Musical Journeys in Sumatra by Margaret Kartomi (review)

Drawing on 40 years of research to survey the “musical arts” from 6 of Sumatra’s 10 provinces, Margaret Kartomi’s Musical Journeys in Sumatra is the first monograph to cover the island’s diverse musics in one place. It introduces the reader to the incredible wealth of practices, including those that incorporate elements of body percussion, movement, self-defense, or theater, ranging from gong-row musics to legendary tales recounted throughout the night, shamanistic practices, mystical Islamic practices where participants try to harm themselves but are protected by powers of the spiritual guide, frame drum ensembles, brass bands, royal ensembles of Malay sultanates, vocal genres predicated on the exchange of improvised verse, and Malay-Portuguese mixes involving violin and frame drum. Although drawing on a series of previously published essays, the author offers an enormous contribution to the ethnomusicology of Indonesia with the attention she brings to this critically understudied region, adding to the small but growing literature on musics outside Java and Bali (Sutton 2002; Rappoport 2009; Byl 2014; Fraser 2015).

Musical Journeys opens with an introduction to Sumatra, including a useful map and chart of musico-lingual diversity (4–5) and discussion of themes that run through the book, including issues of identity, religion, gender, class, and foreign exposure. Divided into four parts, the book is organized around large geographic areas: (1) West Sumatra and Riau, with four chapters on a range of instrumental and vocal Minangkabau practices and one on a royal drumming ensemble in a Riau court; (2) South Sumatra and Bangka, with two survey chapters and a chapter on the creation and development of one particular song-dance, “Gending Sriwijaya,” including a discussion of the contested meanings attached to it; (3) North Sumatra, with a chapter surveying the Malay practices of the province’s western coast and one on ceremonial drumming of the Mandailing; and (4) Aceh, with a chapter on a women’s song-dance and its modification and another on the diversity of rapa’i (frame drum) practices. The book concludes with a chapter on connections between practices throughout Sumatra. Each section begins with a general introduction to the linguistic diversity and historical background of the region, along with a map. Most chapters detail the instrumentation, seating and dance formations, contexts, origin stories, and approaches to tuning for a series of genres. The descriptions are enhanced by wonderful hand drawings of instruments and audio material hosted on Kartomi’s Monash University website.

As Musical Journeys draws on research conducted in the 1970s and 1980s, it documents musical worlds and rituals that have changed or ceased to exist. As Kartomi declares, from the early 1970s she and her husband intentionally “focused on collecting the most endangered species of the musical arts—genres attached to the rituals of ancestor and natural veneration,” including funeral laments frowned on by Orthodox Muslim leaders, shamanic tiger-capturing rituals, and rice-stamping practices (xxvi). These tiger-capturing rituals in West Sumatra, for example, are likely extinct, as the Sumatran tiger is now critically endangered. This documentation of lost practices, along with the forces that have threatened or changed them, including government interventions, rising Islamic piety, and deforestation and other environmental threats, is one of the greatest strengths of the book.

Sumatra’s rich religious history comes to life in the volume with vivid descriptions of rituals that relate to and sometimes combine influences from different historical layers, including indigenous religious practices involving ancestor and spirit veneration, the period of Hindu-Buddhist rule, and Islamic practices ranging from Shi’a festivals to Sufi mystical practices and more orthodox positions encouraging revising practices in line with Muslim modesty and piety. It is particularly fascinating to see vestiges of indigenous beliefs that underpin rituals in Aceh, the province famous for its implementation of Sharia law and known as the stronghold of Islamic...