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Defining Ethnicity, (Re)Constructing Culture: Processes of Musical Adaptation and Innovation among the Balinese of Lombok 1

2005; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 24; Issue: 3-4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01411890500234013

1547-7304

David Harnish,

Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

Abstract The arrival and negotiation of Balinese music culture on the neighboring island of Lombok has constructed a unique sociomusical identity through processes of preservation, adaptation, and innovation. On Lombok, Balinese music and culture converges and collides with the indigenous majority, the Islamic Sasak. The Hindu Balinese experienced several dramatic shifts in status on the island: from colonizer to colonized to minority in the Indonesian state, and the music adjusted accordingly. The music culture reveals three streams of influence that define the Lombok Balinese. Currently, however, traditions are being reconsidered as musicians and leaders are coping with reformist Islam, centralized Hindu organizations, and national and regional political developments. I first came to Lombok under the auspices of an IIE Fulbright grant in 1983, and witnessed such events as the Lingsar festival. I later visited under DOE Fulbright, United States-Indonesian Society, and Bowling Green State University research grants, and several times on my own. Many people have helped me over the past decades. I wish to thank Dr. I Madé Bandem, my first research sponsor; Hj. Dra Sri Yaningsih, a later sponsor who was the head of the Arts Section of the Department of Education and Culture in Lombok; and H. Lalu Wiramaja, my most recent sponsor. I extend my appreciation to many community members, including I Wayan Kartawirya, my frequent host, and his wife Ni Madé Darmi; Ida Wayan Pasha, one of the leading composer/musicians in Lombok; and other friends or officials, including I Nengah Kayun, I Gedé Gumbrug, Max Arifin, I Wayan Kereped, Kadek Saka, Martinom, Lalu Gedé Suparman, I Komang Kantun, I Nyoman Rembang, and I Gusti Bagus Maharta. I also thank Jeremy Wallach for reading and making suggestions for this text. Notes I first came to Lombok under the auspices of an IIE Fulbright grant in 1983, and witnessed such events as the Lingsar festival. I later visited under DOE Fulbright, United States-Indonesian Society, and Bowling Green State University research grants, and several times on my own. Many people have helped me over the past decades. I wish to thank Dr. I Madé Bandem, my first research sponsor; Hj. Dra Sri Yaningsih, a later sponsor who was the head of the Arts Section of the Department of Education and Culture in Lombok; and H. Lalu Wiramaja, my most recent sponsor. I extend my appreciation to many community members, including I Wayan Kartawirya, my frequent host, and his wife Ni Madé Darmi; Ida Wayan Pasha, one of the leading composer/musicians in Lombok; and other friends or officials, including I Nengah Kayun, I Gedé Gumbrug, Max Arifin, I Wayan Kereped, Kadek Saka, Martinom, Lalu Gedé Suparman, I Komang Kantun, I Nyoman Rembang, and I Gusti Bagus Maharta. I also thank Jeremy Wallach for reading and making suggestions for this text. See David Harnish, Bridges to the Ancestors: Musics and Myths, Hindu Balinese and Muslim Sasak at the Lingsar Festival in Lombok, Indonesia (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2006). See Kendra Clegg, Ampenan: Conceptions of Nationality, Ethnicity, and Identity in Urban Lombok (Ph.D. dissertation, Deakin University, Australia, 2004). Stephen Blum, "Conclusion: Music in an Age of Cultural Confrontation," in Music-Cultures in Contact: Convergences and Collisions, ed. Margaret J. Kartomi and Stephen Blum (Sydney: Currency Press Ltd. 1994), 252. In 2001, I became aware that local historians and intellectuals were switching the notions of "colonization" and "control," so that the Balinese did not colonize (menjajah) and were not colonizers but rather controlled (menguasai) and were controllers. Being Indonesian, the Balinese could not "colonize" another island; only a foreign power, such as the Dutch, could do that. This cognitive switch resituates interethnic and international relationships. Most major Balinese temples include kemaliq (sacred place of taboos), courtyards featuring a well or water spring and/or a collection of rocks in an altar. Balinese teachers state that these courtyards were established for Sasak to worship along with Balinese during temple festivals. Very few of these are still active, and the Lingsar temple may be the only temple in which Sasak still participate within a kemaliq structure. It is important, here, to add that the participating Sasak do not believe that the kemaliq was built for Sasak to worship with Balinese, but rather that this particular kemaliq predates the Balinese temple and participants (see Harnish, Bridges to the Ancestors). Hans Hägerdal, Hindu Rulers, Muslim Subjects: Lombok and Bali in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Thailand: Hans Hägerdal, 2001), 12–42; and Clegg, 63–66. Margaret J. Kartomi and Stephen Blum, eds., Music-Cultures in Contact: Convergences and Collisions, Australian Studies in the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Music, volume 2 (Sydney: Currency Press Ltd., 1994). The "dichotomy" is introduced in Kartomi's "Editor's Preface" (xi–xvii) and reemerges in most chapters. Though also apparent in pre-Dutch eras, a notion arose among Waktu Telu following Dutch colonization that a spiritual leader would return them to a prosperous golden age without the Waktu Lima and Dutch oppression. The few posted Dutch officials in Lombok feared that this would motivate violent action. Judith Louise Ecklund, "Tradition or Non-Tradition: Adat, Islam, and Local Control on Lombok" in What is Modern Indonesian Culture?, ed. Gloria Davis (Athens, Ohio: Center for International Studies, Ohio University, 1979), 250–251. Ruth McVey, "Shaping the Sasak: Religion and Hierarchy on an Indonesian Island," in Kulturen und Raum: Theoretische Ansätze und Empirische Kulturforschung in Indonesien: Festschrift für Professor Albert Leemann, ed. Samuel Walty and Benno Werlen (Chur/Zurich: Ruegger, 1995), 323. The terms are still used, particularly "Waktu Telu." No one knows where the terms originate; They seem to have emerged in the nineteenth century; counterpart terms are "Wetu Telu" and "Wetu Lima" (Three and Five Stages). Some believe that the Dutch concocted them as a way to divide and more easily conquer the Sasak. Urs Ramseyer, The Art and Culture of Bali (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1986), 95. Common Balinese priests come from the common caste, called sudra (Sanskrit) or jaba (Balinese), the vast majority of Balinese on both islands. These are contrasted with Brahmin priests from the brahmana caste. Ingela Gerdin, The Unknown Balinese: Land, Labour and Inequality in Lombok (Goteborg: ACTA Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 1982), 13. See Alfons van der Kraan, Lombok: Conquest, Colonization and Underdevelopment, 1870–1940 (Singapore: Heinemann Educational Books [Asia] Ltd., 1980), 2; and Hägerdal, Hindu Rulers, 124. See Clifford Geertz, Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980). See Harnish Bridges to the Ancestors; and Hägerdal, 24–25, 126. David Harnish, "The Performance, Context, and Meaning of Balinese Music in Lombok," in Balinese Music in Context: a Sixty-fifth Birthday Tribute to Hans Oesch, Forum Ethnomusicologium 4, ed. Danker Schaareman (Winterthur: Amadeus, 1992). There are some notable exceptions to the apparent homogeneity. These are generally sacred traditions sometimes located in rural areas (see Harnish, "The Performance, Context, and Meaning of Balinese Music in Lombok"). See David Harnish, "Worlds of Wayang Sasak: Music, Performance, and Negotiations of Religion and Modernity," Asian Music 34/2 (2003), 91–120; H.I.R. Hinzler, Bima Swarga in Balinese wayang (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1981); Tilman Seebass, I Gusti Bagus Nyoman Panji, I Nyoman Rembang, and I Poedijono, The Music of Lombok: A First Survey (Bern: A. Franke, 1976); and Philip Yampolsky, "Notes," Lombok, Kalimantan, Banyumas: Little-known Forms of Gamelan and Wayang, Music of Indonesia series 14 (Smithsonian Folkways Recording SFCD40441, 1997). Margaret J.Kartomi, "Editor's Preface," in Kartomi and Blum, xi. Intellectuals seem to have coined this relatively new term to help define what it means to be Balinese in the modern world. It is not used in regular discourse and may be restricted to Hindu organizations in Lombok. I often heard rumors that some instruments from a gamelan Semar pegulingan were held at a Sasak noble's home in Central Lombok. Whenever I undertook further research into the question, however, no one seemed to know which noble or where precisely the instruments were located. Légong dances occasionally have been revived since the 1950s. Arja theater apparently has not been recreated by the Balinese, although I have heard reports of a few Sasak troupes. Clubs (seka) are formed in wards and villages to perform for temple festivals and other needs. Their service (ngayah) is spiritually meritorious and fulfills a necessary ingredient for Balinese rites and ceremonies. Musicians are virtually always male; if included in the club, women constitute the majority of dancers. See Colin McPhee, Music in Bali: A Study in Form and Instrumental Organization in Balinese Orchestral Music (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1966), 234-255. Balinese puppeteers perform slightly differently from their Sasak counterparts. The screen is ripped in one small spot to commemorate a legendary contest between two great puppeteers in which the winner stuck his head through the screen, and a Balinese clown is the first to enter. He then calls to his Sasak companion (see Harnish, "Worlds of Wayang Sasak: Music, Performance, and Negotiations of Religion and Modernity"). See David Harnish, "The Preret of the Lombok Balinese: Transformation and Continuity within a Sacred Tradition," Selected Reports in Ethnomusicology 8 (1990), 201–220. This was a revolutionary, postfeudal musical development that moved artistic centers from courts to villages, deritualized much gamelan playing, and inspired the internationalization of Balinese music. See Michael Tenzer, Gamelan Gong Kebyar: The Art of Twentieth-Century Balinese Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). I was fortunate to meet a founding member, Madé Madri, in 1983. He said that he went to East Bali a few times, some relatives visited him in Lombok, and then he acquired some instruments, picked up the style and taught it to others. He indicated that his was the first group to perform the style, although this cannot be corroborated. Zachar Laskewicz, Music as Episteme Text Sign & Tool: Comparative Approaches to Musicality as Performance (Brussels, San Francisco, and Taipei: Saru Press, 2003), 185. Pasha was perhaps the first on Lombok to compose sendratari, a theater form combining music, dance, and narration that originated in early 1960s Bali. He and other Lombok Balinese composers have generated tens of dances specific to Lombok. Pasha's mother is Sasak and he is among the most knowledgeable of Sasak music on the island. However, being Balinese, his "Sasak" works could not easily be showcased by government-supported troupes during Soeharto's New Order government (1967–1998). He often gave his Sasak student choreographers credit for these pieces. One example of a dance moved from Bali to Lombok via this process is Rejang Dewa. Swasthi Bandem, wife of then-conservatory director Dr. Madé Bandem, created this modern dance from East Bali models in the 1980s for a temple rededication. The dance came to Lombok through two different avenues: the Sekolah Tinggi (taught by students from Bali to those in Lombok) and Madé Darmi (who visited her former student Swasthi Bandem, learned it, and brought it back to Lombok). Students from both schools frequently perform this modern temple dance at festivals in Lombok. Despite the fact that the dance is recent and not particularly religious in character, Rejang Dewa has become the primary sacred temple dance. Fath Zakaria, Geger, Gerakan 30 September 1965: Rakyat NTB Melawan Bahaya Merah (Lombok: Penerbit Sumurmas Mataram, 2001); and Kal Muller, "Wetu Telu: Mix of Islam and Traditional Adat Practices," in East of Bali: From Lombok to Timor, ed. Kal Muller (Berkeley-Singapore: Periplus Editions, 1991), 54-55. Albert Leemann, Internal and External Factors of Socio-cultural and Socio-economic Dynamics in Lombok (Nusa Tenggara Barat) (Zurich: Geographisches Institut Abt. Anthropogeographie Universitat Zurich, 1989), 46. Jeremy Wallach, "Dangdut Music, Indonesian Islam, and 'Unofficial Nationalism,'" paper presented in workshop entitled "South-East Asian Pop Music in a Comparative Perspective" at the Royal Netherlands Institute of South-East Asian and Caribbean Studies 17th Annual International Workshop on South-East Asian Studies, Leiden University, The Netherlands, December, 2003. See David Harnish, "New Lines, Shifting Identities: Interpreting Change at the Lingsar Festival in Lombok, Indonesia," Ethnomusicology 49/1 (2005), 17. Religious leaders apparently directed youth security forces (established to help control crime in the late 1990s) to attack churches and Christian businesses in reaction to the Muslim-Christian violence in the Maluku islands. Interestingly, the only churches unscathed were those located near Balinese communities. The tourist industry was shattered following the violence, impacting nearly all sectors of Lombok's economy. Religious leaders relented the action and pledged to maintain peace. See Danni Josephine Redding, "Performing Arts, Identity, and the Construction of Place in Three Balinese Transmigration Settlements" (M.A. Thesis, University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2002). This does not necessarily mean that there is great antagonism. The relationship seems more formal, less close, and less integrated.