Play the Saluang Flute, Use Your Fifth Finger: Lyrical Songs from Payakumbuh, West Sumatra (review)

This film and accompanying booklet focus on making and playing the saluang, an end-blown bamboo flute from the Minangkabau musical tradition of West Sumatra, Indonesia. Filming took place during October–November 1996, on location in and around the town of Payakumbuh in the highland area of the Minangkabau people. As the saluang usually accompanies singing, vocalmusic also figures prominently in this film. The spoken parts of the soundtrack of the film are in Minangkabau or Bahasa Indonesia (with English subtitles), or present as off-screen voice-over narration/commentary in English by the filmmaker, Wim van Zanten. Van Zanten, better known for his excellent research into the music of West Java on which he has published extensively, produced another film on the Minangkabau people of this region, focusing on randai theatre, with co-producer Bart Barendregt (2000).

This DVD and booklet is certainly a welcome addition to published material onmusical traditions of this area of Indonesia. It is a sound ethnographic document that provides a wealth of information on flute-making techniques. In the true spirit of modern film-making in ethnomusicology, it demystifies (and de-objectifies) the field work process through references to the filmmaker by the flute maker and other people in the film (in the soundtrack/subtitles), although this basically sound technique is a little overdone in this film in my opinion.

Apart from basic documentation of the filming process and a tabular breakdown of the film structure/contents, the 32-page booklet includes background on the saluang flute (and a table with measurements of a number of flutes), and a brief introduction to Minangkabau music. A select bibliography bringing together some major publications on Minangkabau music is also included in the booklet. The latter part of the film includes a continuous section of about ten minutes of music performance featuring pantun or four-line poems sung by female vocalists with flute accompaniment. These Minangkabau song texts and their translations are included in the accompanying booklet, providing a valuable resource for future research on this tradition. Apart from its obvious ethnographic value, this film is also a useful pedagogic resource for introducing tertiary level ethnomusicology students to this world musical tradition, as it includes a segment on other musical art forms of the Minangkabau as an overview to contextualize the particular focus of the film: the saluang flute.

Technically, the film is well produced overall, but there are a few minor aspects worthy of critical comment. The low light in shots inside performers' homes was perhaps unavoidable in the field situation in which the film was made but is off-putting at times. Some cut-away shots to general village scenes do establish context and contribute to the overall laid-back, informal nature of the film—which I found quite laudable. But in some cases, these shots seem pointless and do little to advance the film in any significant way. Similarly, in my opinion, the viewer does not need to know all of the side comments made by on-lookers (which were translated and subtitled). Some of the early footage of the flute maker could perhaps have been edited out or have been combined with more voice-overs; later footage of him with informative voice-overs by the narrator worked very well.

In terms of content, the film is clearly focused on the saluang flute and the singing that it accompanies. It is packed with ethnographic detail and is informative at several levels. The film does not attempt to explore performance techniques on the flute, which I would have expected in a film about this instrument. Neither is there any real regional contextualization of the saluang in terms of other types of flutes in West Sumatra or in the broader Indonesian context. Information on the scale employed and the heterophonic relationship between...