulawesi with a more lofty, classical repertory than most other sanggar could provide. But forces conspired against Mahligai until, by 1998, there were just a few musicians and dancers meeting, with no commitments for engagements. Only a few months after I had noted "fantastic group" in my field notes, summarizing my reactions to the first rehearsal I attended, several of the musicians left to assist a group in Jakarta and, finding the performance opportunities more frequent and more lucrative there, did not return. In 1995 many of the best dancers took extended trips to Jakarta and elsewhere in Java to perform with other groups. When given Mukhlis's ultimatum either to remain committed members of Mahligai, forgoing other engagements that compromised the rehearsal schedule or to lose their membership, most chose the latter. Given the severe lack of opportunity for performance in South Sulawesi in the 1990s, their choice was not surprising. By the time of my return in July 1996, the group was much smaller, especially the ranks of the dancers. The talented older musicians continued to provide excellent music. Serang was training a new drummer, Issang, an SMKI graduate from Selayar. After only two or three performances during an entire year, the group was losing members and barely able to sustain itself. Even stalwarts such as Mappuji came only occasionally. At one rehearsal only three dancers came; at another, no musicians came other than Serang, forcing cancellation. It was remarkable how a group that had been so talented and sizable in 1994 had all but deteriorated in just two years. Serang told me in August 1999 that a small group continued to practice at the baruga every Sunday morning, but the membership was not stable and the chances for public appearances very small—this for a group whose musicians rank among the very top in all of South Sulawesi. South Sulawesi in Jakarta One of the challenges to the sanggar in South Sulawesi has been the draw of Jakarta, where some of South Sulawesi's best performers have migrated in search of greater economic opportunity. Wiwiek Sipala, a member of the dance faculty at the Jakarta Arts Institute (Institut Kesenian Jakarta, IKJ), moved from South Sulawesi to Jakarta in 1971 and has been active as a choreographer of contemporary dances, often based on the movement vocabulary of South Sulawesi's dances, particularly Makassarese. (She was born in Kendari, Southeast Sulawesi, and moved frequently during her childhood, spending the most time in the district of Wajo, South Sulawesi.) At IKJ she has taught classes in dance

Schools, Sanggars,, and the Government

191

Serang Dakko (center), Issang (left), and members of Sanggar Mahligai, rehearsing at the main hall (baruga), Taman Miniatuur Sulawesi, Somba Opu, August 1996

of South Sulawesi and is widely known among artists in Jakarta as a representative of this region. When I interviewed her in 1996, she did not have a sanggar herself, but has assisted some of the Jakarta-based sanggar devoted to South Sulawesi's performing arts. I spoke with representatives of several of these, as well as with the head of the Jakarta South Sulawesi Arts Council (Lembaga Kesenian Sulawesi Selatan), Muin Akhmat, and the manager of the South Sulawesi pavilion at Jakarta's "Beautiful Indonesia" in Miniature Park (Taman Mini "Indonesia Indah"), Muh. Nashir Simbong. They mentioned a total of eleven South Sulawesi sanggar in Jakarta. While I do not have even a rough estimate of the number of Jakarta residents of South Sulawesian backgrounds, all agreed that it was substantial, probably over 100,000. They have not settled in one area primarily, but are spread throughout Jakarta's vast sprawl. Nevertheless, many retain a strong sense of identity with their ethnic heritage (Bugis, Makassarese, Torajan, etc.) and with South Sulawesi, according to Simbong and Muin. On a visit to the South Sulawesi pavilion at Taman Mini, I spoke with members of a family who were eating a picnic lunch on the grounds and said they came there once a month or so "because our sense of regional identity is still very strong" (Ind. karena rasa kedaerahan kami masih kuat, Machfud, 14 July 1996). Though they had left South Sulawesi in the mid-1980s and the youngest two children had been born in Jakarta, they maintained Bugis language in the household and tried to instill a sense of regional identity in all their children. On the other hand, Hj. Syarifah Nur Daeng Ngasseng, head of Jakarta's most active South Sulawesi sanggar, Sanggar Tamalate,13 complained that "most people from South Sulawesi here in Jakarta, especially the younger generation, do not care about their traditional culture except when it comes time for

192


weddings, which many want to be full traditional ceremonies, Bugis or Makassarese, or whatever" (personal communication, 9 August 1998). She said only a few came to study dance or music at her sanggar, even though some level of instruction was offered free of charge. Most Jakarta residents of South Sulawesian origin, of course, do not participate in sanggar or study South Sulawesian dance at IKJ. Membership has not been limited in any of these sanggar to individuals with South Sulawesi ancestry. Often, I was told, young people of other ethnic backgrounds were drawn to join a sanggar where they could study South Sulawesian dance or music because they were attracted by its graceful movements or its exciting musical sounds. Sanggar Tamalate members in 1998 included dancers of Javanese, Sundanese, Minang, and Betawi (Jakarta) ethnicities. Non-South Sulawesians could learn some of the dances rather easily, one sanggar director said, and gain proficiency on the kind of suling and kecapi playing that accompanies diatonic songs and the short dances in the style of Bu Nani Sapada. Yet it was acknowledged that the only musicians in Jakarta who played ganrang and puik-puik well were from South Sulawesi and had been trained there. For weddings, other family ceremonies, and a range of cultural events in Jakarta, performers from these sanggar are often hired to perform. Working as a professional performer was much more lucrative in Jakarta than in South Sulawesi. The competition among sanggar was less keen, the opportunities for performance much greater, and the compensation for an evening's performance much more generous in Jakarta. On 10 August 1998, 1 attended a spectacular wedding reception at the "All Purpose Building" (Gedung Serbaguna) behind Senayan Stadium. Several thousand family members and guests attended, celebrating the marriage of a groom of South Sulawesian heritage and a bride from Jakarta. Sanggar Tamalate had been hired to provide processional music, dance, and entertainment music. A threesome (two ganrang, one puik-puik) accompanied the wedding entourage as they made their formal entrance. Four female dancers performed several short dances, including Tari Paduppa and Tari Pakurruk Sumangek, in front of the wedding couple and their families, who sat enthroned in gaudy splendor on elaborate seats situated on a raised area. To their left sat a group of five musicians, playing guitar, kecapi, ganrang, and suling, accompanying the dances and, later, a series of "regional songs" (lagu daerah), most of which were Makassarese favorites. Many attendees would have recognized the songs and some of the dances as Makassarese, but few, I suspect, would have thought it more appropriate to have a one-hour pakarena of the village variety described in the previous chapter, nor the periodic sounding of tunrung pakballe sumangak. This clearly had a strong regional (daerah) feel; the costumes and instruments were visibly South Sulawesian, the language of the songs Makassarese or Bugis, and the dance movements Makassarese or South Sulawesian, even thought the choreography was relatively new. To many Jakartans, like other Indonesians, a strong projection of regionalness (Ind. kedaerahan) is interpreted as traditional in most cases,14 obviating the need for close adherence to any prescription for authenticity in actual choice of repertory or sequence of presenta-


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tion. The wedding reception in Jakarta was unambiguously South Sulawesian, if not Makassarese, and the dances and music were entertaining, without requiring any particular familiarity with Makassarese ritual practice. What this and other sanggars do in Jakarta is to maintain a South Sulawesian presence in the dizzying cultural discourse that characterizes this most cosmopolitan, multicultural Indonesian city. Other cities, such as Yogyakarta and Bandung, where a substantial number of South Sulawesians attend college, also have formally organized clubs devoted to cultural activities such as music and dance. These clubs contribute to both a sustained presence and modification of South Sulawesi's arts, involving performers of various ethnic backgrounds and attempting to provide performances that cater to a wider set of needs than is encountered in South Sulawesi itself.

CONCLUSION: INSTITUTIONS AND WHAT THEY INSTITUTIONALIZE In Ujung Pandang, in nearby towns and rural areas, and in far-away Jakarta, a range of formal institutions have engaged with the performing arts of South Sulawesi, shaping their transmission and packaging them for public presentation. The activities of these institutions have carried tremendous weight, implicitly branding what they produce as legitimate representations of South Sulawesian music and dance in the context of contemporary Indonesia. Not all institutions carry the same weight, of course. Those with direct connections to the Indonesian government—the schools (SMKI and IKIP), Taman Budaya, as well as sanggar favored by the local government—have presented a kind of official South Sulawesian culture, retaining some differences between local heritage along ethnic lines while also encouraging blending. None of these institutions has championed local practice as it is found among villagers. Nearly all intend to present a polished, stageable South Sulawesi, grounded in long-extant local forms but aimed at aesthetic enjoyment and commercial viability. Challenges to an Indonesian status quo are most evident in theatrical productions, whose content may be critical, even confrontational.l5 Dance and music supported by these institutions, however, has been largely oriented toward light entertainment and favorable reception in various context, ranging from local events to national festivals and contests. The issue of openness to artistic forms and representative teachers from outside South Sulawesi, particularly Java, needs to be stressed here. Because all citizens are considered by law to be "Indonesians" first, the formal institutions that are government-funded, such as SMKI and IKIP, have had no barrier to staffing from Java and elsewhere outside of South Sulawesi. While the clear majority of the music and dance staff at both schools have been from South Sulawesi, some teachers hail from Java, others from North Sulawesi, Southeast Sulawesi, and Flores. Some of them routinely offer instruction in music or dance from outside the area. Others teach local music and dance, despite their origins elsewhere.

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Complicating the picture further are the artists born and raised in South Sulawesi, but who have studied for extended periods in Java. These include the entire teaching staff in music and dance at IKIP, nearly all of whom have degrees from ISI in Yogyakarta, and a substantial number of the teachers at SMKI, who have undergone training at P3GK. Some have also studied at Bagong Kussidiardjo's Padepokan Seni in Yogyakarta, along with others who do not teach at these schools but have prominent roles in local sanggar, such as Basri Sila, the music director for the sanggar Batara Gowa. And at Taman Budaya and other Depdikbud offices in Makassar, one finds a significant minority of Javanese, some of whom have become heavily involved with local performance traditions. Thus, in the midst of local cultural discourse appearing to champion the local and to be struggling to find a legitimate place for South Sulawesi's arts in the modern world, it is evident that forces are pushing in other directions as well. Institutionalized artistic activity seems fraught with ambiguity. With headmasters who have not been performing artists, and occasionally not even from South Sulawesi, SMKI has undergone a protracted period of ambiguity in its goals. From its founding as KKS it was to serve local tradition by providing formalized instruction in a school setting. Yet the repertory taught was primarily the modified, secularized dance and music pioneered by Bu Nani Sapada. From its official recognition and national government funding in the 1970s to the late 1990s, it has wrestled with the orientation toward local genres and those from outside, along with questions concerning the vocational goals of its students—as bearers of tradition, creative artists, professional entertainers, or future teachers and scholars. Similar challenges and ambiguities have faced IKIP as well, where courses have been offered in Western music and forms of dance from outside South Sulawesi and where students have often been more interested in performance than in preparing to be schoolteachers. If anything is clear, it is the trend away from what are generally identified as "village" arts and ritual practice. The local practice that has been institutionalized through the schools, the sanggar, and government sponsorship is almost entirely of recent invention, in the style and spirit of Bu Nani Sapada. For festivals, from small affairs at the district level to the province-wide Culture Week festival, government bureaucrats have often required performers to patch together items that conform not to local practice but to the sometimes whimsical demands of a festival organizer. Village musicians often complained to me about being forced into artistic service for government-sponsored events, for which they had to produce something they felt to be awkward (Ind. kaku), contrived (Ind. buat-buatari), and aesthetically unsatisfying, and receiving little compensation for their efforts. Research into a wide variety of local genres notwithstanding, the schools and sanggar discussed in this chapter privilege a remarkably small group of standard dances and musical pieces that have come to represent South Sulawesi in recent decades. What is added, for the complex reasons outlined above, are not additional village-based traditions, but examples of other forms of music and dance, from elsewhere in Indonesia and (in the case of music) often based on the structures of Western diatonic scales, har-

Schools, Sanggars, and ihe Government

195

monies, and timbres. Is this conglomeration a kind of de facto "South Sulawesian" arts complex? Is it a local manifestation of an "Indonesian" arts complex? Most of the students, teachers, and performers I spoke with were vehement about the distinctiveness of local traditions, whether kept separate by ethnic group or merged into a nascent "South Sulawesi" tradition. Yet so much of what has actually been taught at SMKI and IKIP would seem to point toward an unacknowledged plurality of Western, Indonesian, Javanese, Sulawesian, South Sulawesian, as well as Bugis, Makassarese, Torajan, and Mandar. It is this complex, postmodern reality in which people in South Sulawesi and Jakarta, and elsewhere, find themselves and to which these ambiguous, seemingly contradictory responses may be inevitable. At the same time, I have offered a critical assessment of activities at the two schools, as it seems possible that greater institutional support could be provided for the remarkable accomplishments of local musicians and dancers such as those described in the two previous chapters. With change in the wind at the turn of the millennium, SMKI and IKIP, newly incarnated as SMKN and UNM, may move in new directions. Several of the sanggar I saw perform in August 1999 (at the governor's mansion on Independence Day, 17 August, and at TVRI Ujung Pandang on the following evening), though still necessarily short and entertaining, demonstrated a growing interest in creative interpretation of rarely seen local genres (e.g., pakarena ballak bulo, from Selayar; pamasari, from Gowa) and new choreographies combining various styles of martial arts (pencak silaf), going beyond the standards. However, ambiguities are almost certain to persist, along with a continued dialectic in which South Sulawesian institutions respond to the expectations of others—Javanese, other Indonesians, and foreign tourists.

9

Voices on the Margins

Mass Media and Local Music in South Sulawesi

Only a few moments after registering at a small hotel in downtown Ujung Pandang in 1993, 1 embarked on a short trip on the most popular local means of public transportation, the petepete minivan (its name imitates the sound of its small engine, cf. "put-put"). My attempts to ask directions were thwarted by a sound system booming out Bugis dangdut, a local variant of a genre popular throughout much of Indonesia. Accenting the rhythms was a pulsating lightshow of tiny colored light bulbs on the dash and dangling over part of the windshield. Throughout my many periods of research in South Sulawesi I heard a wide range of popular music forms in many of the petepete I rode. These included heavy metal and hip-hop, reggae, country, and soft rock in English language, all of these styles in Indonesian versions, as well as dangdut in Indonesian and Bugis and other songs in local languages. Having not kept an accurate written record, I can only estimate, but it seemed that about a quarter of what I heard were songs in local languages, mostly either dangdut or lagu Makassar (Ind.; Makassarese songs). What I experienced periodically on petepete rides finds parallels in many aspects of musical life in contemporary South Sulawesi. In other public places, such as shopping areas, formal gatherings, and some family-sponsored celebrations, it was routine to have some form of popular music blaring loudly. Often 196

Mass Media and Local Music

197

the music was Indonesian (national pop or dangdut), but it was not unusual to hear a local group singing in a local language and, though accompanied by synthesizer or guitars or some combination, singing in a vocal style many identify as local and not Indonesian. On the other hand, foreign popular music was everwhere, heard on many radio stations, seen on most of Indonesia's television stations, and sold on commercial cassette recordings. The presence of foreign music in South Sulawesi dates back many centuries, as Makassar was an international metropolis in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. And the use of mass media to disseminate music there dates back to the introduction of radio and recording in the 1930s. In the late 1990s, the broadcast and recording media were saturating South Sulawesi with popular music offerings, providing the local populace with slickly produced and marketed alternatives to local musical practice, and yet also offering a substantial amount of music that, despite heavy stylistic borrowings from outside, was locally produced and readily perceived as local. In this chapter I wish to explore the interaction between mass media, musical genre, and local identity in South Sulawesi, whose marginal status vis-a-visthe nation's capital and the dominant Javanese has nurtured a mediated performing arts environment quite different from those in or near the national center. I will concentrate on the worlds of broadcast and recording in Makassar. Through attention to genres, individual musicians, musical sound, packaging, labeling, and contexts of presentation, I intend to show how broadcast and recorded media may reify cultural differences, redefine them, blur them, even erase them. It is important to consider the extent to which the mass media in South Sulawesi can actually be said to rest in local hands and in what sense this contributes to the vitality of local music (and dance) and to the empowerment of local people more generally. I do not offer the simple answer that the introduction of means of production into South Sulawesi, in the form of cassette production and radio broadcast, has enabled local music to gain an even footing against the international music industry, or the Jakarta-based national music industry. But neither do I see South Sulawesians as passive consumers whose needs and tastes are formed and sustained by mass commodity culture introduced from outside and over which they have little or no control. Local cassette production and broadcast content clearly contribute to local empowerment as national and global musical styles are made local (cf. Appadurai 1990; Tsing 1994), even though this empowerment is limited and situates itself in a hierarchy beneath the global and the national. Like other Indonesians, South Sulawesians register a sense of cultural chaos (cf. Erlmann 1993), which they often attribute to the extraordinary power of mass-mediated culture, including music, from the West. Yet, as will be shown below, contesting representations of localness in South Sulawesi's media appropriate from the very cultural realms from which they seek to distinguish themselves. They do so, I believe, as a tactic (cf. de Certeau 1984) for survival in a world transfixed with the trappings of modernity, which in music has largely meant Western commercial music.

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Local mass media have truly served as conduits between local, national, and global music, representing and shaping performance and identity in South Sulawesi, and in constructing awareness of South Sulawesian identities elsewhere. I cannot provide here a comprehensive look at South Sulawesi's mass media and the kinds of music they present. These media have a complex and unique local history and are in constant flux. At best, I hope to paint part of the picture, providing historical perspective, ethnographic detail, and musical example.

BROADCASTING Radio The first form of mediation in South Sulawesi was Dutch radio, introduced during the 1930s. Those with whom I spoke remembered two radio stations. One was primarily an informational station, operated by the colonial office of the Post-, Telegraaf- en Telefoondienst (Dutch; Post, Telegraph, and Telephone Service). The other, which emphasized musical entertainment, was the Makassar branch of NIROM (Nederlands Indie Radio Omroep Maatschappij— Dutch; Netherlands Indies Radio Broadcasting Company). Tuned to NIROM, radio listeners heard European and American dance music, concert music, religious songs in Dutch, a few songs in Malay, and "local songs" (Ind. lagu daerah), usually accompanied by Western or Western-derived instruments such as violin, guitar, and winds. Latin American rhythms were especially popular. Indeed, the orientation was so strongly international that the main group of studio musicians was called the "Havana Band"—hardly an expression of local Makassarese or Sulawesian identity. Under the direction of local musician B. Rasyid, it consisted of trumpet, trombone, clarinet, saxophone, guitar, piano, drums, and violin. Recordings were also used for broadcast, likely including a few 78 rpm discs of local performers (see below), but mostly representing American and European popular entertainers. Genres such as local drum ensembles, solo flute, songs in local languages accompanied by kacapi, and epic singing (sinrilik, massurek) were not broadcast. From 1942 to 1945, the occupying Japanese forces suspended most broadcast activities. They used the Post-, Telegraaf- en Telefoondienst transmitter for a Makassar branch of Radio Hosokyoku, which broadcast propaganda and music on two frequencies, one in Indonesian, the other in Japanese, introducing Japanese songs and ideas to the local populace.1 Shortly after Indonesian independence was declared in 1945, Makassar and the rest of Sulawesi opted to accommodate the Dutch through membership in the Negara Indonesia Timor (NIT; Ind.; Nation of East Indonesia) rather than join with Java and other islands in the western part of what had been the Dutch East Indies. During these years the former Radio Hosokyoku facilities were used to broadcast music and information on two frequencies, one in Dutch, the other in Indonesian. Dutch was dropped during the short period of the Republik Indonesia Serikat (Ind.; United Indonesian Republic, 1949-1950).


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From 1950, with Sulawesi now a part of the Republic of Indonesia, the government established a national radio station in Makassar: Radio Republik Indonesia (RRI), which broadcast news, information, and a wide variety of music, mostly performed live by studio musicians. The successor to the "Havana Band" of the colonial era was the "Nusantara Band"—a self-conscious reference to the Indonesian nation. (Nusantara, Indonesian for "archipelago," is frequently used as a word for the nation of Indonesia.) The band widened its repertory under its new director Yip Weng Ge, a local musician of Chinese ancestry. In the late 1950s this band was expanded to an orchestra "Orkes Radio Makassar," adding cellos, violins, violas, and timpani. M. A. Arifin, who worked as a musician and arranger at RRI in the 1950s and as orchestra director from 1964, recalled a large number of Hawaiian music bands, trios, quartets, kroncong groups, losquin groups (at that time, a singer accompanied by one or two guitars, performing music with kroncong-style rhythms and simple harmonies),2 orkes rambang-rambang (a unique South Sulawesi ensemble combining violin, Arabic-derived frame drums, kettle gongs, and other optional instruments—also referred to nowadays as orkes turiolo),3 choral groups, seriosa (bel canto-style singing, art song), sinrilik, and occasionally kecapi and voice. Of these, he said kroncong was unquestionably the most popular, perhaps reflecting a new sense of "Indonesian-ness"—although kroncong has some distinctive regional variants, including language. It is worth noting that, in this region where Islamic religion is so prominent, the genres most closely associated with Islam, such as gambus (singing accompanied by lute, often resembling Arabian 'ud) and qasidah (singing accompanied by tambourines or frame drums), were not regularly broadcast on radio, though they have been more recently.4 Although recording technology was available and in use in Indonesia from the first decade of the twentieth century, it is important to stress that in South Sulawesi (as, indeed, most other regions of Indonesia) nearly all music heard on the radio was broadcast live through the 1950s. This gradually diminished through the 1960s and 1970s, and by the 1980s RRI Ujung Pandang no longer employed a group of regular studio musicians, although individuals on the staff continued to perform live. In the 1990s, even the staff members who performed were almost always recorded by technicians at the studio and the resulting tape played for broadcast, thereby facilitating retakes for correction of mistakes. Within the medium of radio from about 1950, one could find a range of musical activity, from Western classical to Western-based popular, to indigenous traditional music. Yet not all traditional music could be heard on the radio. The drum and oboe music frequently encountered at weddings, circumcisions, and accompanying pakarena dances was simply not broadcast. Of the traditional genres, those with vocal parts, telling a story, or conveying clever innuendos, were preferred—largely for the verbal virtuosity rather than melodic or rhythmic interest. In the 1960s, a strong polemic took hold against foreign popular music, particularly rock and roll. Government pronouncements warned about Western decadence and immorality in the sound of the music, the behavior of the

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performers, and the message of the lyrics. Newspaper and magazine articles echoed these concerns, bemoaning the attraction it had for Indonesia's youth. One might wonder why, then, the national radio station did not offer a greater variety of traditional music. The people I asked, both at the studio and elsewhere, agreed that RRI would quickly lose its audience if it broadcast hour upon hour of suling or kecapi music. In order to attract and maintain listeners, RRI has always had to take people's musical tastes into account, even as it tried to control those tastes by excluding such genres as foreign rock and promoting genres that, while Western influenced, at least could be construed as local or Indonesian. Government media in South Sulawesi have long recognized local genres and performers, but offered very little time for broadcast, particularly in contrast to Java and Bali, where RRI stations have devoted many hours each week to local gamelan music and related genres. In South Sulawesi, much airtime has been devoted to nationally produced music and foreign-produced music. The local music it broadcasts has mostly been one or another variety of Western-influenced popular music, rather than traditional (see tables 9.1 and 9.2). RRI Ujung Pandang had two broadcast "programs" (Ind. programa), each on a different frequency: Programa I for the outlying villages and rural areas (Ind. desa), Programa II for the city and vicinity (Ind. kota). The program for city broadcast contained no regular slot for traditional arts at all (though city dwellers could tune their radios to the village program if they wished). Music and related arts broadcasts at RRI were organized under two main categories: hiburan/musik (Ind.; entertainment/music) and budaya/drama (Ind.; culture/drama). Within each of these were separate subcategories of tradisional and nontradisional, the former described by RRI staff as music or other arts without obvious Western influence and clearly identifiable as indigenous, local, and stylistically "old" (if not "old-fashioned"). Assigning categories to well-established genres is not universally agreed upon, however. Kroncong, with its assortment of Western instruments, has existed in Indonesia for so long that some identify it as traditional. Orkes rambang-rambang, though less Western in sound and usually classified as traditional, is seen by a few as "nontraditional" because of its use of the Western violin. Nearly 50 percent of both the village and the city programming each week was devoted to "entertainment/music" in the 1990s, a broad category that incorporated local, national, and international music, mostly one or another variety of Western- or foreign-influenced music, as well as sports broadcast. Table 9.1 gives the weekly broadcast schedule for Programa I of the shows involving music, sometimes alternating musical selections with talk on various topics, as of 1993. By the end of 1994, the daily Musik Tradisional show had been dropped, leaving only the Saturday evening Kesenian Tradisional slot for traditional arts of any kind. Otherwise, the only show devoted entirely to music in local languages has been Pesona Musik, which by 1998 had been shortened to thirty minutes, but broadcast almost daily. Most of the music featured on Pesona

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Mass Media and Local Music Table 9.1 1993

Radio shows with music on RRI Ujung Pandang Programa I (village),

Day(s) on Air Time on Air

Name of Show (with English Translation)

Daily

06:05-06:30

Daily

08:30-10:30

Daily Daily except Sat M/W/Th

23:15-23:45

Dinamika Pagi ("Morning Dynamic"): variety show with some music Bunga Rampai Keluarga ("Family Garland"): variety show with some music Musik Tradisional ("Traditional Music")

M/Th

15:10-16:00

T/W/Sat

15:10-16:00

T/Sat

21:15-22:00

T

18:10-19:00

Th

20:30-22:00

F

13:10-14:30

Sat

22:10-23:00

Sun

20:30-22:00

22:10-23:00 12:10-14:30

Pilihan Pendengar ("Listeners' Choices") Pelepas Lelah ("Release from Exhaustion"): music (kroncong, etc.) Dian Nusantara ("Lamp of the Archipelago"): show with some music Parade Dangdut, Hits Dangdut ("Dangdut Parade, Dangdut Hits"): national and regional dangdut music Pesona Budaya Nusantara ("Cultural Impressions of the Archipelago"): may include music from various regions Pesona Musik ("Music Impressions"): pop music in local languages Lagu dan Pencipta ("Song and Composer"): songs and discussion of composers Studio Vokalia ("Vocal Studio"): amateur singers (talent search) Kesenian Tradisional ("Traditional Arts"): verbal arts (kecapi, sinrilik, massurek) Kebaktian Menyanyi ("Devotion Singing"): Christian vocal music

Musik, has been langgam and kroncong music arranged and performed by local musicians. Programa II has offered a substantial number of music shows. Some included local music on a regular basis, but none have been devoted entirely to traditional music (see table 9.2). On Programma //one finds less informational programming and correspondingly more music. Both have regularly broadcast popular music in regional languages, but with only one show (Pesona Musik) devoted entirely to this music. It is under the heading of "culture/drama," rather than "entertainment/ music," that performances of sinrilik, massurek, and narrative kecapi music have been broadcast. Sometimes performers have been brought to the studio to be recorded for later broadcast; more often a team of technicians has sought out performers in villages, hiring them to perform on location, with an interactive audience, and, prior to the fall of Suharto's New Order, requiring that they

202 Table 9-2

Calling Back the Spirit Radio shows with music on RRI Ujung Pandang Programa II, 1993

Day(s) on Air Time on Air Daily Daily Daily Daily Daily Daily except Sun Daily except Sat Daily except Fri Daily except Sun/T Sun/Th Sun

Name of Show (with English Translation)

06:05-07:15

Selamat Pagi Ujung Pandang ("Good Morning Ujung Pandang"): variety show with some music 10:10-12:00 Pesan dan Lagu ("Advice and Song"): variety show with music 12:10-14:20* Terminal Musik ("Music Terminal"): assorted pop music Irama Padang Pasir ("Desert Rhythms"): music with 18:00-18:30 Middle Eastern sound (qasidah and gambus): 22:10-24:00** Gita Malam ("Night Song"): pop music 09:00-10:00

Musik dan Informasi ("Music & Information"): talk and pop music

14:20-16:00+

Pesona Musik Kita ("Impressions of Our/ Music"): pop music in local languages

18:30-19:00

Top Dangdut ("Top Dangdut Music Hits")

16:10-17:00 22:15-24:00 13:10-14:20

Hits FM Collection—rock music hits Memory Song—"oldies," songs from the past Studio Vokalia ("Vocal Studio"): amateur singers (talent search) Hits Top 20 ("Top 20 Hits"): countdown of top Indonesian pop songs) Kebaktian Menyanyi ("Devotion Singing"): Christian vocal music Musik Tenar ("Well-known/Popular Music") Hits Indo Pop 12 ("Top 12 Indonesian Pop Hits")

Sun

14:20-17:00

Sun

20:30-22:00

T Sat

16:10-17:00 14:20-16:00

* On Sunday,12:10-13:00 only; on Friday, 13:10-14:20 only ** On Sunday and Thursday, 22 : 10-23:00 only + On Sunday, 14:20-15:00 only

incorporate government messages in their narratives. Yet these traditional musical genres have only been broadcast in one-hour segments, once a week.5 One very obvious result of this extreme limit on programming is that genres that normally go on for hours, or even days, such as sinrilik and kecapi, must either be re-created in shorter, self-contained segments or they must be serialized. Both of these alterations have occurred. It is important in our understanding of the role of the national radio station to recognize that it was adminsitered under the Department of Information.6 Accordingly, RRI policy preferred broadcast of songs and dramas whose entire text could be reviewed prior to


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broadcast to ensure against lewd or confrontational messages. Thus, singers who present standardized songs, or could provide a manuscript for the new material they intended to perform, were often favored. It was in this context that RRI began broadcasting short, propaganda-filled sinrilik, fully written out prior to performance—operating under completely different conventions than village sinrilik, in which a story is re-created in each performance through processes of oral tradition. RRI staff altered the musical programming in the late 1990s, adding several new locally produced shows, featuring Indonesian pop, children's songs, and even street musicians. The only show devoted exclusively to songs in regional language (other than the Kesenian Tradisional show, which is considered "culture/drama") continued to be Pesona Musik, now broadcast only on Programa I. Private radio. As of 1999, RRI Ujung Pandang/RRI Makassar was one of twelve radio stations in the city. While all have had to adhere to government regulations and some have emphasized only a few varieties of commercial music, the private stations have not been as restricted in their programming as RRI. These commercial stations have presented popular music from four identifiable origins—Western (Europe and America), Indian (Hindi), national (Jakarta), and local (South Sulawesi)—catering to most local tastes with the notable exception of the Chinese, until very recently. Under Suharto's New Order radio stations were not permitted to broadcast in any Chinese language, but within weeks of his resignation in May 1998, some private stations began broadcasting Chinese songs. In the city of Ujung Pandang in the 1990s, Radio Gamasi was the most immediately identified by South Sulawesi's listeners as a champion of local music, particularly Makassarese. Even the name of the station identifies it specifically as Makassarese. Gamasi is an acronym for the station's motto— "Gaya Makassar Ada Dismi" (Ind.; "There Is Makassarese Style Here"); and the word gamasi itself is Makassarese for "breadfruit." The mostly Makassarese staff members I spoke with in August 1998 identified what local musical expression they felt to be commercially viable. Criticizing RRI for its limited commitment to local music, they acknowledged that Gamasi or any other commercial radio station could not afford to broadcast much of the most uniquely local genres, such as kecapi, gambus, or sinrilik, but they could outdo RRI at local content. Their own broadcast schedule, which, like RRI, was nearly 50 percent music, favored regional and national dangdut over any other genres, but offered somewhat more kecapi music than RRI. Their breakdown of major categories of broadcast in August 1998 was as follows: 49 percent entertainment (mostly music), 10 percent interactive (callin, conversation), 21 percent information (including news and religious programming), and 20 percent advertisements. The four basic categories of music were as follows: 72 percent dangdut (in Indonesian and local languages), 7 percent "regional" (Ind. daerah), mostly kecapi with singing; 15 percent Indonesian pop music; and 6 percent "foreign" (Indian and Chinese) music (no

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American or European pop at all). The emphasis within its regional offerings was strongly Makassarese. Only once a week did Gamasi make a token bow to other local music: an hour of Bugis pop and dangdut, Sunday 7-8 A.M. Despite the intentions of the staff to maintain a strong Makassarese presence on the airwaves, a marked loss of advertising sponsors throughout 1998 and into 1999 caused a severe cutback in regional music programming and a marked increase in national popular musical forms, especially dangdut. Other stations in Ujung Pandang in the late 1990s offered at least some local content. Radio Al Ikhwan broadcast some shows in Bugis language and others in Makassarese. Radio Barata offered shows and music of various regional traditions, not only of South Sulawesi but also of Central Sulawesi, Manado (North Sulawesi), Batak (North Sumatra), and Minangkabau (West Sumatra), in part reflecting some of the ethnic diversity of migrant labor and the university student population in Ujung Pandang. Other stations broadcasting local music with some announcing in local languages as of 1999 were Radio Sentosa, Radio Gandaria, and Radio PIPOSS.7 What about the fears of homogenization and globalization in the music available on the radio airwaves in Ujung Pandang and vicinity? Local music and other local content has certainly not been absent, but neither has it occupied a dominant position on any station. Moreover, the kinds of local music offered have been mostly those characterized by the use of Western scales, harmonies, and instruments. All radio stations rely heavily on pop and dangdut—genres that also share much in common across ethnic boundaries. From a musicalanalytical standpoint, then, the musical offerings that have constituted the radio broadcast scene in Ujung Pandang clearly represent a kind of homogenization: most of this music is produced electronically in the recording studio and uses predominantly Western harmonic accommpaniment. Distinctive local styles of song and instrumental playing are heard only occasionally on a few stations and ignored entirely on the others. However, it is clear from countless conversations I had across a broad spectrum of age, class, and ethnic affiliations that the use of Western-derived harmonic accompaniment and instruments is taken as a given; it is not the locus of meaning in relation to ethnic and regional identity. That is, while listeners are certainly aware that the guitar and bass originate from the West, these are now just as integrally part of local life as cars and motorcycles, trousers and T-shirts, ballpoint pens and plastic bags. These may be foreign in origin, but they are not foregrounded as "foreign" in daily life. And as part of the local fabric, they may serve any number of functions (utilitarian, symbolic), which may include expressions of local identity. The spectrum of broadcast music, though relatively narrow, nevertheless incorporates music that still clearly evinces particular community affiliations, including each major ethnic group of South Sulawesi (Makassarese losquin, Bugis dangdut, etc.) as well as national ties (Indonesian dangdut and pop). RRI and possibly other stations may contribute to a broader sense of South Sulawesi identity through the airing of music of different regional languages within a single program devoted to "regional music" (musik

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daerah), but separate Bugis, Makassarese, Mandarese, and Torajan identities are reflected, and very likely maintained and enhanced, by the ongoing presence of popular music traditions for each. Television Like other branch stations of TVRI (Television Republik Indonesia, the national television station), TVRI Ujung Pandang has, since its founding in 1972, devoted most of each broadcast day to programming from the central station in Jakarta. Much of this has been mandated from Jakarta, yet at least through 1999, each day also has offered the opportunity some locally produced television shows. TVRI Ujung Pandang in the 1990s devoted a substantial portion of its local programming to music and dance, along with some locally produced spoken drama and news. As a unit within the Indonesian government's Department of Information, TVRI operated under similar constraints and administrative structures as RRI. For example, a similar set of programming categories was established at TVRI, which, like RRI, also broadcast sinrilik and narrative kecapi under "culture/ drama" and various kinds of non-narrative music, mostly employing Western harmonies, under "entertainment/music." More often featured on television than sinrilik or kecapi, however, were local dances—secular choreographies in the style of Bu Nani. Though these are not "creations of the media," their continued cultivation has certainly been supported by the medium of television, which, as far as I could tell, has not yet presented performances in village ceremonial contexts.8 TVRI Ujung Pandang produced and broadcast on a regular basis a range of music (mostly nontradisional), dance, and drama, as shown in tables 9.3 and 9.4. How have traditional arts shows been conceived and produced on TVRI Ujung Pandang? Typical was a fifteen-minute broadcast of sinrilik that I watched in August 1998. Four men dressed in ceremonial Makassarese outfits (sarongs, red jackets, and the distinctive patonrok cloth headcloth) sat on a nearly empty stage. One man, Pak Arsyad, performed a brief passage from the well-known "I Datu Museng." The three others served as a kind of minimal audience; but unlike a group of convivial villagers, who would likely laugh and comment in their most colloquial Makassarese, these contrived audience members commented in Indonesian, not reacting to the story so much as providing a summary of it. From the start they looked uncomfortable, unable even to attempt to treat this like a nontelevised sinrilik performance. Djirong Basang told me of his experience serving as commentator for live broadcasts of kacaping/kelong on TVRI in the 1980s. He was instructed to give not a plot summary but an approximate translation or description of what it was the singer was singing about. Rather than have the singer pause after every phrase or two, however, the producers simply let him sing on, much as he would in a village performance, with Djirong doing his best to provide simultaneous translation or running description in Indonesian.

Table 9.3 "Entertainment/music" shows produced and broadcast by TVRI Ujung Pandang, 1993-1994 Name of Show (English Translation)

Brief Description, Type(s) of Music

children singing children's pop songs adults singing Lagu untuk Anak children's pop songs, (Songs for Children) interspersed with dialogue and advice Sejenak Bersama "quality" singers (A Moment Together) shown outdoors in beautiful panoramic scenes Wajah Bant showcases new (New Faces) singers, pop music (mostly Indonesian, some local, some international) medleys of songs from Nusantara Berdendang various regions, sung by (The Archipelago Sings) vocal groups "to arouse love of folk songs" Kroncong Remaja young musicians perform music with (Teens' Kroncong) kroncong rhythms and electric instruments for accompaniment Gita Malam established singers perform Indonesian pop (Night Songs) and dangdut music Hiburan Pop Daerah established singers (Regional Pop perform regional pop songs from South Sulawesi Entertainment) Lagu-Lagu Daerah singers in traditional ceremonial dress sing (Regional Songs) regional songs of South Sulawesi "quality" singers Irama Kroncong perform kroncong (Kroncong Rhythms) songs with acoustic instr. accompaniment popular music and Mario Rama (Cheerful and humor in regional Happy) and national languages Kuncup Mekar

Intended Audience

Time (min)

Shows/ Year

Children

30

12

Children

30

12

Teens/ General

15

52

Teens/ General

30

24

General

15

40

Teens

30

4

General

15

36

General

30

12

General

30

12

General

30

12

General

60

12

(Bud Blossoms)

(Continued)

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Mass Media andLocalMusic Table 9.3

(Continued) Time (min)

Shows/ Year

General

30

16

General

30

4

General

30

4

Name of Show (English Translation)


Intended Audience

Lagu Qasidah (Qasidah Songs)

songs in qasidah style w/ tambourine and/or instrumentation as in dangdut seriosa songs (art songs, usually with piano accompaniment) old songs sung by young singers with potential

Seriosa (Art Song)

Lagu Kenangan (Songs of Remembrance)

The dances on TVRI were almost always representative of one or more clearly identifiable ethnic group, though not limited to the indigenous groups of South Sulawesi. Dance-dramas, a newly invented and not widely established category of performance in South Sulawesi, were still rare on TVRI Ujung Pandang as of 1999, occurring only occasionally on the show Pelangi Budaya. Locally produced television drama, though with dialogue all or mostly in Indonesian, constituted the main type of offering under the "culture/drama" category (e.g., Sinetron, Fragmen, etc.). By far the greatest amount of television airtime for local arts has been earmarked for various forms of popular music, from Indonesian kroncong and pop to regional pop, old standbys, and new songs. In 1998, most of the shows listed in table 9.3 were still being produced and aired, but with three new monthly shows added: Irama Dangdut (Dangdut Rhythms), each show devoted to one local dangdut band; Irama Qasidah (Qasidah Rhythms) presenting songs in qasidah style (see note 6), either in Arabic or Indonesian; and Selecta Pop Daerah (Regional Pop Selections), with local pop singers lipsynching to prerecorded pop songs. Most significant, TVRI staff members agreed, were the music video clips they now produced. Music videos have become increasingly evident on all Indonesia's television channels, including TVRI, and have transformed dramatically from simple scenes of the singer, usually wandering in natural settings, to highly edited pieces quite clearly influenced by MTV-style video clips (rapid-fire images, quasi-narrative, pastiche). Since 1991 MTV has been seen available to Indonesians with satellite dishes; and since May 1995, MTV Asia (MTV Southeast Asia as of 1999) has been carried by Indonesia's private station ANteve, which can be received terrestrially (by regular antenna) in Makassar and vicinity. Music videos I saw in Ujung Pandang bombarded the viewer with a multitude of disjointed images—for example, a trio of young women singers in rapidly juxtaposed takes from downtown Ujung Pandang's shopping mall,

Table 9.4 "Culture/drama" shows produced and broadcast by TVRI Ujung Pandang, 1993-1994 Name of Show (English Translation)


Intended Audience

Time (min)

Shows/ Year

Tarian Anak (Children's Dance) Sinetron (Video Drama)

children performing dances stories of local life or legends from a particular region, with traditional dance nonformal educational show on the state ideology (Pancasila) dances in regional styles from around the nation children's stories presented as plays, about daily life or local legend folk tales and other sung narration (in Makassarese language), accompanied by fiddle folk tales and humorous verses sung in Makassarese or Bugis, accompanied by kecapi skits and short plays on health and safety issues teens enact didactic stories on issues of importance for teens local myths and legends, presented as spoken play, dance drama, or ceremony didactic spoken drama dancers perform new dances from around the nation

Children

30

12

General

55

12

General

30

12

Teens

15

12

Children

30

16

General

15

12

General

15

12

General

30

12

Teens

30

12

General

30

12

General Teens

30 15

30 16

Eka Prasetya Panca Karsa (One Will, Five Intentions) Tarian Nusantara (Dance of the Archipelago) Cerita UntukAnak (Children's Stories)

Budaya Tradisionil a) Sinrilik (Traditional Culture: Sinrilik) Budaya Tradisionil b) Pakkacaping (Traditional Culture: kecapi) Ruang Kesehatan (Room for Health) Drama Remaja (Teens' Drama) Pelangi Budaya (Cultural Rainbow) Fragmen (Excerpt) Tari Kreasi (Innovative Dances)

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interspersed with takes from the same trio in different outfits at the waterfall at Bantimurung (a local tourist destination, famous for its butterflies). These were a far cry from the videos made by TVRI Ujung Pandang in the early 1990s and before, which showed the singer, very often in traditional dress, standing on the veranda of a traditional platform house. Although TVRI has faced competition from private (nongovernment) television stations since 1989, none are located in South Sulawesi and none cater to South Sulawesi's local tastes or needs. Teams from these other stations have come occasionally to Sulawesi to film special shows for national broadcast, but their coverage of local performing arts has been minimal, limited so far to the most easily accessible of the urban troupes, the very ones likely to be seen on TVRI.

RECORDING Commercial recording has played an enormous role in shaping musical activity and responses to it around the world, as Wallis and Malm have shown for a number of "small countries" (1984), Waterman has shown for juju in Nigeria (1990), Manuel for devotional and popular musics in North India (1993), I have argued for central and eastern Java (1985, 1991), and Yampolsky for many regions of Indonesia (1987, 1989). In South Sulawesi, local cassette production has been far less active than in the much more populous Java, but some local music has been produced and been marketed. Cassettes of English-language popular music, primarily rock, are in abundant supply in cassette stores in South Sulawesi, as are cassettes of Jakarta-based popular musicians singing in styles ranging from crooning kroncong to throbbing dangdut and even heavy metal. The inventory at stores I visited was predominantly Western popular music, though all sold local pop and most had at least a small section with traditional (non-pop) music from South Sulawesi. Cassettes of regional music from other parts of Indonesia were available in most stores, but in very limited numbers. Salesmen indicated these were mostly bought by Indonesians who had moved from these other areas to South Sulawesi to work, and not by the local populace. It was only slightly less difficult to find recordings of indigenous, non-electrified music of Bugis, Makassarese, Mandarese, and Torajan traditions than to find, for example, Javanese gamelan. Many local genres are not available on commercial cassette at all. Instead, the relatively significant output of local cassettes has been devoted to songs in local languages accompanied by Western or Western-derived instruments—guitar, violin, flute, bass, keyboard, electrified and electronic rock instruments, Western drum set, and now predominantly keyboard synthesizer (known locally as "electone"). Styles range from the kroncowg-like losquin (originally just voice and guitar, now with a few other stringed instruments added) and langgam (with guitar, ukulele, bass or cello, flute, and/or violin), to dangdut and pop (with fully electrified instrumentation, including Western drum set).

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Commercial recording of music in and of South Sulawesi has been sporadic over its six-decade history. But even though it has remained small-scale through the 1990s, it has produced and sustained some local popular stars, made available and even reinvigorated local genres, and demonstrated the limits of commercial viability for others. History: Commercial Disc Recordings The history of recording of Makassarese and other music of South Sulawesi is sketchy at best. The first recordings of music from South Sulawesi were made by Jaap Kunst on a brief visit there in 1932. These are wax cylinders (see inventory in Kunst 1994, 253, 267); some were damaged when sent to the Berlin Archives, and none was intended for commercial production and dissemination. Almost certainly the first musician from South Sulawesi to be recorded commerically was Hoo Eng Djie (also spelled Ho Eng Djie), of mixed Chinese (Ind. peranakan) ancestry who was one of the most prominent local singers in Makassar from the 1930s through the 1950s. On three occasions, in 1938, 1939, and 1940, he was invited by the Hoo Soen Hoo studio (Canary Records) in Surabaya, East Java, to make a few recordings of "Celebes Volksliederen" (Sulawesi folk songs). The result of the sessions was a series of 78 rpm recordings (some 20,000 discs produced) not only of himself singing his own songs with groups named Sinar Sedjati (Ind.; True Ray of Light) and Wari-Waria (Mks.; Morningstar) but also of several other groups from South Sulawesi, singing Mandar and Bugis songs (Yang 1949, 27; Hamonic and Salmon 1983, 158). The two recordings I have been able to hear contrast in instrumentation, but with Hoo singing in a similar style on both. Canary H.S. 34 contains one song on each side, listed as "Ati Radja" (sharing rather little with the more recent song of the same title) and "Kola Satoe" (an early version of the song now known as "Kuala Satu," an Indonesian title translating as "One Estuary/Confluence"), each with relatively sparse instrumentation—what sounds like violin, clarinet, trumpet, and drums. Canary H.S. 324 is entitled Appa Lagu Bunting (Mks.; Four Wedding Songs) and presents four songs contextualized into a wedding ceremony, with Hoo himself narrating the imagined wedding events, from the bride's fixing her hair into a bun (Ind., Mks. konde) to her appearance in front of the guests. Hoo calls his musicians (by name) and announces each song in turn: "Na nikondeki nona bunting" (a song no longer widely known, whose title translates as "[Then] the bride's hair is put into a bun"); "Pasang Teng" (a Makassarese song whose text as rendered in recent decades shares not even a phrase in common with Hoo's version);9 "Dendang-dendang" (a well-known Makassarese song whose title translates as "Song[s]," "Singing"); and, again, "Ati Radja." Njoo reports that Hoo also recorded together with famous kroncong singers in 1940: Abdullah, R. Kusbini, Tumina, and others (1950, 106). On the accompanying CD (item 15) I have excerpted one of the songs from the Appa Lagu Bunting record, "Ati Radja" (King's Heart) performed around 1940 by Hoo and his group Orkest Werg Wari-Waria, with an introduction strongly reminiscent of "Singing in the Rain."10 The text, consisting of two verses in ke-

Mass Media and local Music

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Label on Hoo Eng Djie's recording of "Four Wedding Songs" ("Appa Lagu Bunting"), Canary Records, 1940 (or late 1930s?)

long form (eight-eight-five-eight), with interjections (in italics), is entirely different from later versions: 1. Rannuna pammanakannu, bunting le Teknena anrong manggenu, bauk le Alla sannang nyawana, bauk Ati raja, tubattua mattimporong, andi le 2. Tealaloko pelakki, nona le Tunina tau toanu, bauk le Alla, na niak todong, bauk Ati raja, Jarinu 'muntuluk bajik, bunting.

I. Glad is your family, bride land groom].11' Happy are your mother[s] and father[s], little one[s] Ah, contented is the heart, little one[s] King's heart, people as formal guests to give their blessings, little one[s] II. Don't ever neglect, miss The advice of your parents, little one Ah, hopefully it will also [be], little one King's heart, [that] you will find goodness,12 bride [and groom].

According to fellow Chinese-Makassarese Yang Wen Chiao, his recordings sold well in South Sulawesi—like sweets ("lakoenja di Celebes-Selatan seperti koewe!"; Yang 1949, 27). It is likely that the records sold well among the wealthy in the Chinese community in Makassar, for there is indeed evidence of gramophone sales and service in Makassar (Hamonic and Salmon 1983, 170, n. 45), but the number of gramophones was far greater on Java and Hoo's recordings became more widely distributed on Java than in South Sulawesi—most likely among Chinese and Dutch, and some better-off Javanese.

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Hoo was born in 1906 just outside of Makassar, raised and schooled there, and spoke Makassarese, Bugis, Malay, some Dutch, but not any Chinese language. His songs were primarily in Makassarese, but some almost certainly drew on Chinese tunes. Local musicians listed "Sailong," "Ammak Ciang," "Pasang Teng," and "Sio Sayang" among others as clearly Chinese-derived. This same view is reported by Hamonic and Salmon (1983, 157) and is very likely correct, but the exact sources of these tunes have yet to be determined. Hoo first gained fame as an orator and emcee at wedding ceremonies, and while still in his teens became active politically in anti-Dutch groups, and later in religious debates between Christians and Muslims. Although he adopted Christianity in 1931 as a Seventh-Day Adventist (Njoo 1950, 83), he spoke for both Christian and Muslim groups. From 1926 to 1936 he was repeatedly arrested and interrogated by the Dutch, who forbade him to speak publicly about religion (Njoo 1950, 83ff.); but the music he composed and sang, mostly love songs in traditional Makassarese kelong form, met with no repressive measures by the Dutch. Hoo not only sang tunes employing Western scales but also loved, studied, and performed sinrilik, the traditional Makassarese epic narrative genre. Indeed, in local performances at Chinese and Makassarese weddings, he often would accompany himself on kesok-kesok or on violin. After Indonesian Independence he performed sinrilik on RRI Makassar. Recognition of his musical talents, at least in South Sulawesi, was probably due more to his radio appearances than to his recordings. But the fact of his having recorded enhanced his prestige. On 2 September 1953 he was received by President Sukarno in Jakarta and presented with a special citation (since lost). In the same year he won a medal from RRI in recognition of his contributions as a musician. Several years afterward, however, he was forbidden to perform live broadcasts of sinrilik, as he had become increasinlgy critical of local and national governmental figures, from the mayor of Makassar to the president of the nation (Arifin, personal communication, 26 July 1996). All concur that Hoo was not only an exceptional musician but also a bold individual who spoke his mind with little regard to his own safety or economic well-being. A somewhat more enigmatic figure is Djajadi Djamain, a Javanese-born singer, band leader, and military man who rose to popularity in the 1950s, made recordings in Surakarta (Central Java) with Lokananta (the Indonesian national recording company), and mysteriously disappeared one night from the RRI studio in Makassar around 1964, never to be heard from again. He and two other singers recorded just four songs, all Makassarese standards and all accompanied by his Dasa Rama Band, in a session on 27 December 1960. He sang "Ati Raja" and "Dongang-Dongang," his sister Yetty Djamain sang "Amma Ciang," and his cohort Lenny Beslar (female) sang "Pakarena." The results were released as two ten-inch 78 rpm discs in 1961 (see Yampolsky 1987, 89, 204). On the accompanying CD (item 16), I include Djajadi Djamain's 1960 version of "Ati Radja" (King's Heart), sung with just one verse, the text of which is now considered standard and used in much more recent recordings (such as the 1996 release by Iwan Tompo, given below).13

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Mass Media and Local Music Ati raja, Ati raja, ati... King's heart, king 's heart, heart.. . 1. Sekre-sekreji Batara, bauk le Ati raja, ati raja, nakijai 'paknganroi, bauk le Raja le alla, kereami'njo, ati ati raja Nitarima pappalakna, bauk le.

1. [There's] only one God, little one King's heart, king's heart, yet we ask much of Him, little one King ah, who among us, king's heart heart Will have a request that He will receive, little one.

In contrast to the wedding text in the Hoo Eng Djie version, this presents a statement of humility before God. And the musical style is very different from the Hoo Eng Djie version. Drawing on the popular Latin arrangements widely circulating in Indonesia, Djamain recast this and other well-known Makassarese tunes with Latin rhythms and parallel harmonies, thereby giving local music a new twist and winning unprecedented recognition for Makassarese songs in other parts of the archipelago. Some local musicians I spoke with complained of the "liberties" he took in his recorded arrangements and felt they misrepresented local culture, an especially grievous sin because there were very few other recordings representing Makassar or other South Sulawesian groups in circulation. His involvement with the military, which was bent on the destruction of the rebellion led by Kahar Muzakkar in South Sulawesi (1950-1965), is cited by some as the probable cause of his disappearance—suspected to have been carried out by Kahar's forces. Others point to his reputation as a playboy and believe he was killed by a jealous husband. During the early 1960s, Lokananta recorded a number of Makassarese songs, mostly in studios in Surakarta or Jakarta and often by performers from Ambon or Java. The only recordings Lokananta actually made in South Sulawesi (or anywhere in Sulawesi) were two ten-inch 78 rpm discs released in 1961 of a local group, Lenatien and his associates, performing four songs: two Makassarese ("Anging Mammiri" and "Muri-Muria"), a Sumatran song ("Butet"), and an Indonesian-language song ("Kisah Tjinta"; see Yampolsky 1987, 89, 113). By the mid-1960s, Lokananta had turned its attention away from Sulawesi entirely, and, in fact, from most of the archipelago outside of Java. Although designated as the "national" recording company, Lokananta devoted very little of its resources to recording music from South Sulawesi, even during the late 1950s to mid-1960s, the period during which it was most open to music from areas of the archipelago outside of Java. What little it did record consisted mostly of Makassarese songs, but usually recorded elsewhere and often performed by musicians of Javanese or mixed ethnic background. Moreover, it only recorded music whose diatonic melodies and Western-instrumental accompaniment made it marketable as entertainment music for Indonesians outside of South Sulawesi. In this way, Lokananta contributed, as had Canary beforehand, to the spread of a certain kind of popular music identified as

214


Makassarese and, more generally, as (South) Sulawesian. But it involved internationally influenced arrangements and excluded from its offerings any of the numerous indigenous genres whose musical style would have had little appeal to this wider audience—genres such as kecapi, sinrilik, and local dance and ceremonial music. Although concentrated in a brief period (end of 1960-1961), these Lokananta recordings helped to establish a presence for South Sulawesi in the national musical consciousness. Many Javanese I know became familiar with such songs as "Anging Mammirik" and "Ati Raja" through these Lokananta recordings and their broadcast as part of general entertainment fare on Javanese radio during the 1960s and early 1970s. Production and distribution, however, were not in local hands. That was soon to change with the introduction of the much cheaper technology of cassette recording and playback. Commercial Cassette Recording Because gramophones or phonographs were relatively rare throughout Indonesia, privately run and locally based commercial recording companies did not begin to operate in South Sulawesi until the dawn of the cassette age in the 1970s. With regional cassette enterprises already thriving in Java, several cassette companies (Suara Mas, OK Record, and Special Record) opened in Ujung Pandang in 1974 and 1975, and a variety of local musical genres began to be recorded and sold. Owned by Chinese entrepreneur Mas Gunawan Elham, Suara Mas led the way, recording at the RRI studio in 1974 and the first half of 1975. The opening by Suara Mas of its own separate studio in August 1975 involved an elaborate ceremony with representatives from the mayor's office, the local military command (Kodam), and local playwrights, actors, dance choreographers, musicians, and newspaper and magazine reporters. The city's mayoral secretary, Jusuf Nappa, officiated and told those in attendance that "the building of this recording studio constitutes a major form of participation in [the national agenda of] development and for the progress of the region, especially in the field of culture and art."14 Even at this early stage, then, local bureaucrats and artists recognized the significance of local cassette production for positioning local culture, however defined, in the modern Indonesian context. Intense rivalries between performers, I was told, led to the demise of Suara Mas only a few years after it opened. By then it was already facing competition from Special Record and OK Record, both of which opened shortly after Suara Mas in 1975. Irama Baru began recording in the following year, and Libel Record the year after that. OK Record was most active in the late 1970s and closed in 1981. Anew company, National Record, opened in 1982 and recorded from 1982 to 1986, afterward reconstituting itself briefly as Gema Aries Record. In the late 1990s, Special Record continued to duplicate cassettes it had released in earlier years, but has produced no new ones since the mid-1980s.15 Irama Baru still produced an occasional cassette of dangdut Bugis, but was otherwise a cassette store and distributor. Libel and the newer company Jansen, founded in 1987, were the most active.


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Outside of Ujung Pandang, various individuals set up small-scale systems of recording and distributing cassettes, beginning in the mid-1970s and continuing through the 1990s. These cassettes are sold only within small districts (kabupaten) or towns and are not available in Ujung Pandang. During his research in Bugis areas north of Ujung Pandang in the mid-1990s, Sirtjo Koolhof reported finding cassettes of Bugis kecapi, biola, and massurek at village markets, produced by small local companies (Flamingo Musicasette, Super Dynamic, Ramayana Cassette, and Sinar Tenggara). And in the Torajan highlands small companies produced and sold cassettes of Torajan ritual and popular music, again on many labels. Nevertheless, my discussion of the commercial cassette industry below is limited to the companies based in Ujung Pandang/Makassar. The first years of local cassette production saw the release of a wide variety of local genres. Anything of potential entertainment value was considered, and the market was exclusively local (within the province). The first music recorded for commercial cassette release consisted of fourteen local songs performed by Hamsan Marliat and Murtini Soeharto, a favorite duo from the early 1970s through the 1980s.16 The songs were accompanied by acoustic Western instruments, some combination of guitar, bass, flute, violin, kroncong ukulele (cuk), and cello. Indeed, where local companies had the greatest local success, even early on, was in the recording of the local songs—old standards by Hoo Eng Djie, Baharuddin Mandjia, Arsyad Basir, Borra Daeng Ngirate, and newer pieces by Hamsan Marliat, Rachmansyah, and others. Representative of the early cassette releases of lagu Makassar is item 19 on the accompanying compact disc, Hamsan Marliat singing "Bannang Ejaya" (Mks. "Red Thread") with guitar, cuk, and cello (or bass?) in losquin style, around 1985. The text, the instrumental simplicity, and Hamsan's almost mournful singing style combine to give this rendition its emotional power, widely acknowledged by listeners as characteristic of much of the lagu Makassar repertory. As in nearly all lagu Makassar, the text employs the standard kelong form, here with only one short interjection ("aule") per verse.17 1. Bannang eja singainta Rotasakna kulambusi aule Kukellainna Jarrek ri passimbangenta.

Red thread, our love Its tangle I straighten out ah, Because I want Things solid between us.

2. Bannang eja nukambarak Nukambarak bannang gauk aule Kukarannuang Passikkok sikalakbui.

Red thread, you entwine you entwine with blue thread ah, I like [our] lasting/eternal bond.

3. Sarroi kusassalakna Bannang nukasumba paleng aule Kasumba gauk Nupabene ri lilanu.

I am very sorry The thread you dye, can it be, ah, Blue dye You drip from your tongue?

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Calling Back the Spirit 4. Bannang gauk ri lilanu angekbak ri barambangku aude Allei pelak Sambei bannang kebok.

Blue thread on your tongue Slices into my chest ah, Try to throw it away Exchange it with white thread.

In addition to lagu daerah, early releases included a substantial amount of distinctive local traditional music outside the realm of Western-influenced pop. Traditional kecapi, sinrilik, gambus, and even Torajan ritual music were recorded by Special Record. Irama Baru and Libel recorded kecapi, gambus, and the ensemble genre they most often identified as orkes turiolo.18 The selfconscious naming of this genre (Mks.; old folks' ensemble), explicitly identifying the music, if not the performers themselves, as an embodiment of the past, derives from a specific ensemble led by Arsyad Basir and brought to the grand opening of Taman Mini in May 1975. The reflexive ensemble name fits perfectly the contrived nostalgia that pervades the design and concept of this postmodern institution located in the southeast of Jakarta (see Pemberton 1994a, 1994b). The alternate term orkes rambang-rambang persists today among many musicians, perhaps not wanting their music to be labeled "old." Yet cassette companies, such as Special Record and Libel Record, have helped to establish the term orkes turiolo, identifying several of their early releases of this ensemble by that name. Most of the early orkes turiolo recorded on cassettes consisted of musicians residing in or near Ujung Pandang, but not so the kecapi and gambus musicians. Riady Panorama, the current owner and manager of Libel Record, described seeking kecapi players and singers from the Makassarese districts of Gowa, Takalar, and Selayar, and from Bugis areas, bringing them to Ujung Pandang to record.19 Irama Baru and Special Record did essentially the same. It was widely agreed among those I interviewed in Ujung Pandang's cassette industry that, even though musicians were paid very little for these early recordings, the cassettes were not as profitable as had been hoped. For an orkes turiolo tape made in 1976 by Special Record, and for which the owner, Tjiang, had only part of the master (on a Maxell Chromium Dioxide cassette) when we discussed it in 1995, he paid singers and instrumentalists the equivalent of US$12 (Rp. 5,000) each, composers US$3.25 (Rp. 1,500) per song, and the music director, Arsyad Basir, US$36 (Rp. 15,000) for the entire session. Those who both sang and played instruments received US$24 (Rp. 10,000.) But even with this modest outlay of slightly over $200 (Rp. 92,500) in artists fees, the resulting cassette was still not very profitable for Special Record, according to Tjiang. He has not even attempted to market it since 1986. Judging from the copy he made for me from the master, the quality of recording was poor, with some overmodulation. This may not have been its biggest commercial problem, however. Rather, the adherence to a sparse instrumentation of violin, rebana frame drums, suspended gong, and pair of kettle gongs (kannong-kannong) on some of the songs gives this music a decidedly "non-pop" feel. Item 17 on the accompanying CD is the opening item from this early cassette: "Dendang-Dendang," sung in 1976 by Ambottang Sidjaya, ac-


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Orkes Turiolo (Orkes Rambang-rambang) Ilologading, performing at IKIP Ujung Pandang, 2 August 1999

companied by a small group of instrumentalists led by Arsyad Basir.20 This cassette presented songs that have since been recorded with greater commercial success in a number of arrangements with more Western instruments providing triadic harmonic textures. Item 18 on the CD, recorded at a rehearsal at RRI in 1995, provides an example of orkes turiolo with fuller instrumentation. Dendang-dendangji laguku, sayang Kelong-kelongku riolo, bauk Rajale, kualle jima, sayang Kuparek Pammuno simpung, bauk Kualle jima, sayang Dendang-dendang Kuparek pammuno simpung, bauk.

Happy and cheerful are my tunes, dear My songs from long ago, little one King, I make them my comfort, dear I make them erase sad feelings, little one I make them my comfort, dear Happy and cheerful I make them erase sad feelings, little one.21

Although a series of kecapi or gambus cassettes could be recorded in one session and the payment for kecapi and gambus musicians was substantially less than even what was paid for an orkes turiolo group, the results simply did not sell as well as expected. Cassette producers had not realized the extent to which the popularity of these genres relied on the humorous spontaneity of live performance. All of the companies, past and present, as far as I have been able to determine through interviews and newspaper articles, have been owned and operated by local ethnic Chinese, some born and raised in greater Makassar, such as Riady of Libel Record, others from overseas, such as Mas Gunawan of Suara Mas. Though clearly concerned with turning a profit, the owners with whom I spoke had more than pure commercial reasons for venturing into the recording

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of local music. They were music lovers, often with tastes that ranged from local diatonic songs, sung in an open, bel canto style, to the uniquely indigenous sounds of kecapi and sinrilik. They also readily acknowledged liking Jakartabased pop, Chinese pop, and some Euro-American popular music. Yet they felt the local music to be part of their heritage, despite the divisive nature of Indonesian policy that has separated pribumi (Ind.; indigenous) Malay-race citizens from nonpribumi (Ind.; nonindigenous, [racially] foreign) Chinese. Of the three cassette producers I spoke with at length—Tjiang at Special Record, Edwin S. Jansen at Jansen Record, and Riady Panorama at Libel Record—all expressed a love for local music, but cited the very low volume of sales of traditional music as their reason for either ceasing production or limiting their production of local music to pop. Tjiang, the owner and manager of Special Record since its founding in 1975, said he had given up making recordings, unable to compete for the most popular of the current singers, whose cassettes continued to make a profit, especially for Libel. Shortly after its founding in 1977, Libel Record released two cassettes of orkes turiolo, both explicitly designated as such. One featured the orkes turiolo group led by Arsyad Basir (who, as noted earlier, coined the term several years ago), and entitled Pabiola (Mks.; Violin Player). The second featured the group Dendang-Dendang Turiolo (Mks.; Old People's Songs), with Chinese-Makassarese musician Pui Tjung Ang and led by "family of Ho Eng Djie," an apparent reference to Hoo Eng Djie's son, who also directed music for a local military band—a popular genre in South Sulawesi, both among military personnel and at high schools. Pui Tjung Ang had performed with various groups, including Gambus Arrafiq, a gambus ensemble directed by Abdullah Bin Agil and specializing in Arabic songs. His career flourished from 1951 to about 1960, and is said to have ended in 1965 (Hamonic and Salmon 1983).22 Aside from early experiments in recording and marketing orkes turiolo versions of Makassarese standards, Libel and Special Record both recorded solo village musicians accompanying their own singing on kecapi or gambus. An echo effect was often added in production, but these companies asked for no observable change in musical style to bring the music closer in sound to the styles recognized widely as pop: use of Western intervals, vocal quality, harmony, and so forth. Most of these recordings appeared in multi-volume sets, attempting to present the equivalent of a long night of music, sometimes with a single story being narrated throughout. Yet by the early 1990s I could not find a complete set of any of these for sale, but rather just an isolated volume or two. It is still unclear just what the buying public does with these tapes— whether they are played as part of a ritual event, such as wedding or circumcision, or whether they serve mostly for private listening and entertainment. The salespeople I spoke with did not offer any strong opinion, and I was never able to interview a buyer, since the local people making purchases at stores while I was present invariably bought popular music, choosing recent Western pop, Indonesian, or local popular titles. The only owners of these kinds of cassettes with whom I was able to discuss the matter were themselves musicians active in one or another local traditional music. Ichsang, a young musician from Selayar


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studying ganrang and biola, commented enthusiastically about a cassette of kecapi and singing that we heard as we waited at a friend's house. Just hearing it made him feel relaxed and able to forget about life's challenges. He said he often played his few cassettes of kecapi Selayar at night as he fell asleep, or in the afternoon when he was relaxing, but he noted that it was the "music"—the playing of the kecapi and the singing voice, rather than the text—which he found so pleasant. He added that fewer and fewer people enjoyed this kind of music. Whatever examples of these genres were recorded during the early years of the cassette industry in South Sulawesi, then, have turned out to be more than sufficient to fill the demand. After the first years of experimentation, the cassette companies have devoted almost all of their local recording to popular music with triadic harmony provided by guitar, small acoustic kroncong-type ensemble, or electrified and electronic instruments. In addition to Makassarese singers, an ample number of Bugis singers, mostly performing Bugis dangdut, have been recorded and successfully marketed, along with a few Mandarese performing similar music in Mandarese language. Torajan popular music in the 1990s, as noted, was being recorded and produced by small companies located in the Torajan district. Active Cassette Companies in the 1990s In the late 1990s, only three companies in Ujung Pandang were making recordings. Irama Baru was barely active, producing a few Bugis dangdut cassettes a year, but otherwise simply marketing its older releases. Jansen Record, also active with Bugis dangdut, had a considerably more varied output. Founded in 1987 by the Jansens, a local Chinese family, Jansen Record first focused on Bugis and Makassarese singers. Jansen used to record the instrumental track in Surabaya, at the studio of a Chinese friend, and add the vocal track at their small studio in Ujung Pandang. Only in 1993 did they acquire the electronic keyboards and multitrack equipment necessary to do all recording in Ujung Pandang. Family member Edwin S. Jansen was the producer, serving as sound engineer, operating the electronic equipment, and composing arrangements, as well as choosing performers and advising on repertory. In the mid-1990s, following the lead of their main competitor, Libel Record, Jansen Record shifted much of its activity to recording groups from other parts of eastern Indonesia, especially Ambon (in the Moluccas) and several areas of Irian Jaya, bringing groups to Ujung Pandang to record. Most of the earlier companies, such as Special Record, produced their cassette copies with their own equipment in Ujung Pandang, but this was no longer the norm. Though the Jansen recording studio and company distribution office were in Ujung Pandang, the master tapes (on reel-to-reel and DAT) were sent to Jakarta for duplication on cassettes, which were then shipped back to Jansen in Ujung Pandang, where the cassette covers and notes were duplicated and inserted into the plastic cases. The dominant company of the 1990s has been Libel Record, owned and operated by Riady Panorama.23 After its initial efforts with kecapi, gambus,

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and orkes turiolo, it has built its reputation with recordings of the favorite Makassarese singer, Iwan Tompo (see below) and other younger singers who present newly composed and older songs with various studio-produced accompanying tracks. Libel acquired its own studio in 1980, after three years of renting others in Ujung Pandang. In the early 1980s it featured simple, acoustic arrangements for local singers, emphasizing the losquin sound. Riady suggested that Libel's efforts at this time, particularly with top-name singers providing the vocals, did much to rehabilitate this nearly forgotten genre. Yet Libel was certainly not the only label to record losquin, a genre rather widely recorded by several of the early companies. (Though other labels have recorded losquin, I am unable to ascertain precise dates, which might support or challenge Riady's claim,) An example of losquin from Libel can be heard on the CD accompanying this book (item 20). The song "Rera Atia" ("Heart's Lament") is a Makassarese standard, here performed by Makassarese female vocalist Arwinny Puspita, with guitar and other acoustic plucked strings (kroncong ukulele, cello). It is one often songs presented in losquin arrangements on a composite album entitled Nostalgia Makassar Losquine,24 with Puspita and three other singers, released by Libel in the early 1990s. In this production, the echo effect is relatively heavy, reminiscent of the earliest days of commercial cassette recording in Ujung Pandang. Libel also recorded much local popular music during the 1980s. Though not "rock," this music used the instrumentation typical of rock—electric guitar and bass, keyboard, and drum set—and for dangdut or orkes melayu items added dangdut drum. These instruments have gradually been replaced by keyboard synthesizer in the 1990s. Looking to expand its profits, Libel began in 1993 to record music from other parts of eastern Indonesia. As early as 1987, it had recorded a group of students from Irian Jaya who were enrolled at Universitas Hasanuddin in Ujung Pandang, but only produced one or two casettes. In 1994, however, Riady brought a group of ten musicians from Irian to record four cassette volumes in one visit (several weeks in the studio). By 1999, Libel's catalog included groups from Southeast Sulawesi, various areas of North Sulawesi (Gorontalo, Manado, and the islands of Sangir and Taulud), Maluku (mostly Ambon), Irian Jaya, and Nusa Tenggara Timur (the province of islands just west of Irian Jaya), though such efforts remain secondary to its continued focus on music of lowland South Sulawesi, especially Makassarese. Libel has had sophisticated equipment from the beginning, and upgraded to a sixteen-track machine in 1991, with MIDI, Roland keyboard, and other high-quality studio equipment. Despite a devasting loss on 22 June 1996, when their main retail store burned to the ground (from a short circuit, not anti-Chinese arson), Libel has been by far the most successful of the local cassette companies. In 1997-1998 Riady's music enterprise expanded to a network of companies. All the cassettes of "entertainment" music from South Sulawesi and other parts of eastern Indonesia continued to be produced and marketed by the Libel Record company. But Riady also launched a company known as Supras Record for the production of Indonesian popular music—in Indonesian Ian-

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guage and mostly recorded in Jakarta. And he founded Sama Ria Record for Christian religious songs, mostly in Indonesian language and marketed throughout eastern Indonesia. Riady expressed to me his optimism that this kind of diversification would see him through the difficulties of the economic crisis. Cassette Sales South Sulawesi has yet to see a mega-hit. No cassette company responded positively to my request to see sales data, but in conversation both Edwin Jansen and Riady Panorama told me that they aimed for sales of about 10,000 copies. A few cassettes have sold substantially more than this. Edwin Jansen estimated that their most successful cassette had sold around 50,000 copies; Riady Panorama, whose Libel cassettes enjoy greater circulation, thought that estimate too high, and said Libel's top one or two cassettes might have sold around 25,000 or 30,000 at the absolute maximum. According to Riady, sales of 5,000 are average and sufficient for a modest profit, and sales of 10,000 or more are rare. While cassettes are sold throughout the province, only a small number are marketed elsewhere in Indonesia. Even in the larger cassettes stores in Jakarta, I found not a single cassette of music from South Sulawesi, though cassettes of music from North Sulawesi, Ambon, and areas of Sumatra were often available. All I found were several recordings with Makassarese standards ("Anging Mammirik" and "Ati Raja") and an album by national popular star Rama Aiphama of contemporary Makassarese pop songs composed by Makassarese pop musician Iwan Tompo (see below). Popular music of South Sulawesi, then, has remained mostly confined to the province itself, only rarely appealing to listeners without strong cultural ties to one or another ethnic group of South Sulawesi, though a few older lagu Makassar are known nationally. A Local Popular Musician and the Media: Iwan Tompo I spoke at length on four occasions (1995-1999) with the reigning king of Makassarese popular music, Iwan Tompo. By 1999, he had made over forty commercial cassettes. He also had made numerous appearances on television and frequent live performances. In 1996, he earned somewhere between Rp. 500,000 and 750,000 (US$250-375) for a sixty-minute cassette of music for which he was singer, Rp. 875,000 if he arranged the instrumental accompaniment in addition to singing, and often more than Rp. 1,000,000 for a single night's performance locally with his group (formerly called Mario Rama [Bgs.; Cheerful and Happy]),25 which frequently played for weddings and circumcisions in the city and in nearby villages. He and his group also performed in more distant parts of the province, and they have also made numerous trips to other provinces and islands to play for those who have settled away from South Sulawesi: Sorong and Jayapura (Irian Jaya), Samarinda and Balikpapan (East Kalimantan), Palu (Central Sulawesi), Kendari (Southeast Sulawesi).

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Iwan Tompo, top-selling singer, composer, and arranger of Makassarese pop songs, at Libel Studio, Permata Hijau, Ujung Pandang, August 1999

His repertory in the latter 1990s covered several distinct styles of musical arrangements, all of them derived from national popular idioms: langgam, dangdut, and pop. Yet his orientation has been decidely local. In the 1970s he used to sing with an orkes rambang-mmbang/turiolo, and through the mid1980s he sang and recorded losquin. He made his second recording during the very first year of commercial cassette production in Ujung Pandang, at OK Record in late 1975, singing for a cassette with the explicitly local title Pakelong (Mks.; Singer of Makassarese verse/song). The title song describes a local singer of the verse-form kelong employed widely by Makassarese in generations-old village ritual song, in written literature dating back several centuries, and in most contemporary popular songs. The most apparent local ingredient is the language of the text, but verse-form, vocal style, and nuance are readily identified by many listeners as distinctively local—not necessarily Makassarese only, but perhaps Bugis-Makassar. The control of the voice, ornaments, and "feeling" are local. In our discussions of his music, and what he thought might best be appropriate examples to include on the CD accompanying this book, Iwan, Riady, and I agreed on two examples. The first (item 21) is the title song from his cassette album entitled Pop Makassar: Bangkenga Cini' [= Bangkenna Cinik]

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(Mks.; Look at the Feet), composed and recorded by Iwan around 1992. The text, like nearly all of Iwan's compositions, employs the standard Makassarese kelong form, here without the added words and phrases used in the presentation of many of the older Makassarese songs. As in many Makassarese songs of recent decades, the text is a melancholy plaint, somewhere between lament and protest, and the vocal style melismatic and ornamented in a style similar to dangdut and earlier orkes melayu singing, deeply emotional and able to "touch the heart" (Ind. menyentuh hati): 1. Tuna memangi anrongku Kasi-asiji manggeku Katea tonji Nitunai tallasakku.

1. Lowly indeed is my mother Poor is my father But I do not wish My life to be looked down upon.

2. Manna sunggu empoannu Tallebakja nupatini Taku kasukmang Kalengku palak rikau.

2. Though you occupy a happy position You never even try to help me I can't ever recall Myself asking something of you.

3. Massing-massingji ikatte Akboya ri tallasatta Nujujung kamma Sunggunu anne rilino?

3. Each of us on our own Searches in our lives Why do you raise above all else Your own happiness in this world?

4. Tenantu nutuli tekne Nikana sare anne rilino Bangkenna cinik Sisambe mange riyolo.

4. You are not always happy In what is called your fate in the world Look at the feet Alternating in their march forward.

The second song (item 22) is his newly arranged rendition of "Ati Raja" (King's Heart), released in 1996 on an album entitled Pop Langgam Makassar Abadi, Vol. 3 (Ind.; Enduring Makassarese Langgam Pop, Volume 3). The text consists of three verses, the first nearly identical to that sung by Djajadi more than thirty years previously. The musical accompaniment, produced entirely in studio on keyboard synthesizer, employs what is identified locally as a langgam beat, characterized by the multiple levels of duple, "off-beat" playing (rest, quarter, rest, quarter; simultaneously with rest, eighth, rest, eighth, rest, eighth, rest, eighth, etc.). (Words in italics are interjections, not related to the main song text.) 1. Sekre-sekreji batara, bauk le Ati raja, nakijai 'paknganroi, bauk le Raja le elele, kereami'njo, ati ati ati raja Nitarima pappalakna, bauk le.

1. [There's] only one God, little one King's heart, yet we ask much of Him, little one King ah, who among us, king's heart heart heart Will have a request that He will receive, little one.

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Calling Back the Spirit 2. Mannamo kiminasai, bauk le Ati raja, kipanaik ri palatta, rikodong Raja le elele, takballe tonji, ati ati ati raja Ka batara tangkellai, bauk le.

3. Manna nijallok sarea, da ele Ati raja, taempokik ri masunggua, rikodong Raja le elele, tanikanyame, ati ati ati raja Kataena panngellai, rikodong.

2. Even though we hope, little one King's heart, we rise up on our palms, alas King ah, spilled out are we, king's heart heart heart Because God does not so desire, little one. 3. Even though we try our hardest, ah King's heart, we don't really reach happiness,26 alas King ah, we cannot taste thereof, king's heart heart For there's no permission [from God], alas.

Tompo worked at an insurance office for a few years but found the regular hours and office life not to his liking. He told me he much preferred the freedom of an artist's life and has managed to make his living entirely through musical composition, arranging, recording, and performance since 1981. He credited his appearance on TVRI Ujung Pandang in 1981 and the release of the cassette album Attetemak Ri Kamaseku (Mks.; I've Crossed the Bridge from My Misery), recorded by Libel Record, with arrangements by Jakarta-based musician Pance Pondaag, as the pillar events that brought him to stardom. Several subsequent cassette albums contributed to his continued prominence. Some older performers derided the music of Iwan Tompo and his cohorts (A. Kahar and Ismail Wahid) for drawing too heavily on Jakarta-based popular styles, and for being concerned with quantity of production rather than quality. Still others commented on his recordings of songs in Bugis language, which he pronounces with a slight accent, sounding a bit strange to native Bugis speakers. Yet he has undeniably become a star, nurtured if not created by the mass media. Given his commercial success, it is significant that he not only professed concern for the image of local culture in the larger Indonesian context; in July 1995, he took a week out of his busy schedule of recording and live engagements to join with approximately three hundred other South Sulawesians, mostly Makassarese, to represent the Makassaresse kingdom of Gowa at the nationwide Festival Kraton (Ind.; Palace/Kingdom Festival) in one of the most prestigious palace centers in all of Indonesia: Surakarta, Central Java. Funding barely covered travel (by boat and bus), and accommodations in Surakarta were anything but luxurious. The South Sulawesi contingent, as mentioned in chapter 7, was known as Salokoa Ri Gowa (Mks.; The Crown of Gowa) and included village musicians, dancers, and flag bearers, all representing Makassarese tradition. Yet the group also included musicians—Iwan Tompo and others—performing many of the older Makassarese standards with accompaniment by orkes turiolo.

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A further indication of Tompo's engagement with traditional local culture was the circumcision ceremony he held at his house for two of his sons in 1997. He sponsored what he described as a full upacara adat (Ind.; customary ceremony) with ganrang and puik-puik, and all core participants dressed in Makassarese ceremonial clothing. Later in the evening a dangdut band (his own musicians) gave the ceremony an up-to-date side, performing songs in Indonesian and Makassarese. After a motorcycle accident in 1996, he began to turn his attention more and more to studio work for Libel Record. He had a daily routine that took him to the Libel studio from late afternoon until around dawn. He would then return home and sleep until about 1 P.M. In the studio, instead of singing, he devoted most of his time to composing and arranging soundtracks for other groups, using a synthesizer with computer. In addition to local groups, he has worked with musicians from North Sulawesi and other islands in eastern Indonesia, providing them the same kind of pop langgam and dangdut-style instrumental arrangements that he has used in his own more recent cassettes. He told me in 1998 that he made more money as an arranger-producer than as a performer, since he could complete arrangements for at least one album per month, but could only release about two casettes of his own music and singing per year. Live engagements had dropped off some owing to the economic crisis that began in late 1997 (though South Sulawesi suffered far less than Java and some other parts of Indonesia in this regard). In late 1997, nationally known pop star Rama Aiphama approached Tompo with the idea of making an album with Aiphama singing Tompo songs.27 Tompo wound up creating the instrumental tracks for a full album of his songs, sung by Aiphama in Makassarese language. Aiphama is from Gorontalo (North Sulawesi), but is a resident of Bogor (south of Jakarta) and a singer whose hits were in Indonesian language until this album. The results were very convincing, despite Aiphama's Gorontalo roots. Not only the vocal style, but even the pronunciation were indistinguishable from those of the best Makassarese singers. Riady was angry with Tompo for doing this, seeing it as cutting into Libel's market, but he has maintained Tompo as the cornerstone of his South Sulawesi pop endeavor—star singer and songwriter, and now prolific arranger and studio man.

CONCLUSION The mass media have clearly played an enormous role in shaping the musical world of South Sulawesi, as they have throughout nearly all of the late-twentieth-century world. My account in this chapter has attempted to offer historical overview balanced by ethnographic detail. I would like to suggest several emergent patterns by way of conclusion. First, and perhaps most obvious, is that mass media have provided local ears with the sounds of Western harmonies, instruments, and tunes for more

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than sixty years—first under the Dutch and later in a media environment controlled to a large extent by the Indonesian national government. Moreover, while some of this music has been identifiable as national or local, much of it has always been explicitly foreign. I would suggest, then, that many South Sulawesian performers and listeners attempt to position themselves as part of "the modern world"—a world dominated culturally and economically by the West—not only by cultivating a taste for music that is explicitly Western but also by creating and consuming music that incorporates and localizes Westernstyle popular music through language and vocal style. Moreover, given the government's official aversion to Western popular culture, the consumption of Euro-American rock, widely available on commercial cassettes and on radio airwaves, can be seen as a form of resistance in South Sulawesi, even as it feeds the coffers of the international music industry. It has certainly been ascribed this kind of resistant meaning by local youth. To keep the sounds of rock and other Western-influenced popular styles as Other would place one's self, one's own "culture" outside the perimeters of modernity. Thus, many South Sulawesian performers have adopted elements of Western style in their own music. In places like Java and Bali, where gamelan has been a viable indigenous alternative to popular music, songs in Javanese language but with Western harmonies and so forth have been seen as less authentically "indigenous" (Ind. asli) than gamelan music. But in South Sulawesi, Makassarese standard tunes have mostly been judged to be local music and sometimes, when arranged as orkes turiolo, losquin, or langgam, even as "traditional" music. Second, mediated local music since its inception has tended to confound as well as reify ethnic boundaries and categories. Government radio and television have shown a clear tendency to de-emphasize specific ethnic labeling, with shows simply designated Kesenian Tradisional or Lagu-lagu Daerah, for example (rather than Kesenian Bugis Tradisional or Lagu-lagu Daerah Makassar), but cassette labeling has almost always reinforced them (Losquin Makassar, Dangdut Bugis, etc.), offering local identity a legitimate place among the national and international music commodities. Nevertheless, star figures in Makassarese music have included peranakan Chinese Hoo Eng Djie, Javanese Djajadi Djamain, Javanese-Gorontalonese Murtini Soeharto, Madurese Hamsan Marliat, and Jakarta-born Angel Paff, as well as Makassarese Iwan Tompo, Rachmansyah, and so on. Moreover, Makassarese singers, such as Iwan Tompo, perform songs in Bugis language and collaborate with musicians from outside the province. Far less sharing across ethnic lines occurs with village-based genres, such as kecapi and sinrilik. Only a few cassettes are designated by the broad category "Sulawesi Selatan" (rather than one or another ethno-linguistic category). Even in the pop world, most consumers of pop Bugis are Bugis or speak Bugis, and those favoring lagu Makassar are Makassarese or speak it. Cassette labeling helps to reify ethnic differences, even as the musical styles, similar as they are, might be seen to minimize those differences. The music of far greater dif-

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ference—the drumming, kecapi playing, flute playing, and so forth—is so rarely presented through the media that we can posit a homogenizing effect of the media in South Sulawesi, more so than in Java, for instance. What, then, of the control by local people in cassette production, private radio broadcasts, and even government radio and television, given that many of the broadcast choices at these stations are made by local people, even though categories and guidelines have been imposed from Jakarta? Despite early efforts, not all local music has been commercially viable as a consumable commodity. Village genres of instrumental and vocal music continued to be performed for ceremonial occasions through the 1990s and, increasingly, for local, regional, and national contests and festivals, where the government played a determining role, but the media did not. Peter Manuel argues in his study of cassette culture in North India that regional cassette technology has made available a wide variety of genres and styles, encouraging new forms of syncretism, as well as ensuring "a place in consumer culture for archaic yet still expressive genres which might otherwise be increasinlgy vulnerable to obliteration by a homogenizing mass culture" (1993, 259). In South Sulawesi, although local musical expressions enjoy considerable popularity, the genres Manuel might label "archaic" or "the most traditional" would not seem to fare as well as in India, at least as consumer commodity. Rather, villagers maintain various noncommercial genres in more or less the same styles and performance contexts as have existed over the last several generations, if not more; but along with many observers, they report that support for these kinds of music has been waning for sometime. Where I see the most obvious challenges to these older traditions, however, is not from national or international popular music. Rather, it is from the local musicians whose music employs the styles and techniques of dangdut, kroncong, or Western rock but is still local in language and in signification. Without this, the need for local expression might turn more toward village traditions of ganrang, kecapi, and others. Artists like Iwan Tompo offer a powerful combination of appeal at the local level. He utilizes the musical techniques identified with modernity and establishes for these techniques a firm place in the three important realms of musical representation—cassette recordings, radio and television broadcast, and live performance. Like other local popular stars, he demonstrates the ability to be modern (at home with Western technology), Indonesian (drawing on various national popular music styles), and local (singing in Makassarese and Bugis with local nuance). What then of local empowerment? Even at the height of the New Order, popular music and the media that support it constituted an important site of local empowerment for South Sulawesi, arguably eclipsing that of the much touted traditional arts, which are increasingly seen as old fashioned and irrelevant by many. It is empowerment less of one ethnic group or social class over another, than of a plural and dynamic South Sulawesi finding a foothold in contemporary public culture, in Erlmann's "global chaos." Homogenization and

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effacement of local cultural diversity, if such is the project of mass media or the government, still has a way to go in South Sulawesi, despite the enormous presence of Western popular music and its Indonesian derivatives. Global and national are not merely imposed, they are also localized. And local forms, hybrid or not, both reify and blur traditional ethnic affiliations.

10 Conclusion

The preceding pages have attempted to trace multiple paths into, if not through, the complex world of music and dance in South Sulawesi. It has not been a single journey, but multiple departures, in hopes of avoiding the tendency for scholarship to contribute to a false essentializing—of "culture," "genre," and "identity"—and to an overarching grand narrative claiming to explain all. At times I have focused on individuals and genres identifiable as Makassarese (or Bugis, or Torajan), and often I have considered practices, events, and groups whose identity is mixed, multiple, or ambiguous. From the opening look at the Culture Week festival, the fit between ethnicity and genre has been shown to be highly problematic. Two of the prominent figures appearing throughout the book, Bu Nani Sapada and Halilintar, have Bugis ancestry but have figured centrally in activities involving Makassarese performance and in representing South Sulawesi to itself and to others. Guiding the journeys has been an ongoing concern with the different ways that the practices of music and dance in South Sulawesi, and of South Sulawesi when presented elsewhere, have engaged with power, in many senses of the word. Local performers, intellectuals, and bureacrats have sought to shape performance in response to expectations from a remote and Javanese-dominated national center. Artists from one district are coerced to perform in provincial festivals and to invent and compromise to conform to demands from the provincial center, replicating the hegemonic imbalance at a more local level. 229

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The saturation by Western-dominated popular culture and Indonesian derivatives through the mass media has produced an environment in which viable local forms of popular music appropriate much from the very forms from which they seek to distinguish themselves. Indeed, Slobin's and Appadurai's admonition about multiple hegemonies in the modern world is aptly demonstrated in the case of South Sulawesi. Local performance may celebrate local power of the past by telling about it: the dance-dramas depicting the story of Sultan Hasanuddin's war against the Dutch, the sinrilik singing of I Datu Museng's defiance of a Dutch ruler's demand to take his wife. Local performance may invoke power through its role in ritual, such as pakarena and the music accompanying it. From its mythical origins to the ceremonies performed to bless it, the Makassarese ganrang is closely associated with notions of indigenous spiritual power. The destruction of many of these drums and pakarena dance costumes during the Islamic rebellion and repression attest to the very real power these were felt to have. Even secular forms of expression, such as kacaping and singing, can be "powerful" in their hold over an audience, the performers dazzling their listeners with virtuosic fast fingers, and equally dexterous control of words as they weave narrative, humor, political commentary, and infectious instrumental passage work into a rapid-fire delivery. And magic strings and mirrors are said to have given the kacaping performer, additionally, uncanny powers of seduction. Presenting arts to a wider public of diverse ethnic backgrounds raises challenges, however. One or two singers, no matter how skillful their kacaping playing, cannot hope to hold an audience all night if they are singing in a language the audience does not understand. So too with performers of sinrilik. Thus, we find both sinrilik and kacaping presented on television with translations and comments in Indonesian and, on both radio and television, chopped or compressed into brief episodes. And we find Bu Nani's larger kecapi-suling ensemble (and still larger sinfoni kecapi) intended to make a grand impression, representing the local in the broader sense of South Sulawesi, and doing so for mixed audiences and audiences from outside the province. Unquestionably the sheer volume and density of sound of the ganrang have also made this music powerful as immediate, visceral experience. In recent years, its spread from Makassarese village ceremonies to a range of postmodern contexts, from opening official government events to serving as core music in Halilintar's polysemic "Dance of Gold," or his reinvented arts rituals, has been based on its impressive sound power. Even detached from its real or imagined doxa (Bourdieu 1977), where power arises from a full integration between movement, sound, community, and belief, ganrang playing can be "powerful" because it is powerfully loud and fast. And it is thus powerful not only for Makassarese but also for all who hear—Bugis, Javanese, foreign tourists, ethnomusicologists. The short vocal sections (dondo, leklek, kelong) are still in Makassarese, but they take their aesthetic effect not from the words but from the melodies and strange vocal timbres used in their delivery. Many of the forms that now widely represent South Sulawesi, to itself, to other Indonesians, and to the rest of the world, were consciously created to pro-

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vide South Sulawesi with an artistic corpus that would not require intimate knowledge of particular local conventions and beliefs. The trend toward secularization and engagement with larger communities, particularly the Indonesian nation, has produced important new forms of music and dance. Recordings of Djajadi Djamain and his Dasa Rama Band performing Latin-inspired arrangements of Makassarese songs spread throughout Indonesia. Bu Nani and her followers, including many who teach and choreograph today, built a secular tradition that very frequently reaches across ethnic boundaries for movement vocabulary, costume, music, and performers. To some her work gives legitimacy to the region and constitutes a tradition that incorporates the arts of "all four" of South Sulawesi's ethnic groups (in one case seven groups representing the entire island of Sulawesi), as often reifying their differences as combining them with each other or with elements from outside. Yet the legitimacy they strove for came at a cost that some have seen as an impoverishment of local performance, stripping it of its former uniqueness (Djamain's songs) or spiritual power and ritual associations (Bu Nani's dances). New arrangements of Makassarese songs by Iwan Tompo and others incorporate distinctly Indonesian rhythms and vocal styles. And Halilintar and his peers have sought to recapture the spiritual power of performance, not through accurate revival but through postmodern neo-rituals that juxtapose styles and genres, involving exemplary traditional village musicians and dancers along with South Sulawesi's most brazen experimental artists in a pastiche that confounds the very categories of "traditional" and "modern." They invoke a sense of local authenticity by their celebration of non-Indonesianized, nonsanitized performance, albeit packaged in profoundly new (hence, "inauthentic") events. One of the themes running through these chapters is the concern with "Indonesia" and particularly Java. From the need to create dance- dramas, to the system of formal education, and even to the relations with the Javanese avantgarde, South Sulawesi's performing arts community has had to navigate between respect and resentment, acceptance/imitation and resistance. In the works of some music composers, and quintessentially in the performance events conceived and staged by Halilintar Lathief, the tension between these seeming opposites can be seen to collapse into an ambiguous form that may imitate Javanese avant-garde in its approach, but champion the local by drawing thoroughly and exclusively on indigenous practices—and the very ones most closely associated with local power (parading of banners, demonstrations of invulnerability to fire and daggers, swearing of oaths, martial arts, and the least Javanized or Indonesianized forms of local music and dance). Packaged as patriotic celebrations of Indonesian independence, but utterly unorthodox, do these constitute resistance or accommodation, or an ambiguous mix of both, intentional or otherwise? As oppositional discourse, they challenge basic assumptions about performance and art, but at the same time they honor through mimesis the Javanese and international avant-garde. The image of the Javanese gamelan left on the stage at the SMKI festival in Jakarta in 1979 still looms in my mind as a poignant statement of the hegemonic

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status of the Javanese-dominated center —this, followed by Javanese Sumiani teaching and choreographing local dances, artists from South Sulawesi seeking their credentials at Javanese institutions, and recurrent discourse in the local press about measuring up to Java (and Bali). The entire staff of music and dance teachers at IKIP (UNM) have advanced degrees from Java (ISI in Yogyakarta), and a growing number of teachers at SMKI (SMKN) undergo training in Java. It is not just the few radical artists who contribute to, and react to, South Sulawesi's postmodern condition. The constantly shifting goals and approaches to formal education in music and dance have produced an atmosphere of confusion, lack of depth, and postmodern celebration of difference. The Culture Week festival organizers and performance clubs act within this world as well, programming their own juxtapositions, mirroring the array of "traditional" houses built next to and within the ruins of Fort Somba Opu. And popular musicians, such as Iwan Tompo, not only compose and perform songs based on Western harmonies, accompanied by guitars or electronic keyboards, but also sing older standards that may accompany local dances and themselves join in "old folks' ensembles" to represent the ancient kingdom of Gowa at a festival in Java or at Taman Mini cultural park in Jakarta.

REPRESENTATION The politics of representation—who represents whom or what, by what means, in what contexts—has been a central concern in this book, as indeed it is in the lives of many of those involved in the performing arts in South Sulawesi. In many cases, those privileged to represent "Makassarese" music, or "Torajan" dance, or regional arts (Ind. kesenian daerah) of South Sulawesi are not those with the greatest skills, deepest knowledge, or the expected ethnic background. Lacking the requisite formal education, Daeng Mile did not teach at IKIP or SMKI. Lacking connections in the provincial capital, able Torajan groups, for example, are less often seen performing Torajan dances at the governor's mansion than the mixed, but largely non-Torajan sanggars such as YAMA. One of the most talked-about incidents in performing arts circles in 1995, spilling over to 1996, was the choice of a dance and music group to represent the province of South Sulawesi at the festival of regional dance (Festival Tarian Rakyat Nusantara) in Jakarta. Over the objections of many of South Sulawesi's best known performers, the group finally chosen had prepared a lively dance for men and women playing tambourines, accompanied by a small ensemble featuring trumpet and bass drum: "Ri Pa'buntingang" (Mks.; "At the Wedding") by Abdi Bashit. The music ensemble was close to the local variant of the Western-derived small brass ensemble, known as tanjidor. Prior to the explosion of dangdut in the 1970s and occasionally since then, tanjidor bands have played for weddings and other family ceremonies, offering a reportory of Latin American, American, Indonesian, and local diatonic songs. For this performance, the group played and sang a song in Makassarese about newlyweds (Mks.

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"Bunting Berua"). To the trained eye, the dance movements skillfully combined elements of Makassarese acrobatic (ragd) and local martial arts (pancak) by the men and occasional traces of pakarena by the women, but these were only subtly worked into a choreography that resembled none of the standard "traditional" dances of any of the four main local ethnic groups. Instead it struck many viewers as most similar to Minangkabau dances (from West Sumatra), and the music, though a Makassarese song, employed Western diatonic melody, harmony, and instruments. The choreography was interesting, the dancers and musicians well rehearsed, the tune catchy, but was this what South Sulawesi should send to Jakarta? In discussions about this, I heard one complaint after another about the inappropriateness of this choice. It was not "traditional" in the way that the Jakarta jury (made up almost entirely of prominent figures in Javanese and Balinese dance) would expect. But most important, in movement, costume, and music its association with South Sulawesi was not obvious. It betrayed expectations of an essentialized, compartmentalized ethnic identity. Not that South Sulawesi could or should have sent something pan-provincial (such as Munasiah's "Tari Kalompoang" with each dancer costumed in a different ethnic attire), but rather that it should have chosen something that was clearly of one local ethnic group, at least—something inspired and still perceptibly related to a Makassarese pakarena, a Bugis pajaga, a Torajan pagelluk. At the festival in Jakarta, where each participating group was judged for possible awards, the group failed to win even honorable mention. As this news reached South Sulawesi, cries of "See, I told you so" were heard across the city and out to the various dance and music groups whose offerings in the preliminary contest in Ujung Pandang had been more closely modeled on local practice, and more obviously so. One of these might have fared better in Jakarta than Bashit's work. In conversation with two of the Javanese on the jury some months after the event, the complaints of those who objected to sending Bashit's group were verified—I was told flatly that the group from South Sulawesi was not sufficiently asli (Ind.; authentic, original, indigenous), an opinion based on prior representations of and by South Sulawesi to other Indonesians, at previous festivals and through television. We can see here the workings of Javanese-dominated Indonesian hegemony, dictating the terms on which it chooses to encounter artistic work from "the regions." And as often happens in response to hegemonic domination, nearly all of those concerned pointed the blame at Bashit himself and at the few decision makers in South Sulawesi who made the bold choice to send Bashit's group rather than "the usual." One of the chief supporters of choosing this work of Bashit was a senior civil servant at the Department of Education and Culture. He was about to retire and, he told me, was promoting Bashit's work precisely because it broke with stereotypical expectations at the national level. In short, this work—though hardly radical compared to Halilintar's neo-rituals—was a kind of oppositional discourse, defying expectations at both the national and provincial levels (the latter forming its expectations in this case in conformity with those of the former).

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In September 1999, a group of local artists in Ujung Pandang hosted the Makassar Arts Forum. They used the English title to emphasize its international dimension and anticipated the name shift of the city (back to Makassar). Performers and arts scholars were invited from Canada, Australia, the United States, and Korea, as well as Jakarta and Surakarta. Local theater groups, musical groups, and choreographers presented their own original works at several venues in downtown Ujung Pandang. Here the items were not expected to reflect particular ethnicities and, of what I saw in rehearsal immediately beforehand, most did not. Yet the entire event was a concerted effort by local artists to make a statement to larger arts communities, and in particular to Jakarta, Bandung, and Central Java, where similar international festivals have brought performers from around the country and from overseas. The Makassar Arts Forum received heavy press coverage nationally, with articles in the widely read Kompas appearing before the forum began and nearly every day of while it was taking place. Yet the all-important footnote to this instance of local efforts at empowerment is that the adviser and "curator" for the forum was Mas Halim HD, an experienced arts coordinator from Surakarta, Central Java. LOCAL PERFORMANCE AND LOCAL POWER: CALLING BACK THE SPIRIT Six weeks after the Makassar Arts Forum hosted its global, national, and local interaction in the city soon to be renamed Makassar, and only days after Javanese Abdurrahman Wahid and Megawati Sukarnoputri had been chosen president and vice president of Indonesia, students from the city's major universities called for the establishment of an independent Sulawesi nation, marching in the streets, waving a "Free Sulawesi" banner at the governor's office, and lowering the Indonesian flag to half-mast at the airport. Sporadic calls for independence have arisen since, as local people vent their frustration with a national government that is, after a brief period of transition under a president raised in South Sulawesi (B. J. Habibie grew up in Pare-Pare), once again in the hands of Javanese. As this goes to the publisher, the Indonesian nation seems closer to breaking apart than at any time since 1965. As events have shown all too brutally in the late 1990s and early 2000s, discontent over local relations with the Javanese-dominated national government, and particularly its military, has led to protracted and bloody conflicts in Aceh, Papua, and most famously, Timor. And conflicts along ethnic and religious lines have also flared, from West Kalimantan to the Moluccas, Lombok, and Central Sulawesi. Performing artists are not in the headlines when it comes to these open hostilities. Yet we have seen in the preceding pages the extent to which local performers have used received tradition, reshaped it, and reasserted it, to establish a measure of local power in the larger worlds of cultural discourse. Their music and dance have seen enormous challenges and undergone radical transformation in the last half of the twentieth century. As I suggested in the Introduction, the process has threatened these arts with a loss of spirit. If anything might tie

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together the efforts of Bu Nani, Halilintar, Mappaselleng, Daeng Mile, and Iwan Tompo—from the interpenetrating worlds of secular dance, neo-ritual, epic narrative, village drumming, and local pop music—it is the persistent effort to nurture and sustain local performance, to reinvigorate it. However contrary their approaches may have been, all have sought to keep the local arts vigorous, calling back their spirit to ensure a continued and healthy presence for them in an uncertain future.


Notes

CHAPTER I 1. On the Bugis ceremony (also written pakurrusumange'), see Errington 1989b, 51-53, with further elucidation in Forth 1992. The secular dance was choreographed by Ida Joesoef Madjid (see chapter 3). 2. The name of this city for many centuries was Makassar, but in an effort to efface ethnicity—particularly in the name of a provincial capital where the dominant ethnic group was Bugis, not Makassarese—a decision was made in August 1971 to change the name to Ujung Pandang, based on an old name for a part of the city. This caused great discontent among the Makassarese population, and in October 1999 the (Bugis) governor announced that the name would revert to Makassar, beginning 1 January 2000. 3. Cf. Slobin 1993, 27, 76; Mbembe 1992, 5-6; Myers 1994, 680; Guilbault 1993b, 35. 4. Two volumes of a lengthy manuscript version attributed to Arung Pancana Toa have recently been published, with transliteration and translation into Indonesian by Muhammad Salim and Fachruddin Ambo Enre. For an excellent article on this complex work, see Koolhof 1999. 5. Those with significant passages on performing arts range from personal accounts by sailor/adventurer George Collins (1937) to the more analytical and scholarly descriptions by anthropologists Raymond Kennedy (1953) and Henri Chabot (1950, 1996). The work of French scholars Christian Pelras and Gilbert Hamonic has covered various aspects of ritual and religion, primarily of the Bugis (Pelras 1971, 1974, 1975a, 1983, 1996; and Hamonic 1975, 1980, 1987, 1988, 1991). And several scholars have looked at the role of the Chinese in the musical life of Makassar (Hamonic and Salmon 1983; Tol 1991). American anthropologists Millar and Errington have written important ethnographic studies based on extensive field research among the Bugis in Soppeng (Millar 1989) and in Luwu (Errington 1989b). 6. He states that the "professional" dances, including many performed at Bugis and Makassarese courts, were simply imports from Java, rather than indigenous. Indeed,

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there is some plausible evidence in support of Javanese influence. Kaudern's suggestion of Javanese origins has been taken up by local artist-intellectuals as the most plausible theory for such forms as the Bugis pajoge', a flirtatious solo female dance thought to be derived from Java (cf. the Javanese vernacular for dance: joged). 7. Somewhat more useful in the historical perspective they provide are the photographs of musicians and dancers performing, despite some questionable captions. It is more likely that what is identified in photograph No. 31 (Kunst 1994, 194) aspakarena performed by "royal Buginese girls at the Luwu court of Palopo" is actually Bugis pajaga—both dances are stately dances by a group of girls or women each holding a fan, but pakarena is Makassarese. 8. An earlier version of what follows as chapter 3 in this study also appeared as an article in Asian Music (Sutton 1998). 9. My discussion of Indonesian cultural policy is necessarily brief here. Important resources on this topic include a booklet on the topic by former Director General of Culture Haryati Soebadio (1985), Ramstedt's study of government policy and the arts in Bali (1992), and Yampolsky's overview of forces affecting change in Indonesia's performing arts (1995). 10. For critical analysis of this cultural park, see Pemberton 1994a and 1994b. Ethnicity is not erased altogether, however. For a description of the Torajan house at the South Sulawesi pavilion, see Lumowah 1985. 11. South Sulawesi (Sulawesi Selatan, acronym Sulsel) has existed as a province since 1964. Prior to that, from 1960 to early 1964, it was part of the province of South and Southeast Sulawesi (Sulawesi Selatan dan Tenggara, acronym Sulselra). In 1945, only days after Indonesia's declaration of Independence, it became part of newly established province of Sulawesi, though this status was not solidified until the demise of the pro-Dutch Nation of East Indonesia at the end of the decade. Effectively, the southwestern peninsula was part of a single Sulawesi province of the Republic of Indonesia from 1950 to 1960. 12. These figures are based on estimates in Pelras 1996, 12; and Caldwell 1990, 62. 13. See Reid's seminal article on this phenomenal rise to power (1983), and the source readings compiled by Patunru (1969). 14. Cf. Cunningham's remarks on the Makassarese as "poor-cousins in the local social structure" (1979, 273). 15. A lengthy account of this period is given in Agung 1996 (a translated into English of Agung 1985). A bilingual description (Indonesian and Dutch) of the NIT Cultural Center at Fort Rotterdam, Makassar, is given in Anon. 1949. 16. On Muzakkar, see Djarwadi [1963]; Manuhua 1965; Mattalioe 1965; Harvey 1974; and Gonggong 1992. Mattalioe was himself a former follower of Muzakkar. 17. Though quelled in the south after only three months, it continued in the north for several years. See Harvey 1977. CHAPTER 2 1. In response to objections from a number of districts, the Department of Tourism accepted proposals from some to construct houses whose plans diverged somewhat from those the department had provided. See the Kajang house photograph in chapter 1. These were built, along with four major houses representing the four main ethnic groups, within the walls of the old fort, among the ruins. This portion of the park was referred to as kawasan rumah adat (Ind.; area of customary/traditional houses); the other


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section, outside the old fort, as kawasan rumah tradisional. While both terms translate into English as "traditional," the Indonesian term tradisional suggests a less binding link with the cultural past and "a lesser cultural value than adat" (Robinson 1997, 82). 2. A few local performer-scholars have written on kondo buleng. See Lathief 1976a and Syariff 1991. Holt describes a version she saw in 1938 (Holt 1939/1980, 18-21). 3. The cultural status of Chinese, suppressed for most of the New Order era (1966-1998), began to change following the resignation of Suharto. The official public display of cultural performance held at the governor's mansion on Indonesian Independence day (17 August) in 1998 and 1999, for example, featured appearances by local Chinese groups: children dancers in 1998, and the more ostentatious lion's dance (barong sai) in 1999. See chapter 9. 4. In Bugis, tudang means "sit"; sipulung means "gather together." 5. Many of the local Torajans I spoke with during my visit there in August 1993 expressed not only recognition of the transformations but varying degrees of concern. For scholarly studies of tourism's impact in the Toraja highlands, see Adams 1991, 1993, 1995, 1997; Crystal 1977; Volkman 1982, 1984, 1987, 1990; and Yamashita 1994. 6. Hamonic has written extensively about the bissu and their language. See Hamonic 1975 and esp. 1987. See also Sirk 1975; Hamzah 1979; and Pelras 1996. 7. Best-known in the 1990s has been the bissu community in Segeri, in the district of Pangkep (Pangkajene-Kepulauan), though others are found in Soppeng, Bone, and Luwu. See Gesuri 1993 and the works of Hamonic. 8. Daeng is a Bugis and Makassarese term meaning "older sibling"—of either sex—and is still understood in some contexts to refer to lesser nobility, those born above the rank of commoner (or the now obsolete rank of slave). In recent decades, however, the term has increasingly come to be a polite term of address, no longer a clear indicator of social rank (and, in my experience, more often used for males). 9. Dangdut musical style draws most heavily on Indian film music and on aspects of Western rock (especially instrumentation). It is interpreted by some scholars to incorporate some rhythmic and melodic elements from melayu music of North Sumatra, as well, although this is articulately contested by Yampolsky (1987, 45). The term was coined in the early 1970s. See Frederick 1982. 10. "Monumen sejarah yang menyimpan berbagai misteri masa lampau" (Dicky Tjandra, Pedoman Rakyat, 4 August 1991, 10). 11. "Memang telah menjadi tekad pemerintah secara sungguh-sungguh, bahwa... sektor pelestarian budaya daerah serta pengembangan kepariwisatanaan semakin dirangsang pertumbuhannya. Oleh karena itu Pekan Budaya Sulawesi Selatan ke III 1992 ini, merupakan sebuah cermin disektor pembangunan pariwisata" (Saltik, Pedoman Rakyat, 26 July 1992, 10). 12. "Dalam sambutannya ketika membuka Pekan Kebudayaan, Gubernur mengatakan, kegiatan semacam ini yang mulai diadakan sejak 1990 dimaksudkan sebagai usaha menggali, membina dan mengembangkan kebudayaan daerah sebagai bagian kebudayaan nasional. Juga sekaligus dijadikan arena promosi yang dapat meningkatkan minat dan arus wisatawan berkunjung ke daerah ini ... pentingnya menggali kebudayaan daerah bukan karena kebudayaan merupakan salah satu obyek dan daya tarik wisata... tetapi merupakan pencerminan jati diri bangsa yang dapat menjadi penangkal sekaligus pengikat keutuhan nasional" (Pedoman Rakyat, 22 July 1992, 12). 13. "Dr. Mukhlis Paeni kepada PR mengatakan, sejak awal memang menggaet wisman itu bukan target utama. Tujuan pelaksanaan Pekan Budaya... ini lebih terfokus pada pencarian jati diri. Mukhlis berkali-kali menekankan, pekan budaya ini hanya

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terfokus pada usaha menanamkan kerinduan budaya sekaligus sebagai usaha menginventarisir budaya Sulsel" (Pedoman Rakyat, 23 July 1992, 1). 14. "Dalam pekan budaya itu akan diupayakan terciptanya kebersamaan kebudayaan Sulawesi Selatan yang didukung empat etnis yang ada di daerah tersebut, yaitu Bugis, Makassar, Mandar dan Toraja. Pada sektor-sektor tertentu ada kegiatan menggambarkan keempat etnis tersebut, tetapi pada kegiatan tertentu lainnya keempat etnis tersebut mencerminkan kebersamaan, sehingga tidak terlalu menonjolkan daerahdaerah kabupaten" (Pedoman Rakyat, 3 June 1991, 7). 15. "Bahkan ada daerah yang tampil pada karnaval itu mengambil penari dari daerah lain. Ini kurang beres, kan" (Pedoman Rakyat, 20 July 1991, 12). 16. "Merupakan suatu fenomena yang amat terkait dengan latar belakang budaya, sejarah, geografis, wilayah, politik, pemerintahan dan demografis" (Pedoman Rakyat, 11 August 1995, 7). 17. "Cermin masyarakat Sulsel kontemporer. . . . Di satu sisi kita tak ingin kehilangan akar di sisi lain kita tanggung menerima masukan dari luar" (Pedoman Rakyat, 9 September 1990, 3-4). 18. "Kali ini, modus sajian dari pementasan adik Pusaka 'Bunga Rampai Sombaopu" berlandaskan seni-budaya tradisional Makassar. Mulai dari bahasa, dialog, tari, kostum, musik, properti dan lainnya. Bernafas roh dan budaya Makassar" (Pedoman Rakyat, 21 July 1991, 3). 19. " Suasana perang hanya sebagai kesan-kesan selintas, tetapi yang menjadi tekanan cerita Drama ini terletak pada konflik ide dan manusia, antara penjajahan dan perlawanan patriotik. Drama ini ... tidak berpretensi mengungkap data sejarah, melainkan terutama upaya interpretasi terhadap 'roh sejarah' dikaitkan dengan kepentingan massa depan bangsa" (Pedoman Rakyat 23 July 1991, 12). 20. Sukatanya, also known as Eddy Thamrin, is from the island of Selayar, one of South Sulawesi's twenty-one districts (kabupaten) generally considered to be culturally Makassarese on the basis of local language (a dialect of Makassarese) and other practices. 21. "Melestarikan budaya . . . Sulawesi Selatan" (Dicky Tjandra, Pedoman Rakyat, 4 August 1991, 10). 22. "Haruslah kita akui, perkembangan budaya Sulsel ternyata cukup ketinggalan jika dibanding dengan perkembangan budaya di daerah-daerah lain di nusantara... budaya Sulsel. . . kurang memberikan kontribusi dalam perkembangan budaya nasional" (Pedoman Rakyat, 27 July 1990, 4). 23. "Penyebabanya tentu tidak terlepas dari sikap masyarakat kita selama ini yang kadang 'kurang senonoh' dalam memperlakukan budayanya sendiri" (Pedoman Rakyat, 27 July 1990, 4). 24. "Sulsel sendiri sangat jarang diberi kesempatan. Penyebabnya, tentu saja karena kesenian di daerah ini belum mampu menyesuaikan diri dengan kebutuhan zaman" (Jurlan Em Saho'as, in Pedoman Rakyat, 23 July 1993, 11). CHAPTER 3 1. Though South Sulawesi had agreed to join the Negara Indonesia Timur (NIT) in December 1946, many people, including Bu Nani's father, were ardent supporters of a free Republic of Indonesia and resisted the NIT. In an effort to stamp out this resistance against the Dutch claims on South Sulawesi from pro-Republican forces, the Dutch resorted to a campaign of "arbitrary terror" and mass killings under Westerling from December 1946 through part of 1947 (Ricklefs 1993, 224).

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2. The name of the group translates as "Good Hope," "Good Aspirations." In the spelling now used by Makassarese linguists, this name would be written "Bajik Minasa." 3. For example, green had been reserved for the highest nobility and other colors (red, purple, etc.) signified various stages of intermediate ranks and whether one was married or not. 4. Bu Nani and her husband certainly knew of the combination of multi-octave kecapi zither with suling in Sunda, but the instruments known as kecapi in South Sulawesi bear little resemblance to the Sundanese one. And the sound of kecapi-suling differs markedly between the two regions. 5. The terms for instruments are given here with Bugis and Makassarese spellings: lea-lea is Bugis, lae-lae is Makassarese; beccing is Bugis, baccing Makassarese. 6. On pajoge' see Kaudern 1927b, 473-477; Holt 1939/1980, 87-93; Kennedy 1953, 67-68, 74, 103-106; Sumarjo et al. 1972, 32-33; Nadjamuddin 1982, 191-216; Lathief 1983, 43-49. 7. Lathief (1983, 43) suggests specifically a Jakarta/Batavia origin deriving from exposure to ronggeng and other forms experienced by soldiers of the seventeenth- century Bugis warrior king Arung Palakka. The vernacular Javanese term for dance is joged. The Bugis term may derive the Malay joget (social dancing in which a professional female dancer entertains males who may dance with her). 8. Holt gives the Makassarese term kawe-kawe, which she incorrectly identifies as both Makassarese and Buginese (1939, 87). 9. "Ongkona Arumpone" translates from Bugis as "Favorite of the King of Bone." According to Bu Nani, it was formerly known as "Radigambong" (Sapada 1975, 93-94). I am not aware of any translatable meaning for "Radigambong" or for "Kandope." 10. "Dengan kesempatan-kesempatan ini, Sulawesi Selatan telah memotong jalan sejarah perkembangan seni Tarinya dalam mensejajarkan dirinya dengan seni Tari dari daerah-daerah Bali dan Jawa" (Soepanto et al. 1991, 2). 11. "Dengan seni, seniman menghapuskan batas-batas yang mempertegas pertentangan antar suku. Dengan kesenimannannya, seniman berhasil membuat seni daerah bukan hanya milik daerah ini, melainkan milik nasional" (ibid.). CHAPTER 4 1. "Kehadiran fragmen tari 'Bunting Mangkasara' . . . bukan hanya menyajikan aneka ragam dan kekayaan nilai budaya etnis Makassar Sulawesi Selatan, tetapi pergelaran ini juga merupakan penghormatan dan upaya pelestarian nilai budaya yang diwariskan oleh leluhur kita. Kekayaan nilai budaya terseut adalah juga kekayaan dan kebanggaan kita bersama. Itu juga bagian dari kekayaan bangsa" (Bachtiar Dg. Leo in Bunting Mangkasara [Program], 1994, 1). 2. "Dimalatn hari ini, kita mengalami suatu perasaan bathin yang sama dalam lingkungan suasana pasca panen di kampung halaman .. . bagi kita warga KKSS yang sudah lama meninggalkan kampung halaman akan merupakan kilas-balik (flash back) kehidupan di masa kanak-kanan kita dulu. Dan bagi anak-anak kita, sekurang-kurangnya dapat dijadikan stimulasi apresiasi terhadap kekayaan seni dan budaya bangsa" (Amang in Panorama Budaya Sulawesi-Selatan [Program], 1993, 5). 3. ASTI is the abbreviation for Akademi Seni Tari Indonesia (Indonesian Dance Academy). It was still ASTI when Halilintar first entered as a student in the early 1980s.


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4. He described for me a dance he choreographed in the late 1970s involving spirit possession and self-stabbing with daggers (keris), in which he himself was not fully in trance and accidentally drew his own blood as the dagger penetrated his neck. 5. This according to several literature scholars (Djirong Basang and Mukhlis), and an older dancer — Pak Manda, teacher at SMKI and a recognized theorist of Makassarese dance, especially pakarena (see Manda 1980). 6. Pakarena and salonreng were formerly performed for royal ceremonies, but with the demise of the courts, they have found new patronage among wealthier villagers of nonroyal rank. Salonreng is specifically associated with the sacrifice of water buffalo and the protection of the ritual participants from potential harmful lingering of the water buffalo spirits (Lathief and Taba 1995). 7. "Samparajae," a Bugis term which translates literally as "the anchor with two prongs," is the name of a sacred heirloom banner belonging to the king of Bone, part of his royal regalia (Bgs. arajang). 8. Tunrung is a Makassarese term for beating the larger of the two drumheads with a stick (bakbalak)', tumbuk refers to beating this head with the bare hand. Beating the smaller head, which involves an open palm slap, is called tempana. The term tunrung here indicates that the drum patterns rely entirely, or nearly so, on a combination of stick beating on the large head, with the usual open palm slap on the smaller head. 9. Sere Palanro is a dance-drama depicting the making of metal weapons (Bgs. palanm) and their use by fearless young soldiers, ready to go to war. It is noteworthy instead of using the Indonesian term tari (dance) Halilintar chose the local term sere, Makassarese (and Bugis?) for dance, particularly "war dance" (Cense 1979, 688). CHAPTER 5 1 . This genre is widely practiced throughout much of Islamic Indonesia, including South Sulawesi, where it is even taught at the arts high school (SMKI) near Ujung Pandang. 2. This is a Melayu social dance deriving from the Deli region on the east coast of Sumatra. Its name can be interpreted to mean "twelve" (Ind. duabelas) parts/variations (Soedarsono 1974, 214). 3. While I do not wish to overemphasize the connection between dangdut and Islam, there is, nevertheless, only a thin stylistic line between the musical sound of dangdut and that of the explicitly Islamic genres qasidah moderen and orkes gambus. See Frederick 1982 and Yampolsky 1987, 40, 45-47. 4. "Dengan satu tekad — yaitu seni kita kaitkan, atau kita bangkitkan, kita kembalikan (ke)pada patriotisme bangsa" (Darmawan, welcoming speech, 13 August 1994). 5. Although these instruments have strings around most of the circumference of the bamboo tubes, the players do not pluck the strings, but strike the ends of the bamboo tubes, like drums, and the resulting tone causes the strings to vibrate. In recent decades ganrang bulo has more often been presented as a children's dance, each child dancing and playing not idiochord tube-zithers, but bamboo castanets. See Mangemba 1958b for a brief description of the tube-zither instrument and its playing technique. And see Lintin et al. 1983a for description of a lengthy performance with dialog, songs, and dancers in Sero (Serok), Katangka, kabupaten Gowa. 6. Mks.; "Steep Slope on One Side" —referring to the location, on the boundary between Gowa and Takalar districts, where Daeng Mile and members of his group live. 7. The text of Sardono's directive was given at the end of the Petunjuk Pelaksanaan Tari Emas booklet, part of a three-page letter on letterhead stationery from De-

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partment of Education and Culture, Taman Budaya Surakarta (Cultural Garden of Surakarta). The original Indonesian of the portion translated here is as follows: 1 . Jumlah penari emas tiap wilayah minimal 50 orang. 2. Jenis kelamin penari disesuaikan kebutuhan/gagasan masing-masing koreografer. 3. Bentuk tarian, kostum, iringan musik dan perlengkapan tambahan disesuaikan dengan gagasan masing-masing koreografer. 4. Gerakan tari dilakukan dengan diam membisu, serta dijauhkan dari hal-hal yang bersifat emosional. Sama sekali kontemplatif, tidak merupakan protes sosial. Juga tidak mengikutsertakan slogan-slogan verbal, tertulis maupun pembacaan narasi atau puisi. 5. Tata rias penari adalah bebas, namun untuk menjaga kesatuan maka akan ada penari yang berwarna emas. Untuk bahannya akan dikirim dari Tim Kerja. 6. Awal penyajian adalah bebas, namun akhirnya adalah tepat pukul 10:00 WIB, yaitu dengan mendengarkan pembacaan teks proklamasi. (Sardono 1995) The booklet was published not only as a guide for the participating dancers, musicians, and documentation team (of which I found myself to have been listed as a member) but also to be shown to government officials in order to obtain necessary clearance and permits. 8. Halilintar's familiarity with Sardono and other prominent Javanese figures was well known by his students and followers in South Sulawesi and certainly an important element in his own stature among them. Yet Halilintar was not alone in this. Many of South Sulawesi's best known creative performing artists have drawn upon their study experiences on Java and to present new creative works there (in Surakarta, Yogyakarta, and Bandung, as well as Jakarta), supporting their claim to artistic accomplishment at least in part by having connections to the "center" that they may revile, but also envy and, in some ways, respect. CHAPTER 6 1. "Tidak jarang pula seorang pasinrilik tidak mau terlalu terikat dengan bahasa naskah. Yang diambil adalah ide cerita dan penahapan-penahapan adegan di dalam cerita kemudian merangkainya dengan gaya dan bahasanya sendiri" (Arief and Hakim 1993, 5). 2. In the early days of RRI, sinrilik was performed live in the studio. 3. "Beberapa tahun terakhir ini sinrilik semakin mendapat tempat di hati masyarakat, terutama kalangan generasi muda setelah cerita-cerita dalam sinrilik . . . diangkat ke televisi. . . . Sinrilik bukan lagi monopoli orang Makassar, tetapi etnis-etnis lain yang ada di Sulawesi Selatan pun menganggap sinrilik itu juga miliknya" (Arief and Hakim 1993, 5). 4. For the sinrilik transcriptions here, and for the kacaping and vocal transcriptions in the next section, I use Western staff notation with some unconventional alterations. The key signatures are based on the pitch vocabulary of the singers and players, and may involve a combination of sharps and flats. In the first example, the use of B flat along with F sharp and G sharp simply avoids having to introduce frequent accidentals differentiating the A from the next pitch above (which might have been conceptualized and written as an A sharp). Moreover, the pitch is consistently somewhat higher than a B flat. Other pitches audibly above or below the pitch notated, by roughly a quarter tone (50 cents), are indicated with vertical arrows. Rhythm is proportional except for the use of a

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whole note with single arc following (as if a tie) to indicate a long held single tone, sometimes with vibrato or trill. Vertical alignment determines the duration. Thus, a whole note with thirteen eighth notes above it in the vocal part should be understood to last the full thirteen eighths. As a consistent meter is not evident, I have chosen not to suggest meter with a time signature or even to insert any bar lines. Groupings of eighth notes correspond with words (or occasionally short phrases) and are horizontally barred simply to facilitate reading, rather than flagging each eighth note separately. 5. Sink na pacce is a well-known Makassarese expression, often invoked as the essence of Makassarese "character" and implying quick to anger, at having been shamed, but then quick to forgive. Another translation might be "affront, then mercy." 6. When referring specifically to members of this family of instruments from just one ethnic group, I use the appropriate language—e.g., Makassarese kacaping. However, in the instances where I wish simply to indicate a two-string boat-lute from South Sulawesi, I use the Indonesian term kecapi. Sources providing perspectives on the varieties of kecapi, their music and contexts are Kaudern 1927a; Hasan et al. 1995; Lathief 1980, 1994a, 1996c; Yasiletal. 1986; and Yampolsky 1998. 7. Comparing various kecapi he measured in 1996, Yampolsky observed that the Bugis and Makassarese instruments are "more or less standardized at a body length of roughly 85-95 cm, a string length of ca. 45-47 cm, and a width (at the widest point) of 7-9 cm" (1998, 8). 8. Instead of grip, Hasan et al. use words for "tooth": isi (Bgs.), gigi (Mks. and Ind.) and even tuts (a corruption of the English word "tooth") (1995, 13-15). Most of the Makassarese musicians I spoke with used grip (or grif). 9. "Kecapi sebagai alat musik tradisional sejak adanya tidak dikenal di Istana rajaraja seperti halnya dengan kesenian lainnya. . . . Jadi pada dasarnya alat musik kecapi adalah milik masyarakat petani di pedesaan" (Hasan et al. 1995, 3-4). 10. "Konon bila dawai kecapi yang digunakan adalah dawai yang terbuat dari tali swasa (logam bercampur emas), maka akan mebuat gadis pujaan tergila-gila. Karena banyaknya kasus kawin lari pada jaman dahulu yang disebabkan oleh mantera kecapi swasa ini, maka kecapi semacam ini dilarang" (Lathief 1994a, 38). 11. The word riak is Makassarese for "movement," "commotion." As used in this text, however, it is obviously a filler, rather than a part of the narrative text. 12. The italicized text, beginning with deng riak after the word kuassengi, consists of sounds and words that either have no lexical meaning or are employed here for rapid vocalization and not joined in a coherent phrase or sentence. Deng may be a contracted form of daeng, a common form of address. Riak can mean "in movement"; laku-laku can mean "moving" or "walking"; didi means "yellow" or "reddish yellow"; karaeng is a title for king or nobility; and so forth. Pak Rajab thought it would be fruitless and even misleading to present word-for-word translations of passages such as this one, since it was clear to him that these passages were serving as vocables. Thus, I have opted here not to include translations of this and similar subsequent passages, and to use italics to set them off from the rest of the text. CHAPTER 7 1. Indeed, ensembles featuring drums and oboe are found throughout much of Indonesia south and west of Sulawesi: Sumbawa (Bima), Lombok (not Bali), Madura, Java, and many areas of Sumatra. 2. "I Lolo Bajo Karaeng Sanrobone mengadakan sayembara: 'membuat yang mendatangkan manfaat.' Pemenang dari sayembara itu bercerita tentang sebuah gen-


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dang besar yang terbuat dari sebatang pohon mangga yang linkaran batangnya 100 depa. Kulit yang digunakan adalah kulit seekor kerbau jantan yang tanduknya bisa ditempati orang duduk bersila diatasnya. Rotan yang digunakan mengikat gendang tersebut adalah sebuah rotan yang sangat panjang, tujuh kali keliling lingkaran bumi masih tersisa. Konon gendang maha besar tyersebut digantung pada sebuah rumah panggung besar dan tinggi. Ketinggian rumah tersebut dilukiskan sama dengan apabila sebuitr telur ayam yang baru keluar dari induknya dijatuhkan dari atas rumah itu ke tanah, maka telur tersebut telah menetas sebelum tiba di tanah. Digambarkan pula bahwa manusia yang memukulnya adalah seorang manusia yang sangat besar yang dapat melangkahi sebuah gunung. Apabila gendang ini dipukul, maka segenap rakyat berdatangan untuk mendengarkan hajat raja yang berupa titan atau sebuah pengumuman. Syahdan setelah mendengar cerita ini, Banri Manurung I Lolo Bajo memerintahkan menciptakan hiburan-hiburan dengan menggunakan gendang sebagai salah satu instrumen musiknya" (Lathief 1996b, 14-15). 3. Although taught in elementary school, this alphabet is quickly forgotten by students in secondary school, since nearly all local publication has used Roman alphabet since the end of the nineteenth century. 4. In my many conversations, I often heard status differentiated with reference to karaeng, daeng, and samarak or maradeka, but not ata (Mks.; slave), nor the more elaborate divisions described by Friedericy in his work from the colonial era (1933, esp. 454-56, 460-461). 5. Lathief and Sumiani state that the term salonreng is indeed a Makassarese word for what is called selendang in Indonesian (1995, 206), although no dictionary gives this definition. In a version from Bulukumba described by Lathief and Taba (1995, 32-46), the dancers did not use a shawl or stole. 6. The best known female dance associated with the Bugis court of Luwu is called pajaga, a form now seen in shortened stage-oriented versions. 7. According to Makassarese dance teacher Manda, salonreng is appropriately performed at this point, its ritual function being to escort animal spirits to the afterworld, preventing them from hovering around the site of the ritual and potentially disturbing those people present by entering their bodies (personal communication, 1 August 1996). Daeng Mile also noted this core association for salonreng, but mentioned that it may also be performed around objects of ritual importance—often buffalo meat that has been cut up, a buffalo head, or even the person central to the ceremony (such as a boy just circumcised) actually sitting on a pile of buffalo meat, on a cloth to protect him from the blood and fat, but also other kinds of spiritually powerful objects (kalompoang; personal communication, 22 July 1996). 8. Eleven other pakarena dances from the districts of Gowa and Takalar are also known, though less commonly performed. See Lathief and Sumiani (1995, 236-246) and Manda (1980, 13). Lathief and Sumiani also list several other pakarena from Selayar. 9. The flexibility in sequence and in naming sections has resulted in a somewhat different progression here than that given by Lathief and Sumiani for the same pakarena performed by Daeng Mile and his group several years previously (1995, 287-295). 10. As mentioned in chapter 4, Lathief offered a similar scheme relating these same four elements to body parts, but with earth represented by torso, fire by legs, wind (air) by head, and water by hips and groin. 11. The same downward gaze applies to Javanese dance as well, looking no more than three meters in front. I am not promoting a view of Makassarese pakarena and Javanese court dance deriving from one another, although distant historical links seem

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likely. Many Javanese, when first exposed to pakarena, exclaim how its slow, refined character—and even some of its movements—resembles the most refined Javanese court dances, serimpi and bedhaya, both of which are also performed by a group of female dancers. CHAPTER 8 1. Along with many other IKIPs throughout Indonesia, IKIP Ujung Pandang was changed from a teachers' college to a university in 1999: Universitas Negeri Makassar (National University of Makassar, referred to as UNM). 2. The founding members of DKM were H. D. Mangemba (history and literature scholar), H. A. Mattulada (anthropologist), Ali Walangadi (painter), Arsal Alhapsi (poet), Sakka Ali Yatimayu (theater specialist), Hisbuldin Patunru (literature specialist), Rahmad Arge (actor and playwright), Salim Mallombassi (actor and playwright), Jamaluddin Latif (writer), and Husni Jamaluddin (writer). 3. In 1999, DKM and other organizations have also begun again to use the building still known by its Dutch colonial name as Societeit de Harmonie but also as the Gedung Kesenian (Ind.; Arts Building). See Syariff 1999. 4. Offices of the Department of Education and Culture (Depdikbud) exist at the national level, in Jakarta, and at three regional levels: provincial (Ind. propinsi) in the provincial capitals (daerah tingkat I—Ind.; region level I); district (kabupateri) in the district capitals (daerah tingkat II—Ind.; region level II); and subdistrict (kecamatan', daerah tingkat III—Ind.; region level III). Each office has its own budget and own bureaucrats making decisions on what to fund. A Depdikbud bureaucrat at the kecamatan level takes orders from the kecamatan head, Pak Camat, rather than a bureaucrat in the Department of Education and Culture at a higher level, either kabupaten or propinsi, although he or she must implement compulsory programs and follow decisions determined at higher levels. 5. The new name translates as "National [i.e., government funded] Vocational High School [number] I—Somba Opu." (It is not located on the island or old fortress known as Somba Opu, but within the Somba Opu subdistrict of Gowa.) 6. Note the erroneous assumption of the former use throughout the archipelago of these scales, which are primarily associated with Java, Sunda, and Bali. Naming scales, however, is not universal elsewhere in Indonesia. Sirajuddin told me that Makassarese, for example, have no terms for scales or tones, hence the use of sovejio/solfa (Ind.; solfeggio; do-re-mi) at SMKI in the teaching of Makassarese and other traditional melodic music. 7. "Seni Karawitan pada hakekatnya tidak dapat dipisahkan dari seni Tari dan seni Padalangan (di daerah yang ada seni Padalangannya). Sebetulnya yang dimaksud dengan seni karawitan adalah seni-seni yang menggunakan hiasan-hiasan kecil dan halus (rawit) sebagai unsur pokok . . . Di daerah-daerah yang seni Musiknya sudah dipengaruhi oleh seni Musik diatonis sehingga tidak digunakan lagi tangganada-tangganada Slendro Pelog pun, orang menari, bermain musik melukis, dan mengukir penuh dengan hiasan yang "ngrawit," sehingga dapat dikatakan bahwa hampir semua seni tradisionil di Indonesia termasuk dalam seni Karawitan. Jelaslah bahwa Konservatori Tari Indonesia tidak hanya terbatas pada tugas mengkonservir (memelihara dan mengembangkan) seni Tari saja atau Konservatori Karawitan Indonesia hanya seni Karawitan saja (dalam arti Musik tradisionil), tetapi di-

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dalamnya harus mengandung tugas-tugas untuk memelihara dan mengembangkan seniseni tradisionil yaitu seni Karawitan, seni Tari dan seni Padalangan" (Punagi 1975, 2). 8. Rahim, a native of Palu, Central Sulawesi and holding a degree in literature, left his post in 1997, replaced by Drs. Mohd. Rais, who was in turn replaced after only nine months by Drs. Anwar Nur, trained in the visual arts but not performance. 9. Flying kites with noisemakers is a long-standing practice in South Sulawesi. See Kaudern 1927b, 240. Also, cf. Basri B. Sila's use of what he called pitu-pitu, described in chapter 4. 10. These games involved teams from various provinces of eastern Indonesia, as well as Australia—all bordered by the Arafura Sea. 11. I do not have figures on job placement for IKIP's performing arts majors. Some of the earlier ones secured jobs at SMKI, where their performance skills and knowledge are best utilized. Most of the others who have been able to obtain regular teaching jobs are placed in various schools around the province and teach an array of courses, not just performance. 12. Music was the only major drawing male students in the mid-1990s, although far fewer than female: four males and nineteen females in 1995. For reasons not clear either to me or to IKIP teachers I spoke with, the drama major at IKIP was also populated exclusively by female students. 13. Tamalate is a Makassarese term rich in meaning and connotation. The word itself can mean "not to become dull" (e.g., of a knife) or "not to wilt, or fade" (of a flower; see Cense 1979, 382) or "togetherness to achieve mutual happiness" (personal communication, Jolanda Pandin, 15 October 1999). Tamalate was formerly the name of a palace of the king of Gowa from 1618 to 1647, located in the center of Gowa (Kale Gowa), and is said to have been the name of the palace of Makassar's first ruler, the legendary Tumanurung (Cense 1979, 382). Currently, it is the name of a subdistrict (kecamatan) on the eastern side of the city of Ujung Pandang, and also the name of major street in that district. 14. I would not wish to push this argument too far. The new varieties otkethoprak theater flourishing on Indonesian television in the late 1990s, such as kethoprak humor, though they employ some Javanese language and distinctly Javanese clothing and behavior, are not widely interpreted by Javanese themselves as "traditional." 15. A thorough overview of theatrical activity in South Sulawesi over the last fifty years is provided in an article by Fahmi Syariff (1999). Among the two dozen or so plays I saw in South Sulawesi in the 1990s, some related local history and legend, but the majority have dealt with contemporary issues, either in a more-or-less straightforward narrative or in wild hyperbolic displays of jarring images, loud shouting and enacted rage. CHAPTER 9 1. For informative overviews of radio history in Indonesia, see Wild 1987 and Lindsay 1997, in which the highly controlled approach by the occupying Japanese forces is contrasted with the open, apolitical approach of N1ROM. 2. The losquin is usually interpreted to refer to the slackening (/as) of strings on the guitar to provide open fifths (quin[tj). The Dutch word los means "loose," "loosened"; and the Dutch word kwint means "fifth." The use ofquin rather than kwin may indicate Portuguese (or Spanish) origins, however, which would not be surprising given the widely acknowledged Portuguese origins of kroncong and its plucked stringed instruments.

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3. This kind of ensemble dates back at least to the 1930s. The term orkes rambangrambang is said to derive from the Makassarese tune "Rambang-rambang," attributed to Chinese-Makassarese musician Hoo Eng Djie (Hamonic and Salmon 1983, 162). The more recent term, orkes turiolo (Mks.; old folks' ensemble) was adopted in the early 1970s. See below. It is important to note that (1) these terms refer to an ensemble of instruments, rather than to a repertory of songs or style of singing; and (2) the exact instrumentation of the ensemble can vary considerably. Core to most orkes rambang-rambang/orkes turiolo of which I am aware, from interviews, listening to recordings, and direct observation of performances, are Western violin (biola), frame drums (rebana), and a pair of kettle gongs (kannong-kannong). Other instruments may include guitar, cuk, cello, bass, trumpet, and kecapi. 4. Both gambus and qasidah are also known in South Sulawesi and elsewhere in Indonesia in "modern" forms that involve the use of electric guitars, bass, and keyboards, and sometimes drum trap-set, in addition to the signature instruments (the 'udlike gambus and the tambourines or frame drums). Both genres in their more recent manifestations can sound similar to dangdut. See the definitions and explanations given in Yampolsky 1987, 40, 46-47. 5. And those only on the frequency intended for village audiences (Programa I), which of course can be received in the city as well. (As noted previously, the city frequency has a somewhat different weekly program, with no slot earmarked for kesenian tradisional of any kind.) 6. The Department of Information was abolished soon after Abdurrahman Wahid became president of Indonesia in October 1999. Debate about the future of governmentrun media (RRI and TVRI) is now suggesting the privatization of these media. 7. PIPOSS is an acronym formed from the popular Bugis expression Pada idi pada elo sipatuo sipatokkong (With us, our wishes are the same, to give each other life and help). 8. TVRI's presentations of music and dance have been almost always recorded in the studio, rather than in village settings. Apparently the unpredictability of appearance and physical behavior on the part of audiences (and of performers) in such settings made it undesirable as television fare, whereas the spontaneous verbal responses were not seen to be so risky as to warrant their exclusion from radio broadcasts. 9. Scholars I worked with were unable to translate the title "Pasang Teng," suggesting that it was likely from a Chinese language. Chinese I asked could offer no meaning for this title, however. One meaning of the word pasang in Makassarese is the same as the Indonesian word pasang: "pair" or "couple." This would seem appropriate for a song incorporated into a wedding ceremony, but it leaves unexplained the word or particle teng. 10. Text transcribed by Abdul Rajab Johari, Djirong Basang, Djamaluddin Asis, and Bu Ugi, translation by Rajab, Ugi, and myself. The title of this piece translates literally as "King's Heart," or "Great Spirit." Most of the musicians and literary scholars I spoke with expressed no opinion on the origins or meaning of this title, dismissing it as a mystery. Several mentioned that "Ati Raja" was known as a song of "request to one in power" (Ind. permohonan kepada yang berkuasa), the "one" being literally "king" but figuratively "God." The words to later versions of this song support this view (see below). 11. The musicians, linguists, and literary scholars I consulted about this text agreed unanimously in trying to parse it as two verses of a kelong (each verse with four lines, of eight-eight-five-eight syllables) with interjections. The first interjection,


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bunting, can translate as "bride," as "groom," or as "bride and groom," hence the bracketed items in the translation. 12. This is close to a literal translation, but can be interpreted to mean "May you have children who have a good future." 13. Text transcribed by Djirong Basang, translation by Djirong Basang and myself. 14. "Pembangunan studio perekaman ini adalah merupakan salah satu pertisipasi [sic] yang besar didalam pelaksanaan pembangunan dan untuk kemajuan didaerah ini, terutama dalam bidang seni budaya" (Pedoman Rakyat, 23 August 1975, 1). 15. Much of the information on dates in this paragraph is based on information provided to me by Tjiang, owner of Special Record (23 July 1996) and Riady Panorama, owner of Libel Record (25 August 1995). 16. Though both singers had grown up in Makassar, Hamsan was born in Madura of Madurese parents; Murtini's father was Javanese and her mother Gorontalo. 17. Text transcribed by Djirong Basang, translation by Djirong Basang and myself. 18. Orkes turiolo cassettes sometimes identify the ensemble as O.D., which stands for orkes daerah (Ind.; regional ensemble). 19. He mentioned Makassarese kecapi players Nurdin Kilat (Gowa) and Daeng Ngerang (Takalar), Rapene (Selayar) and Bugis kecapi player Andi Marrat. 20. The list from which I learned the personnel recorded on this early cassette gave all the instrumentalists who participated in one or more item on the cassette: consisting of Rachmansyah, Hamsan Marliat, A. M. Sitaba, Latif Basir, L. Wuni, and F. Husain, under the direction of Arsyad Basir. It is unlikely that all of them were performing on "Dendang-Dendang," as it has only one violin, one kannong-kannong (pair of kettle gongs), and several rebana (frame drums). 21. Text transcription by Djamaluddin Asis, translation by Djamaluddin and myself. 22. This is the tragic year in Indonesian history, which saw the coup and countercoup that resulted in the demise of Sukarno, the coming to power of Suharto, the purging of suspected communists, and the official erasure of Chinese cultural presence in Indonesia. In Makassar, this erasure included the curtailment of open celebrations of Chinese holidays, such as the New Year, and even the renaming of streets. Officially imposed restrictions thereafter were successful in keeping Chinese performance out of public life, thereby helping to force its redefinition as "non-Indonesian." 23. Most of the information provided here on Libel Record is the result of several extensive interviews with Riady Panorama (25 August 1995, 30 August 1995, 23 July 1996, 3 August 1996) and with staff at his studio and cassette retail store (15 August 1998, 20 August 1999, in addition to the dates with Riady). 24. Losquine is an infrequent variant spelling of losquin (usually pronounced "loskwin"). 25. Though Makassarese and proud of it, Iwan Tompo chose an auspicious Bugis name for his group, perhaps thinking it would offer wider appeal than a Makassarese name. He certainly makes no secret of his Makassarese identity, composing and singing in this language for the most part. But he seeks live performance invitations from the larger population of South Sulawesi, where Bugis are the majority. Note that a popular TVRI show devoted to local music (of various ethnicities, not just Bugis) bears the same name: Mario Rama.

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26. The phrase taempokok ri masunggua translates more literally as "we really don't sit on contentedness" and was interpreted as "reach/attain happiness" by Djirong Basang (in Indonesian as mencapai kebahagiaari). 27. The cassette Battu Rikau Tommami (Mks.; It Is Up to You) was produced by MSC Recording Company (not a Sulawesi-based company). The category of music as given on the cassette cover is an intriguing "langgam reggae"—indicating a hybrid genre mixing the kroncong form known as langgam with reggae rhythms.

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Index

Abdullah, Hamid, 16, 210, 218 Abu Bakar, Andi, 86-88, 168 Acciaioli, Greg, 70, 71, 78 Adams, Kathleen, viii, 19, 239 n. 5 adat, 30, 31, 34, 38, 70, 71, 76, 225, 238-239 n. I Agung, Ide Anak Agung Gde, 238 n. 15 Aiphama, Rama, 221, 225 Ambon, 52, 64, 213, 219-221 Amiruddin, H. Achmad, 30, 43 Ammak Ciang (= Amma Ciang), 212 Amrullah Syam, ix anakbaccing, 135, 150 Andaya, Leonard, 25 Anging Mammirik (= Anging Mammiri', Anging Mammiri), xxi, xxii, 58, 62, 66, 166, 189, 213 angkong, 51 Anida, 50, 56 anmngguru, 139,140, 142, 144, 150-153, 158, 162, 167

Antweiler, Christoph, 24 Appadurai, Arjun, 12-14, 197, 230 appalari, xiv, 141 appassili, 148, 150 Arge, Rahman, 45, 63, 246 n. 2 Arief, Aburaerah, xxi, 107, 109, 148, 243 n. 1 Arifin.M.A., ix, 199, 212 Aru Palakka, 25 Arung PancanaToa, 237 n. 4 ASEAN, 41 asli, 44, 79, 135, 226, 233 ASTI, xxii, 75, 173, 183, 241 n. 3 Ati Raja(= Ati Radja), xviii, xix, 210-214, 221, 223, 224, 248 n. 10 Atkinson, Jane, 10

authentic/authenticity, 6, 37, 44, 60, 78-81, 118, 183, 192, 226, 231, 233 baccing, 55, 135, 150, 241 n. 5 badik, 76 Badji Minasa, 52, 58 Bajau, 24 Bajik Minasa, 241 n. 2 bajubodo,49, 91, 131 bakbalak, xxii, 137, 141, 242 n. 8 balakbak, 143, 155 Bali/Balinese, 28, 77, 113, 114, 178 court culture, 60, 64 cultural prominence of, 4, 17, 20, 33, 45, 60-64, 169, 171, 180, 181, 232, 233, 241 n. 10 dance (in South Sulawesi), 174, 183 essentialized, 6 history, 25 media, 200 as model for South Sulawesi, 47, 58, 59, 85, 169-171, 186, 187 music, 135, 137, 138, 226, 238 n. 9, 244 n. 1, 246 n. 6 representation, 15, 49 bamboo, 32, 35, 48, 55, 66, 81, 87, 92-95, 99, 135, 136, 172, 180, 242 n. 5 Bandung, 4, 168, 193, 234, 243 n. 8 BangkengaCini', 222 Bannang Ejaya, xix, 215 Bantaeng, 7, 8, 66, 108, 157, 186 Barru, 72 Basang. See Djirong Basang Basir, Arsjad, 18, 205, 215-218 Basir, Rustam, ix, xix

265

266 Basri Baharuddin Sila, 85-88, 168, 194, 247 n. 9 Batara Gowa, 25, 85, 106, 107, 136, 167, 194 batte-batte, 179 beccing, 55, 57, 58, 241 n. 5 bedhaya, 34, 83, 246 n. 11 Bigalke, Terance, 59 Bira, 7, 179 bissu, 37, 38, 49, 74, 76-78, 94, 187, 239 n. 6, 239 n. 7 BKKNI, xxii, 168 Blacking, John, 9 boat-lute, 34, 94, 104, 244 n. 6 Bone, 7, 8, 23, 25, 43, 56, 57, 65, 239 n. 7, 241 n. 9, 242, n. 7 Bontonompo, ix, xviii, 7, 122 bosarak, 57 Bourdieu, Pierre, 230 broadcast, ix, 100, 108, 109, 119, 120, 197-206, 208, 209, 214, 227 Bugis, 19, 23, 33, 36, 51, 52, 59, 75, 92, 96, 186, 212, 230 arts and media, 209, 210, 215, 216, 219, 222, 248 n. 7 costume/dress, 61, 76, 130 elements in newer works, 50, 55-58, 65, 68, 77, 82, 181 essentialized, 5, 32, 59, 70, 72, 76, 160, 233, 240 no. 14, 245 n. 6 geography, 23-25, 37, 55, 215 history, 25-27, 83, 106, 107, 237 n. 2, 241 n. 7 identity, 24, 38, 42, 46, 59, 68, 205, 226, 229 language use, 191, 204, 224, 226, 227, 239 n. 4, 239 n. 8, 241 n. 9, 242 n. 7, 242 n. 9 local prominence, 32, 33, 106-108, 110, 249 n. 25 music/instruments, 55, 59, 72, 121, 131, 196, 197, 204, 214, 241 n. 5, 244 n.7, 249 n. 19 performance, 33, 34, 49, 70., 71, 73, 91, 92, 103, 130, 192, 237 n. 1, 237-239 n. 6, 238 n. 7 scholarship on, 16, 18, 237 n. 5 teaching/transmission, 173, 174, 187, 195 writing, 16, 182 Bulo, Beatrix, 19 Bulukumba, 7, 8, 76, 89, 90, 108, 179, 245 n. 5 Buton, 61, 173 caktbai, 57 Caldwell, Ian, 238 n. 12 Canary Records, xix, 210, 211 Cantwell, Robert, 13 cassette tape, viii, xvii-xix, xxi, 18, 38, 63, 66, 91, 110, 111, 121, 183, 197, 209, 214-222, 224, 226, 227, 249 n. 18, 249 n. 20, 250 n. 27 Celebes, 17, 23, 210, 211 Cense, A. A., 139, 148, 161, 242 n. 9, 247 n. 13 censorship, 11, 21 Central Sulawesi, 23, 61, 204, 221, 247 Chabot, Hendrik, 237 n. 5 China/Chinese, 18, 24, 26, 27, 35, 57, 59, 127, 157, 199, 203, 210-212, 214, 217-220, 226, 237 n. 5, 239 n. 3, 248 n. 3, 248 n. 9, 249 n. 22 Christian/Christianity, 10, 24, 59, 212, 221

Index Clifford, James, 6, 13, 15 Collins, George, 237 n. 5 Crystal, Eric, viii, 239 n. 5 cultural policy, 20-23, 77, 185, 238 n. 9 Culture Week festival, 28, 29, 32, 36, 38, 40-44, 46, 47,71,73, 121, 134, 194, 229, 232 Cunningham, Clark, 238 cuwi, 16 Daeng Sugi, 52 daerah, xviii, 22, 24, 32, 38, 39, 63, 130, 131, 175, 180, 182, 192, 198, 203, 205, 207, 216, 226, 232, 239-241, 246,249 dagger, 76, 242 dance-drama, 33, 39, 44, 45, 59, 60, 68, 72, 180, 242 dangdut,39, 9l, 151, 162, 196, 197, 203, 204, 206, 207, 209, 214, 219, 220, 222, 223, 225-227, 232, 239 n. 9, 242 n. 3, 248 n. 4 Darius Jemparut, ix, 172, 173, 180 Darmawan Mas'ud Rahman, x, 89, 93, 96, 242 n. 4 Darul Islam, 26, 37,49, 50, 53,71, 138, 156 DasaRama, xix, 212, 231 Datu Museng. See I Datu Museng de Certeau, Michel, 11, 98, 197 Dendang Manjina, xix Depdikbud, xxii, 165, 168, 169, 174, 188, 194, 246 n. 4 Dewantara, Ki Hadjar, 22, 64, 83 Dirks, Nicholas, 13, 14 Djajadi Djamain, xix, 212, 223, 226, 231 Djamaluddin Aziz, 44 Djirong Basang, ix, xxi, 105, 107, 110, 116, 123, 136, 205, 242 n. 5, 248 n. 10, 249 n. 13, 249 n. 17, 250 n. 26 DKM, xxii, 81, 167, 168, 246 n. 2 Donda'dondang, 56, 57 dondo, 14, 152-156, 230 Donggala, 61 drama tari, 33, 39 drum/drumming, xxiii, 63, 190, 244 n.l in acculturated ensembles, 131, 227 bamboo. See ganrang bulo Bugis, 34, 35, 55, 57, 66 construction, 136-139 contests, 34, 39 and dance accompaniment, 4, 39, 58, 71, 74, 150-156 destruction of, 49, 230 and formal education, 20, 169, 174, 181, 184 frame, 33, 87, 189, 199, 216, 248 n. 3, 244 n. 20 and gender, 159-161 innovation, 53-55, 86, 93, 96, 99, 130 and martial arts, 95, 99, 156-157 notation, 20, 142, 182 at official functions, 31, 32 origin myth, 136 performance, 81-84, 93, 94, 101 and power, 135, 163, 235 and ritual, 81, 82, 135, 139, 140, 199 and slapstick, 158, 159 inTanaToa, 90 teaching/transmission, ix, 137-139

267

Index techniques, 140-150, 242 n. 8 Torajan, 58, 71, 99 Western/trap set, 164, 175, 192, 209, 210, 220, 232, 248 n. 4 Dutch, xxi, xxii architecture, 92, 169 colonial power, 22, 48, 78, 94, 96, 106, 119, 156 language, xviii, 52, 171, 212, 238 n. 15, 247 n. 2 music, 198, 226 and NIT, 49, 238 n. 11 radio, 198 resistance against, 26, 27, 92, 100, 107, 108, 110, 114, 119, 212, 230 scholarship, xvii, 16, 17, 160 schools, 51 in South Sulawesi, 25-27, 29, 39, 43, 48, 49, 51, 60, 115, 160, 240 n. l, 246n. 3 Effendy, Ridwan, 19 Engels, Friedrich, 11 Enre, Fachruddin Ambo, 237 n. 4 Enrekang, 8 Erlraann, Veil, 11, 12, 197, 227 Errington, Shelly, 12, 237 n. 1 essentialism, 4-6, 9, 11, 13, 15, 35, 79, 106, 160, 229, 233, ethnicity, 9, 12-14, 23, 32, 59, 76, 229, 237 n. 2, 238 n. 10 Europeesche Langere School, 51 fashion show, 39, 91 Ferguson, James, 13 festival, vii, 3, 4, 6, 13, 14, 22, 28-31, 33, 35-47, 71-73,75,77,78,81,84,86, 121, 134, 163, 167, 168, 174, 178, 194, 224, 229, 231-233 feudal, 64 fiddle, 60, 104, 105, 183 flag, 15, 82, 89, 93, 95, 97, 102, 224, 234 Fort Rotterdam, 89, 92, 167, 169, 238 n. 15 Forth, Gregory, 237 n. 1 Frederick, William, 239 n. 9, 242 n. 3 Friedericy, Herman Jan, 245 n. 4 Galesong, 7, 39, 115 Gamasi, ix, 203, 204 gambus, 26, 179, 199, 203, 216-219, 242 n. 3, 248 n. 4 gamelan, 4, 6, 13,22, 62, 143, 171, 180, 182, 183, 186, 200, 209, 226, 231 gandang, 180, 181 gandrung Banyuwangi, 174 ganrang, viii, xviii, 18, 55, 60, 66, 81, 86, 87, 94, 96, 101, 128, 130, 131, 134-145, 147, 149, 151, 152, 156-162, 169, 170, 173, 175, 180-182, 184, 186, 192, 219, 225, 227, 230 ganrang bulo, 18, 66, 94, 96, 242 n. 5 ganrang pauluang, 141 ganrang ri boko, 141 gaukang, 136 gendang, 57, 245 n. 2 George, Kenneth, viii, 19

global, 6,9, 10, 12, 14, 21, 27, 36, 43, 48, 91, 197, 198, 227, 228, 234 globalization, 21, 22, 42, 93, 204 Gorontalo, 61, 220, 225, 249 n. 16 Gourlay, Ken, 15 Gowa, xviii, 8, 25, 26, 40, 43, 45, 54, 60, 83, 85, 106-108, 110, 123, 136, 140, 148, 155, 163, 167, 172, 180, 182, 186, 194, 195, 216, 224, 232, 242 n. 5, 242 n. 6, 245 n. 8, 246 n. 5, 247 n. 13, 249 n. 19 gramophone, 211 Gramsci, Antonio, 11 grip, 56, 120, 128, 244 n. 8 Guilbault, Jocelyn, 10, 11, 237 n. 3 Gupta, Akhil, 13 Hakim, Zainuddin, 107, 109, 243 n. 1 Halilintar Lathief. See Lathief, Halilintar Hamonic, Gilbert, 210-212, 218, 237 n. 5, 239 n. 6 239 n. 7, 248 n. 3 Hatnzah, Sitti Aminah P., x, 16, 76, 239 n. 6 Hapsa J. Nur, ix, 186 Harvey, Barbara, 52, 238 n. 16 Hasan, Salahuddin, 120, 244 n. 6 Hasanuddin, 25, 27-29, 40, 43, 60, 75, 100, 101, 185, 220, 230 Hawaiian, 199 heavy metal, 196, 209 hegemony, 4, 9, 11, 12, 166, 233 heirloom, ix, 76, 96, 242 n. 7 holiday, 89, 92, 93 Holland, 26, 107, 114 Holt, Claire, 17, 19, 49, 57, 239 n. 2 , 241 n. 6 Hoo Eng Djie, xix, 18, 210, 211, 213, 215, 218, 226, 248 n. 3 I Datu Museng, xvii, 107, 115, 117, 118,205,230 ILaGaligo, 16, 37 IMannakkuk, 107 I'inJoesoef, 67 IKIP, ix, xxii, 29, 52, 75, 76, 98, 105, 164, 165, 168, 174, 180, 185-188, 193-195, 217, 232, 246 n. 1, 247 n. 11 IKJ, 190, 192 IKS, xviii, xxii, 62, 63, 65, 66, 91, 166, 167, 169, 170 Ilologading, 94-96, 217 Ince Daimang, 56 Inche Maulana Daeng Tarring, 52 India, 13, 209, 227 Indo Logo, 57 Institut Kesenian Sulawesi, 52, 61, 62, 75, 164, 166, 180, 190 IramaBaru, 214, 216, 219 Irian Barat, 26 Irian Jaya, 12, 26, 219-221 Is Hakim, ix ISI, xxii, 75, 78, 86, 182, 186, 187, 194, 232 Islam, 24-26, 37, 38, 49, 50, 53, 71, 77, 78, 90, 91, 138, 156, 162, 170, 180, 199, 242 n. 1 jaipongan, 47

268 Jakarta, viii, 3, 17, 21, 22, 27, 30, 37, 59, 62-65, 72, 73, 77, 83, 97, 168, 189-193, 195, 197, 203, 205, 209, 212, 213, 216, 218, 219, 221, 224-227, 231-234, 241 n. 7, 243 n. 8, 246 n. 4 Jamang, ix, xviii, 122, 126, 128, 131, 132 Jameson, Fredric, 14, 15 Jangang Leak-leak, 151, 152 Jansen Record, x, 218, 219 Japanese, 26, 52, 156, 160, 198, 247 n. 1 Java, Javanese arts in South Sulawesi, 24, 29, 56, 169, 174, 195, 237-238 n. 6, 241 n. 7 costume/dress, 38, 247 n. 14 cultural dominance of, vii, viii, 4, 9, 10, 20, 22, 24, 26, 27, 45, 47-49, 63, 64, 77, 78, 83, 88, 96, 102, 106, 107, 165, 169, 175, 179, 181, 182, 229, 230, 232-234 dances of, 34, 65, 83, 245-246 n. 11 essentialized representations, 6, 14 formal education in, 85, 183, 185, 187, 232 history, 25, 26, 100,225 language, xxii, 226, 247 n. 14 local resistance to, 108, 114 locality, 5, 157 and media, 197, 200, 209, 210, 211, 213, 214, 227 model for artistic creation, 33, 59-61, 93, 101, 102, 165, 169-171, 180, 182, 231 music/instruments, 62, 105, 114, 122, 135, 136, 183, 186, 226, 231, 244 n. l, 246n.6 notation, 143 people in South Sulawesi, 114, 165, 186, 193, 194, 212, 213, 243 n. 8, 249 n. 16 performers/performances from South Sulawesi in, 3, 4, 52, 75, 78, 84, 86, 88, 100, 108,163, 164, 168, 190, 192, 194, 224, 233, 243 n. 8 politics, 198 scholarly focus on, 13, 15, 17 scholars, 18, 19 Jeneponto, 7, 8, 65 Johari, Abdul Rajab, ix, 126, 147, 244 n. 12, 248 n. 10 Jonge Meisjes Club, 51 Juynboll, H. H., 16 kacaping, ix, xii, xviii, 104, 119, 121-123, 124, 126, 130-132, 179, 182, 184, 185, 205, 230, 243 n. 4, 244 no. 6 Kahar Muzakkar, 26, 27, 37, 38, 46, 53, 138, 156, 213, 224 Kajang, 31, 76, 77, 238 n. 1 kakdok minyak, 140, 153 kale, 137 katompoang, 136, 233, 245 n. 7 kancing,, 87, 135, 150 Kandope, 57, 241 n. 9 kannong-kannong, 87, 156, 181, 216, 248 n. 3, 249 n. 20 Kapala Mojong, 58 Kappalak Tallumbatua, xvii, xxii, 107, 110, 111 Kartini, Raden Ajeng, 60 Kartomi, Margaret, 19

Index Kati, Karsin, ix kattok-kattok, 39, 81, 82, 87, 135, 139, 140, 146, 150, 158, 181, 189 Kaudern, Walter, 17, 56, 238 n. 6, 241 n. 6, 244 n. 6, 247 n. 9 kawe-kawe, 241 n. 8 Kayam, Umar, x, 88 kebudayaan, viii, 9, 22, 29, 239 n. 12, 240 n. 13 kecapi, 34, 48, 55-57, 60-68, 72, 83, 86, 87, 94, 119-121, 128, 131-133, 158, 163, 170, 173, 175, 180, 182, 192, 199-203, 205, 214-219, 226, 227, 230, 241 n. 4, 244 n. 6, 7, 9, & 10, 248 n. 3, 249 n. 19 kecapi-suling, 60, 63, 67, 128, 131,230,241 n. 4 Keil, Charles, 15 kelong, 16,48, 122, 123, 126, 131, 153-156,205, 212, 215, 217, 222, 223, 230, 248 n. 11 Kendari, 61, 186, 190, 221 Kennedy, Raymond, 56, 57, 237 n. 5, 241 n. 6 keris, 43, 100, 242 n. 4 Kern, R. A., 16 kesok-kesok, 60, 104-106, 110, 113, 114, 120, 182, 183,212 keyboard, 39, 91, 143, 175, 186, 188, 209, 220, 223 KKS.xxii, 171, 194 kondo buleng, 33, 34, 48, 239 n. 2 Konjo, 24, 77, 90 KONRI, xxii, 170, 171, 173, 180, 185, 187 Konservatori Kesenian Sulawesi, xviii, 62, 170 Koolhof, Sirtjo, x, 38, 237 n. 4 kmncong, ix, 38, 170, 186, 189, 199-201, 206, 207, 209, 210, 215, 219, 220, 227, 247 n. 2, 250 n. 27 Kulawi, 61 kulintang, 130, 170, 172, 175 Kunst, Jaap, 17, 18, 137, 210, 238 n.7 La Galigo. See I La Galigo La Side, 16 toe-toe, xviii, 55, 94, 95, 135, 150, 181, 189,241 n. 5 lagu Makassar (= lagu Mangkasarak), 52, 196, 215, 221, 226 langgam, 201, 209, 222, 223, 225, 226, 250 n. 27 Lathief, Halilintar biography, 74-78, 241 n. 3 and Bu Nani Sapada, 50, 59, 229 choreography, 44, 45, 76, 162, 231, 242 n. 9 citation of writings by, 19, 56, 57, 74, 76, 89, 97, 120, 121, 136-139, 150-153, 156, 164, 166, 187, 231, 239 n. 2, 241 n.6, 241 n. 7, 242 n. 6, 244 n. 6, 244 n. 10,245 n. 2, 245 n. 5, 245 n. 8-10 commentary by, 20, 32-26, 44, 59, 90, 91 and Daeng Mile/Makassarese drumming, 162 as group leader, viii, ix, 29, 50, 164, 188 andlKIP, 187 as organizer of events, 29, 76, 89, 92-103, 230, 235, 243 n. 8 and ritual, 74-81, 231, 233 lea-lea, 55, 57, 150, 241 n. 5 leklek, xviii, 74, 87, 153-155, 230 lemssang, 141, 142, 152, 154

269

Index Libel, x, xix, 183, 214, 216-222, 224, 225, 249 n. 15 Lindsay, Jennifer, 247 n. 1 local identity, 6, 21, 23, 35, 41, 78, 92, 96, 197, 204, 226 Lokananta, xix, 212-214 lontar, 73, 86, 139 lontarak, 16, 142 Lord, Albert, 105 losquin, xix, 199, 204, 209, 215, 220, 222, 226, 247 n. 2, 249 n. 24 lullabies, 119, 150 Lumowah, Benny, 238 Luwu (= Luwuk), 8, 16, 25, 34, 43, 65, 71, 237 n. 5, 238 n. 7, 239 n. 7, 245 n. 6 mabadong, 49 MacCannell, Dean, 79, 80 Mackey, Eva, 13 Madjid, Ida Joesoef, ix, 66, 67, 166, 237 n. 1 Majapahit, 25 Majene, 7, 8, 46 Makale, 7 Makassar Arts Council, xix,xxii,81, 88, 167,191 Makbiring Kassik, 152 Malay, 24, 157, 198, 212, 218, 241 n. 7 Mallatu Kopi, 58 Malm, Krister, 209 Maluku, 60, 114, 220 Mamasa, 7, 19, 189 Mamuju, 7, 8, 50 mancak, 137, 156, 157 Manda, ix, 155, 170, 173, 190, 242 n. 5, 245 n.7 Mandar, 23, 24, 36, 42, 46, 50, 52, 53, 55, 76, 96, 122, 170, 172, 174, 187, 195, 210, 240 n. 14 Mandarese, xxii, 5, 16, 23, 32, 46, 53, 58, 61, 65, 89, 187, 205, 209, 219 Mandjia, Baharuddin, 61, 215 Mangemba, Hamzah Daeng, x, 18, 45, 62, 242 n. 5, 246 n. 2 Manuel, Peter, 10-12, 14, 209, 227 Mappaselleng Daeng Maggau, ix, xvii, 53, 106, 109-111, 113-116, 119, 132,235 Mappuji, 83, 189, 190 Marellau Pammase Dewata, 58 Marliat, Hamzan, ix, xix, 215, 226, 249 n. 20 Maros, 7 martial art, 157 marwas, 87 Marx, Karl, 11 Massenrempulu, 24 massurek, 33, 39, 198, 201, 215 Mattalioe, Bahar, 238 n. 16 Matthes, B.F., 16, 52, 166 Mattulada, 18, 45, 246 n. 2 Mbembe, Achille, 24, 237 n. 3 media, xii, 6, 14, 67, 101, 109, 119, 120, 196-198, 200, 205, 221, 224-228, 230, 248 n. 6 Meintjes, Louise, 80 Meratus, 10

Mile, Abdul Mtiin Daeng, ix, xviii, xxiii, 20, 83-85, 94-96, 101, 134, 135, 137-148, 152-163, 167, 172, 232, 235, 242 n. 6, 245 n.7 Millar, Susan, 237 n. 5 Minahasa, 17 Minangkabau, 173, 174, 187, 204, 233 Mochtar, ix Muhammad Salim, 237 n. 4 Muhammadiyah, 26, 49, 138, 156, 166 Mukhlis (Paeni), viii, 26, 29, 30, 33, 36, 38, 39, 41, 42,50, 83, 107, 136, 161, 189, 190, 239 n. 13, 242 n. 5 Munasiah. See Nadjamuddin, Munasiah Murtini Soeharto, ix, 215, 226, 249 n. 16 music video, 207 Muslim, 24, 49, 58, 90, 91, 138, 156, 166, 212 Myers, Fred, 13, 14, 237 n. 3 Myers, Helen, 9 Nadjamuddin, Munasiah, ix, 18, 65, 120, 167, 170, 233, 241 n. 6 Nanggong, 16 national culture, viii, x, 21-23, 41, 45, 46, 62, 64, 83, 89, 103, 165, 168 Negara Indonesia Timur, xxii, 26, 49, 240 n. 1 Netherlands, 198 Nettl, Bruno, 9 New Order, 22, 23, 27, 29, 31, 35, 40, 43, 44, 62, 71, 73, 78, 83, 91, 93, 97, 98, 102, 107, 109, 156, 159, 165, 168, 201, 203, 227, 239 n. 3 ngaruk, 43, 77 Ngirate, Borra Daeng, 52, 58, 215 ngremo, 174 NIROM, 198, 247 n. 1 NIT, xxii, 49, 198, 238 n. 15, 240n. 1 Njoo Cheong Seng, 18, 210, 212 Noorduyn, J., 23 North Sulawesi, 17, 23, 61, 170, 172, 193, 204, 220, 221, 225 nostalgia, xix, 42, 73, 80, 216, 220 notation, 13, 18, 20, 112, 142, 143, 149, 167, 182, 184, 186, 243 n. 4 Nurhadi, ix, 81, 86, 88, 93, 96 OK Record, 214, 222 Ongkona Arumpone, 57, 241 n. 9 Operasi Taubat, 26, 71, 138 orkes rambang-rambang, xix, 199, 200, 216, 217, 222, 248 n. 3 orkes turiolo, xix, 189, 199, 216-218, 220, 224, 226, 248 n. 3, 249 n. 18 P3GK, xxii, 172, 181, 182, 194 Padalia, ix, 187 Padang Panjang, 4 pagelluk, 49, 50, 58, 65, 99, 233 pajaga, 18, 34, 49, 64-66, 233, 238 n. 7, 245 n. 6 pajoge, 238 n. 6, 241 n. 6 pajogek, 56, 57, 173 pakaian daerah, 38 pakanjarak. See tunrung

270 pakarena and authenticity, 80, 183, 233 ballak bulo (Selayar), 94, 179, 195 Bu Nani Sapada's, 53-55, 59, 60, 63 bum 'ne (= bumkne), 49 court origins of, 64, 83, 238 n. 7, 242 n. 6 dance costumes, 230 and gender, 159-161 in Halilintar Lathief s works, 74, 77, 94, 95, 99, 100 and healing, 136 Munasiah Nadjamuddin's, 66 music for, 54, 60, 77, 136, 137, 139, 141, 149-155, 157, 162, 181, 184, 185, 199 as representative of Makassar, 54, 233, 238 n. 7 and ritual, 82, 87, 230 scholarship on, 18, 75, 242 n. 5 slapstick interludes in, 121, 158 song by A. Basir, 212 in Sumiani's work, 187 symbolism of, 155-161 teaching/transmission, 166, 173 traditional, 54, 66, 190, 192, 242 n. 6, 245 n. 8 pakballe sumangak, xviii, 81, 82, 87, 99, 139, 141, 145-148, 150, 151, 162, 192. See also tunning pakdekdong. See tunrung pakurruk sumangak, 3 pakurrusumange', 237 n. 1 Palaguna, H. Zainal Basri, 29, 44, 160 palari, 141-145, 147, 149, 150, 157, 158, 184 Palopo, 7, 238 n. 7 pamaccing, 143 pamancak, 77, 137, 156, 157 pamasarl, 38, 195 pancak. 95 ,99, 100, 233 pangaruk, 60 Pangkajene, 7, 239 n. 7 Pangkep, 8, 77, 239 n. 7 Panorama, Riady, x, 72, 216, 218, 219, 221, 249 n. 15 pappadang, xviii, 152, 154 Papua, 26, 234 Parancing, 53 Parawansa, P., 107, 109 Pare-Pare, 7, 8, 50, 51, 234 Pasang Teng, 210, 212, 248 n. 9 Patasik, Elis, ix, 170, 173 pattannang, 141-145, 147, 149, 150, 152, 184 Pattennung, 50, 58 pattuddu, 52, 53, 65 Patunru, Abd. Razak Daeng, 107, 238 n. 13 patuntung, 77 Pedoman Rakyat, 41, 42, 239 n. 10, 240 n. 10-12, 241 n. 13-19andn.21-24,249n. 14 Pekan Budaya, 28, 46, 239 n. 11, 239 n. 13 Pelras, Christian, 37, 237 n. 5, 238 n. 12, 239 n. 6 Pemberton, John, 13, 14,216, 238 n. 10 pepepepe ri Makka, 95, 96 percussion, 55, 63, 66, 67, 87, 150, 180 Permesta, 26 petepete, 196 piano, 52, 198 Polewali, 7

Index Polmas, 8 Polongbangkeng, 53 pop music, ix, 66, 183, 189, 203, 206, 235 popular music, 3, 84, 85, 196, 197, 199-201, 203, 205, 207, 209, 213, 215, 218-221, 226-228, 230 postmodern, 14, 15, 32, 69, 70, 75, 80, 104, 195, 216, 230-232 Prapanca, Ramli Asia, ix, 93, 95, 173 preservation, 10, 20, 41, 44, 45, 72, 169, 185 pribumi, 24, 218 primordial, 12 puik-puik, xviii, 39, 60, 66, 81, 82, 94-96, 101,135, 140, 146, 150, 151, 153, 158, 159, 180, 181, 189, 192, 225 pusaka, 76, 93, 240 n. 18 Puspita, Arwinny, ix, xix, 220 Qamar, Syamsul, ix, 137, 142, 172, 179-182 qasidah, 26, 90, 130, 174, 175, 199, 207, 242 n. 3, 248 n. 4 Qureshi, Regula, 11 Rachmansyah, 215, 226, 249 radio, viii, ix, xxii, 6, 52, 100, 108, 109, 131, 166, 197-204, 212, 214, 226, 227, 230, 247 n. 1, 248 n. 8 Rajab. See Johari, Abdul Rajab Ramstedt, 238 Rantepao, 7 Rappoport, 19 rebana, xviii, xix, 34, 87, 151, 189, 216, 248 n, 3, 249 n. 20 recording, vii-x, xxi, 17, 63, 66, 105, 113, 115, 120-122, 126, 183, 197, 199, 204, 209-220, 222, 224, 250 n. 27 regalia, 37, 38, 93, 98, 136, 242 n. 7 reggae, 196, 250 n. 27 regional identity, 24, 191, 204 Reid, Anthony, 238 n. 13 renjang-renjang, 145, 148, 155 representation, xxi, 4, 9, 13-16, 19, 20, 35, 38, 40, 45, 102, 139, 168, 173,227,232 ReraAtia, xix, 220 rice, 31, 36, 58, 61, 83, 119, 138, 140, 153, 158 Rice, Timothy, 11, 12 Ricklefs, Merle, 43, 107, 240 n. 1 rincik. See tunrung ritual apprenticeship initiation, 137-139 and art, 79-88, 230 and authenticity, 71, 79, 231 Bugis, 3 court, 49, 69, 83 at Culture Week festival, 32-39 dances, 4, 22, 48, 49, 51, 75-77, 87, 135, 180, 183, 242 n. 6, 245 n. 7 and drum construction, 137-139 efficacy, 50, 51, 81, 157, 185 and entertainment, 21, 58, 69, 73, 78, 85, 185 in I La Galigo, 16 instruments, 58, 73, 135, 162

Index and Islam, 26, 38, 71 life cycle, 82-84, 109 122, 136, 140, 162, 183 literature on, 17, 237 n.5 Makassarese, 37, 72, 82, 193 and meaning, 12, 77, 79, 80, 96, 230 and modernity, 75, 80, 84 music, 87, 88, 119, 120, 139, 146-148, 161 objects, 92, 94, 96, 99, 245 n. 7 performing arts in, viii, 48, 74, 75, 78, 161 purification, 136 and representation, 69 and resistance, 22, 233 secularized, 70, 72 as source of modern performance, 33, 50, 58, 74-78, 81-84, 102, 104, 187, 235 Torajan, 19, 24, 58, 59, 65, 87, 180, 215, 216 village, 9, 46, 49, 69, 77, 96, 99, 194 Riyadi, Agus, ix Robinson, Kathryn, 30, 239 n. 1 Rojak, Abdul, 19 Rome, Fachruddin Daeng, 53, 54, 159-161 Ronny, x royong, 119, 150, 151 RR1, ix, .xxii, 106, 108, 119, 131, 166, 167, 199-205, 212, 214, 217, 243 n. 2, 248 n. 6 rumah adat, 30, 31, 76, 238 n. 1 rumah tradisional, 30, 239 n. 2 Sachs, Curt, 18 sacral, 58 sacred, 29, 58, 76, 80, 92, 96, 135, 136, 138, 150, 163, 242 n. 7 Sagimun, 16, 92 Saho'as, Jurlan Em, 82, 240 n. 24 Sailong, 212 Salmon, Claudine, 210-212, 218, 237 n. 5, 248 n. 3 salonreng, 74, 77, 80, 83, 136, 148, 150, 152, 242 n. 6, 245 n. 5 Saltik, Amir Hasan, 41, 239 n. 11 Samboritta, 152-154 sanggar, xviii, 67, 72, 75, 81, 85, 95, 165, 167, 169, 173, 177, 182, 183, 185, 187-195 Sanggar Tamalate, 191, 192 Sangkala, ix, 172, 179 sanrangang, 137 Sanro Bejak, 152 sanro,26, 150, 152 Sapada, Andi Nurhani (= Bu Nani), xviii, 18, 43, 48-70, 84, 166, 229 and authenticity, 81, 194, 229 biography, 51-53 and broadcast media, 205 and innovation, ix, 53-62, 119, 120, 128, 131, 142, 153, 159,231,241 n.4, 241 n. 9 and pakarena, 53-55, 142, 153, 154, 155, 159 performance of her work, xviii, 83, 91, 183, 192 respect for, 74, 85, 88, 166 and teaching/transmission, 62-64, 166, 169-171, 178, 187, 188, 190, 194 views (opinions) of her work, 74, 79, 80, 84, 86, 104, 162, 230

271 Sapada, We Tenrisau, 58, 91 Sardono, 89, 97-99, 101, 102, 242-243 n. 7 Sayo Kembe, 50 Scott, James, 12 Sedyawati, Edi, 78 Segeri, 7, 38, 77, 239 n. 7 Selayar, 7, 8, 94, 156, 179-181, 190, 195,216,218, 219, 240 n. 20, 245 n. 8, 249 n. 19 sendratari, 33, 65 Serang Dakko, 39, 76, 83, 84, 148, 158, 161, 162, 172, 189, 191 Sere Palanro, 82, 242 n. 9 serimpi, 34, 246 n. 11 seriosa, 199 Sidrap, 8, 55-58, 66, 72 simpek, 137 Simson, Tomy, 172 sinfoni kecapi, 55, 56, 68, 72, 120, 128, 131, 230 Sinjai, 8 sinrilik, ix, xvii, 16, 18,60, 104-120, 124, 132, 166, 182, 183, 198, 199, 201-203, 205, 212, 214, 216, 218, 226, 230, 243 n. 2 sinto, 73 SioSayang, 212 Sirajuddin Daeng Bantang, ix, xvii, 106, 115, 117, 167, 173, 182, 189 sink, 27, 113, 244 n. 5 Sirk, U., 239 n. 6 Sisila-sila, 86, 87, 185 Slobin, Mark, 10, 11, 15, 230, 237 n. 3 SMKI,ix,xxii, 3, 62, 71, 81, 98, 99, 122, 131, 142, 160, 165, 168, 169, 171- 181, 183-190, 193-195, 231, 232, 242 n. 5, 242 n. 1, 246 n. 6, 247 n. 11 SMKN, .xxii, 195, 232 Soebadio, 23 Soedarsono, xxi, 18, 19, 242 n. 2 Soepanto, 53, 61, 63, 241 n. 10 Soeprapto, 78 Solihin, ix, 186, 189 Somba Opu, xviii, 7, 25, 29, 31, 32, 40, 45, 76, 77, 83, 92, 94-96, 99, 101, 131, 148, 169, 172, 182, 189, 191, 232, 246 n. 5 Soppeng, 7, 8, 121, 186, 237 n. 5, 239 n. 7 Southeast Sulawesi, 23, 61,96, 173, 186, 190, 193, 220, 221, 238 n. 11 Special Record, x, xvii-xix, 63, 111, 214, 216, 218, 219, 249 n. 15 Speelman, (Admiral) Cornells, 25, 160 spiritual, 26, 51, 58, 69, 70, 72, 73, 76-78, 85, 87, 102, 136-138, 156, 159, 162, 166, 230, 231 SuaraMas, 214, 217 Sudarman, Soesilo, 43 Suharto, ix, 21, 23, 30, 35, 41, 50, 55, 60, 78, 97, 132, 165, 167, 179, 185, 201, 203, 239 n. 3, 249 n. 22 Suharto, Benedictus, 78 Sukarno, 49, 50, 53, 59, 64, 91, 160, 167, 212, 249 n. 22 Sukasman, ix, 186 Sukatanya, Yudisthira (Thamrin, Eddy), ix, 45, 240 n. 20

272 Sulawesi Pa'rasanganta, 61, 62 suling, xviii, 35, 48, 55-57, 60, 63, 65-67, 72, 83, 86, 87, 93, 128, 131, 163, 170, 180-182, 189, 192, 200, 230, 241 sumangak, xviii, 3, 81,82, 87,99, 146, 150, 151, 192 sumange, ix Sumarjo (= Sumaryo), L, E., 18, 57, 241 n. 6 Sumatra, vii, 4, 5, 37, 60, 91, 113, 114, 180, 186, 187, 204, 221, 233, 239 n. 9, 242 n. 2, 244 n. 1 Sumbawa, 107, 244 n. 1 Sumiani, Ninik, ix, 19, 29, 74, 75, 150-153, 156, 164-166, 187, 188, 232, 245 n. 5 Surabaya, xix, 4, 65, 163, 174, 210, 219 Surakarta, xix, 3, 34, 78, 86-88, 163, 168-170, 212, 213, 224, 234, 243n .7 Susetya, Bagus, ix Sutherland, Heather, 59 Sutrisno, 29 Sutton, R. Anderson, 19, 238 n. 8 syarak-syarak, 138, 139 Syariff, Fahmi, 239 n. 2, 246 n. 3, 247 n. 15

Tae, 16 Taha, ix, 186 Takalar, 7, 8, 24, 53, 54, 108, 158, 159, 216, 242 n. 6, 245 n. 8, 249 n. 19 Tallo (= Tallok), 25 Taman Mini "Indonesia Indah," 22, 62, 191 Taman Miniatuur Sulawesi, 29-33, 40, 76, 83, 99, 189, 191 tanjidor, 151, 232 tarimassal, 60, 180, 181, 183 taubat,26, 7l, 138 Taylor, Timothy, 79, 80 tedong, 158 television, viii, 6, 108, 109, 116, 119, 197, 205, 207, 209, 221, 226, 227, 230, 233, 247 n. 14, 248 n. 8 tempa, 143 tenong, 189, 190 Thamrin, Eddy. See Sukatanya, Yudisthira Tideman.J., 107, 136, 160 Tjiang, ix, 216, 218, 249 n. 15 To Mepare, 50 tobak, 26 Tojeng, ix, 122, 123 Tol, x, 237 n. 5 Tompo, ix, x, xix, 212, 220-222, 224-227, 231, 232, 235, 249 n. 25 Toraja, viii, 8, 19, 24, 27, 36, 42, 50, 65, 76, 87, 173, 187, 238 n. 10, 239 n. 5, 240 n. 14 tourism, 16, 30, 36, 37, 39, 41, 43, 238 n. 1, 239 n. 5 tourist, vii, viii, 6, 18, 19, 28, 30, 36, 41, 50, 57, 62, 67, 69, 79, 82, 120,209 transmission, 20, 75, 166, 167, 188, 193 transvestism, 37, 38, 57, 77, 94, 187. See also bissu Tsing, Asing, 6, 10, 197 Tumanurung, 25, 247 n. 13

Index tumbuk, xviii, 141, 143, 148-149, 152-155, 158, 181, 242 n. 8 tumbuk ma, xviii, 141, 149, 154, 155, 181 tumbuk sekre, xviii, 141, 154, 155 tumbuk tallu, 155 tunrung, xviii, 58, 81, 82, 87, 99, 139, 141, 143-148, 150-152, 154-158, 162, 192, 242 n. 8 tunrung pakanjarak, 58, 81,82, 87, 141, 144-148, 155, 157 tunrung pakballe, xviii, 81, 82, 87, 99, 139, 141, 145-148, 150, 151, 162, 192 tunrung pakdekdong, xviii, 154 tunrung rincik, xviii, 154, 158 Turino, Thomas, 11 TVRI, ix, xxii, 106, 108, 119, 195, 205-209, 224, 248 n. 6, 248 n. 8, 249 n. 25 Umar Kayam. See Kayam, Umar Ummu,Andi, 85, 167 UNM, xviii, 195, 232, 246 n. 1 upacara adat, 34, 38, 71, 225 van der Veen, H., viii video, viii, 37, 38, 207 violin, xix, 52, 56, 131, 170, 186, 189, 198-200, 209, 210, 212, 215, 216, 218, 248 n. 3, 249 n. 20 Volkman, Toby, viii, 19, 239 n. 5 Wajo, 8, 24, 190 waju, 73 Wallis, Roger, 209 Wana, 10 Wardoyo, 43 water buffalo, 136, 148, 150, 152, 158, 242 n. 6 Waterman, Christopher, 11, 209 wayang, 6, 22, 171 weapons, 43, 136, 242 n. 9 wedding, 6, 24, 38, 51, 70, 72, 109, 123, 139, 144, 146, 147, 150, 151, 161, 165, 192, 193, 210-213, 218, 232, 248 n. 9 Westerling, Raymond "Turk," 51, 107, 240 n. 1 Williams, Raymond, 11 world beat, 12 xylophone, 87, 190 YAMA, xxii, 62, 66, 67, 88, 166, 167, 188, 189,232 Yamashita, viii, 239 n. 5 Yampolsky, Philip, viii, 46, 64, 121, 122, 209, 212,

213, 238 n. 9, 239 n. 9, 242 n. 3, 244 n. 6, 244 n. 7, 248 n. 4 Yasil, Suradi, 16, 105, 120, 244 n. 6 Yayasan Anging Mammiri, xxii, 62, 66, 166, 189 Yogyakarta, 3, 19, 28, 29, 34, 65, 75, 81, 85, 86, 102, 168, 169, 172, 173, 179-183, 186, 187, 193, 194,232, 243 n. 8 Yusmanizar, Nina, 109

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