Musical Journeys in Sumatra

Chapter 11. The Mandailing Raja Tradition in Pakantan

11 The Mandailing Raja Tradition in Pakantan This chapter focuses on the social role, aesthetic thought, and ritual practice of the ceremonial music in the village complex of Pakantan in south Tapanuli, as we experienced it in 1971, 1972, and 1978. Much of its content is based on testimonies given to us by local female and male musicians and elders in 1978 and by members of the Pakantan diaspora in Medan, which we also visited several times during the 1970s and 1980s.1 The testimonies were about their traditional philosophy, veneration of nature and the ancestors, visual art and design, and performing arts. I also draw on nineteenth-century colonial reports and on field recordings. Although the people wrote tree-bark books (pustaha) in their own script (urup tulak-tulak), historical records before the nineteenth century are rare. Mandailing bards, however, tell many myths and legends, some of which resemble those of their neighbors.2 Pakantan is situated in the Bukit Barisan mountain range near the provincial border between North Sumatra and West Sumatra and is part of the cooler upstream area known as Mandailing na Menek (lit. “Small Mandailing”), which contrasts with the warm, downstream alluvial plains in the north, called Mandailing Godang (lit. “Great Mandailing”) (see map 11.1). Pakantan has all the hallmarks of an isolated valley of village hamlets (huta)—sweeping views of the surrounding mountains, crystal-clear streams, thick forests surrounding the people’s small vegetable plots and coffee plantations, and moderately warm days and cool nights.3 Unlike Mandailing Godang, villages in Mandailing na Menek were until recently connected to Kartomi_Text.indd 251 6/15/12 2:29 PM Map 11.1 The Mandailing area of the province of North Sumatra Kartomi_Text.indd 252 6/15/12 2:29 PM 11. The Mandailing Raja Tradition in Pakantan 253 the neighboring valleys only by footpaths and the occasional road. When neighbors from other valleys wanted to visit, they walked up the paths to the mountain tops and paused before descending to listen for the sound of a ritual orchestra below, which told them if a ceremony was in progress. If there was, the music (uning-uningan) drew them magically and irrevocably toward the source of sound. Even if they wished to resist, they could not, due to the alluring mystical power of the musical sound wafting from afar. Indeed, music is perceived as being loveliest when it is heard from afar (onak nidege siandao), when its conflicting parts melt into a unified whole. On listening close up, one hears all the interesting detail of the interacting contemporaneous parts—the colotomic metallic percussion texture, the free-meter oboe melody, the calls of a human voice, and the rhythmic and tonal dualism, triadism, and other diversity of the drum sounds within the overall unity of the ensemble sound. Like human beings, the ancestral and nature spirits are drawn like a magnet to the source of sound, but they are most attracted by the series of cyclic drum rhythms (irama) that they recognize in successive pieces. It is forbidden to change the basic rhythms and their sequence in a ceremony, lest the spirits not recognize the ancestral rhythms and fail to attend. Each irama is designed to address either the spirits or the spirits and a group of humans. Thus, if irama idengs ideng (rhythm for the spirits to come down) is played, it fulfills the spiritual purpose of requesting the spirits to attend and bless the ceremony, while if the irama gondang raja-raja (chieftains’ drum rhythm) is played, it welcomes both the spirits and the senior descendant of the raja (chieftain) of Pakantan’s founding clan (marga), the Lubis, who dances in the presence of the spirits and acquires some of their hasaktian (mystical power). According to the ceremonial leaders—the shamans, male elders (namora natoras), and male and female musicians—their weddings, funerals, and clairvoyant rituals in the huta are reenactments of the traditions of the ancestors as they were practiced in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries before the people converted to Islam and were colonized by the Dutch, that is, before the Padri war of 1816–33.4 Thus the people refer to their ceremonial music, which is always performed by one of three types of drum ensemble—the gordang sambilan, gordang lima, and gondang dua—as “music transmitted across the generations” (uning-uningan di ompunta na parjolo sundut i) (Nasution...