Kartomi 1994

Journal of Southeast Asian Studies
http://journals.cambridge.org/SEA
Additional services for Journal of Southeast Asian

Studies:
Email alerts: Click here

Subscriptions: Click here
Commercial reprints: Click here
Terms of use : Click here
Is Maluku Still Musicological terra incognita? An

Overview of the Music-Cultures of the Province of
Maluku
Margaret J. Kartomi
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies / Volume 25 / Issue 01 / March 1994, pp 141 - 171
DOI: 10.1017/S0022463400006718, Published online: 24 August 2009
Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0022463400006718
How to cite this article:

Margaret J. Kartomi (1994). Is Maluku Still Musicological terra incognita? An Overview of
the Music-Cultures of the Province of Maluku. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 25, pp
141-171 doi:10.1017/S0022463400006718
Request Permissions : Click here
Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/SEA, IP address: 138.251.14.35 on 17 Apr 2015

Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 25, 1 (March 1994): 141-171
0
1994 by National University of Singapore
Is Maluku Still Musicological terra incognita?

An Overview of the Music-Cultures of the
Province of Maluku
MARGARET J. KARTOMI
Monash University
Introduction
The province of Maluku, otherwise known as the Moluccas,1 is divided into three main
regions: the predominantly Muslim north, the mainly Christian central area, and the
predominantly Christian southeast (see Map I).2 The central region contains the
"mother island" (nusa ina) of Seram which Maluku people believe to be the original
source of Maluku culture. In some relatively isolated parts of this large island the
original inhabitants such as the Nuaulu and the Huaulu ethnic groups (known in
colonial times as the Alifuru people) still practise their ancestral rituals including music
and dance.
M. and H. Kartomi witnessed and recorded some of the traditional music and dance performed in Ternate,
Tidore, Ambon, Kai Archipelago and Tanimbar in December 1989-January 1990 and in Seram and Ambon
in July 1993, under the auspices of officers of the Department of Education and Culture, to whom we owe
a large debt of gratitude. We are most grateful to the Governor of Maluku and the Head of International
Relations of the Department of Education and Culture in Jakarta, as well as to the Heads of the Department
of Education and Culture offices in Ambon, Ternate, the Kai Archipelago and Tanimbar for their assistance
during our visit in late 1989 and early 1990.
We are indebted to many functionaries and artists in North Maluku, including Joumuce (Yang Mulia)
Mudafar Syah, the forty-eighth Sultan of Ternate; Lieutenant-Colonel Sutikno, Bupati of North Halmahera;
Mrs Sutikno and the Dharma Wanita Music and Dance Troupe; Drs Nizam Gani and Bp. Syamsuddin
Muhammad of the government tourism office in Ternate; Mr Tukang, Bupati of Central Halmahera; artists
in the Radio Republic Indonesia office in Ternate; a group of court musicians living in Dufa-Dufa village
not far from the palace, especially Bp. Majid Budran, Bp. Dalima Gafi, Bp. Mochtar Majid, Bp. Ron
Hamisi, Bp. Isak Man and Bp. Tahir Man; Mr Abdul Togubu of the Tidore museum, other heads of the
Branch Museums in Ternate and Tidore; and many musicians and dancers in the villages of Ternate and
Tidore Islands. In Jakarta, we benefited from long discussions with the eldest child of the forty-seventh
Sultan of Ternate, Jou ma fira (Ibu) Syahrinsad Syah, who has vivid childhood memories of the Ternate
palace until she left it in 1945.
For data gathered and recordings made on Ambon we are grateful to church musicians and elders in the
vilage of Waai, Kecamatan Salahutu; the musicians and elders of Hitu village on Ambond's northeast coast;
the troupe of artists led by Bp. Jon Tamaela in Ambon's Department of Education and Culture; musicians
employed at the Museum Siwalima in Amdon; musicians, instrument makers, elders, and young katreji
dancers of the village of Soya Diatas in the hills just above the town of Ambon; and the university student
troupe of Seram-style musicians and dancers led by composer, musician and choreographer Bp. Chris
Tamaela at the University of Pattimura.
We would also like to thank Raja Dullah (Bp. Nohor Rennat of Kampung Dullah, Kai Besar), Bp.
Gregorius Raharawin and Bp. Oni Labetubun of the Department of Education and Culture in Tual, Ibu
Yuliana Refo of Letwuan village, Kai Kecil, and musician Bp. Awat of Mangun village, Kai Besar; Bp.
Rahandra, Bupati (regional head) of the Kai Archipelago; Bp. Eusebius of Wowonda village, Tanimbar, the
elders of Sifnana and Lauruan villages, the Camat (local head) of South Tanimbar, and the heads of the
Museum Negeri Siwalima in Ambon; and heads, elders and female and male artists of many villages,
especially Mangun Debut Langgun and Faan in the Kai archipelago, but also many others in other areas
who helped to organize performances. During fieldtrips in 1989-90 and 1993, we were fortunate enough to
141
142 Margaret J. Kartomi
What do we know about the music-cultures: the micromusics3, subcultures and

intercultures4 of Maluku? What are the lacunae that still need to be addressed? What
are the major directions of change at present? How frequently are the different styles
in each area performed today?
This paper can only begin to answer these questions. Despite the fact that some
data on rituals in parts of the province of Maluku have been published in recent years,
very little detailed field research has been carried out to date on the music and its con-
texts in this large province. Recent research into the rituals has made available valuable
data on the ritual music and dance, their socio-cosmic meanings, and the social-
morphological aspects of the performing arts.5 The present article describes the music-
cultures in Ternate and Tidore in northern Maluku; Ambon, the Uliase islands, Seram,
Buru and Banda islands in central Maluku; and the Kai archipelago, the Aru islands,
Tanimbar and the Luang or Babar archipelago in southeast Maluku. Due to a lack
of data, this article omits reference to such island groups as Leti and Watubela in the
have long discussions with elders such as Mr Nus Tamaela, and Raja Soahuku, and elders of Soahuku as
well as Raja Filip Halaku and elders of Amahai, southern Seram. The anthropologist Dr Mus Huliselam,
Director of the Maluku Study Centre of Pattimura University, was very helpful. I also wish to thank Bp.
Chris Tamaela, son of Bp. Nus Tamaela of Soahuku, who directs the newly-created, Alifuru-based music
and dance troupe of student performers of the University of Pattimura in Ambon.
I am grateful to the Australian Research Committee for assistance on fieldtrips throughout Maluku in
1989-90 and 1993. H. Kartomi and D. Salisbury were of great assistance to me in photographing, video-
taping and recording performances in the field, and Chris Basile and Robin Ryan were my reliable research
assistants for this project.
'Unless otherwise stated all foreign terms are given in local Maluku spelling (M = Malay, Ar = Arabic,
D = Dutch, I = Indonesian, J = Javanese). Moluccas is the English name for the province but it is fre-
quently substituted for now by the modern Indonesian name of Maluku.
2
The third main division of Maluku actually covers all of the southern area of the province, but it is
called "the southeast" to distinguish it clearly from the former Republic of South Maluku.
3
Micromusics are defined as "small musical units within big music-cultures". See Mark Slobin, "Micro-
musics of the West: a Comparative Approach", Ethnomusicology 36, no. 1 (1991): 1.
Subcultures are defined as more or less self-contained groups of people distinguished by class or ethni-
city (Slobin, ibid., p. 2). In north Maluku, they include the two Muslim court subcultures of Ternate and
Tidore, and the Christian subcultures of the Tobaru and Togotil peoples in Halmahera. Intercultures are self-
contained groups which have interacted with other cultures or between groups who live within an inter-
culture (ibid., pp. 2-20). In Maluku they include the Kai interculture or cultural unit, with its dominant im-
migrant group and its indigenous group. Another example is Ambon and coastal Seram, which experienced
contact between the Dutch "superculture" (ibid., pp. 13-16) on the one hand and the indigenous "Alifuru"
culture on the other.
5
See the bibliography in Cecile Barraud, "A Turtle Turned on the Sand in the Kei Islands; Society's
Shares and Values", Bijdragen tot de Taat-, Land- en Volkenkunde 146, no. 1 (1990): 121-23; also Toos van
Dijk and Nico de Jonge, "After Sunshine Comes Rain; a Comparative Analysis of Fertility Rituals in
Marsela and Luang, South-East Moluccas", Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 146, no. 1 (1990):
3-20, on Marsela and Luang (Babar) islands; Cecile Barraud, "Wife-givers as ancestors and ultimate values
in the Kei islands", Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 147, no. 2 (1991): 193-225, on rituals and
art of the Kai islands; and Valerio Valeri, "Autonomy and Heteronomy in the Kahua Ritual; a Short
Meditation on Huaulu Society", Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 146, no. 1 (1990): 56-73, on
Kuaulu rituals and art in the northern part of Seram island. Also see J.W. Ajawaila, "Marriage Rituals of
the Galela People", Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 146, no. 1 (1990): 93-102, about the
Galela people in Halmahera; and J.D.M. Platenkamp, "The Severance of the Origin?; a Ritual of the Tobelo
of North Halmahera", Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 146, no. 1 (1990): 74-92, about the
Tobela people of Halmahera.
Ambon
Suku Galela
Suku
Jailolo Tobelo
Ternate
Halmahera
KABUPATEN MALUKU
UTARA
Suku Huaulu
o
Seram
Buru
Ambon / Bandaneira
Kepulauan Uliase o Vo
Kepulauan Banda
KABUPATEN MALUKU TENGAH Kepulauan
KaiBesarfi Kai
BANDA SEA Kp. Dullah
Kaii Kecil W
Kepulauan Aru
KABUPATEN MALUKU TENGGARA a
a cy-M Kepulauan
Babar °r> jr Tanimbar
L^Saumlaki
Marsela 0 100 200 300 400
I
Kilometres
Map 1. Maluku
south and Bacan and the Sulu archipelago in the north. 6 Clearly a great deal of
fieldwork and primary research into the musical styles, repertoires, objects and social
context of the thousand islands in Maluku remains to be carried out if this province
is to become musicological terra cognita.
This paper is based on short periods of fieldwork by the author in the three main
regions of the province; accounts by early travellers, missionaries and colonial func-
tionaries; and some recent studies by anthropologists and ethnomusicologists. It also
refers to historical research carried out by Abdurachman, Chauvall and Andaya7 who
based their work on documentation in colonial archives as well as modern sources.
Andaya deals most comprehensively with the period of contact between the Malukans,
the Portuguese (from 1512) and the Dutch (from 1605) who, with the British and
Spanish, vied with each other in the sixteenth century for possession of the lucrative
Spice Islands of north and central Maluku.
The earliest source referring to the music-cultures of north and central Maluku was
a set of volumes about the Indonesian archipelago by the Dutch clergyman Valentijn.8
Thereafter the most useful sources include descriptions of the indigenous and European-
influenced music and dance in Protestant Ambon by the English writer Wallace.9 A
study in Dutch about some Malay songs and dances in Ambon and the Uliase
archipelago (i.e. the islands of Haruku, Saparua and Nusalaut) was published by
Joest.10 An encyclopedia entry on music and musical instruments of Maluku was
published by Snelleman in 1918," and a preliminary study of music and dance in the
Kai archipelago by the Dutch ethnomusicologist Kunst appeared in 1945.l2 In 1984 a
useful introductory book on music and dance in central and southeast Maluku and
among Maluku emigrants in Holland, containing transcriptions and texts of children's
songs and games, was published.13 More recently, ethnomusicological studies of parts
6
Sections below on the Uliase islands, Buru, Banda, Aru and Babar are based entirely on secondary
sources.
7
See, for example, Paramita Abdurachman, in "Moluccan Responses to the First Intrusions of the West",
ed. H. Soebadio and C.A. du Marchie Servaas, Dynamics of Indonesian History (New York, Oxford: North
Holland Co., 1978), pp. 161-68; Richard Chauvell, Nationalists, Soldiers and Separatists. The Ambonese
Islands from Colonialism to Revolt, 1890-1950 (Leiden: KILTV Press, 1990); and Leonard Y. Andaya, The
World of Maluku: Eastern Indonesia in the Early Modern Period (Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 1993).
8
Francois Valentijn, "Beschrijvinge van Amboine" (Description of Ambon), in Francois Valentijn, Oud
en Nieuw Oost Indien [Old and New East Indies] (Dordrecht-Amsterdam: J. van Braam, 1724-26), II.
Valentijn was a Calvinist domine who served two terms under the VOC (Dutch army), mainly in Ambon
in 1686-94 and 1705-1713. His description of aspects of North Maluku were based on secondary sources
and personal communications. Valentijn devoted the first three volumes of his five-volume work Oud en
Nieuw Oost Indien mainly to eastern Indonesia; and he included descriptions of the customs, art objects
and history of Maluku. See Andaya, The World of Maluku, p. 20.
9
A.R. Wallace, The Malay Archipelago (London: Macmillan, 1869).
10
W. Joest, "Malayische Lieder und Tanze aus Ambon und den Uliase (Molukken)", International
archives for ethnography V (1892): 1-3, 4.
"See J.F. Snelleman, "Musiek en Muziekinstrumenten in Niederlandsch Oost- Indie", Encyclopedic van
Nederlandsch-Indie (1918): 24-26.
12
See Jaap Kunst, "Een en ander over de muziek en den dans op de Kei-eilanden", Mededeling 64 des
Koninklijke Vereeninging Indisch Instituut (Amsterdam, 1945).
13
See Claartje Gieben, Renee Heijnen and Anneke Sapuletej, Muziek en Dans Spelletjes en Kinderlied-
jes van de Molukken (Hoevelaken: Christelijk Pedagogisch Studiecentrum, 1984). Also see Gert Boonstra,
"Beperapa Tjerita, Permainan dan Lagu dari Maluku", RPCZ pg Oom (Hoevelaken, 1982).
Music-Cultures of Maluku 145
of the Muslim north, i.e., historical and new music and dance on the twin islands of
Ternate and Tidore, have appeared.14 Susan McKinnon's 1991 ethnography of the
Tanimbar islands contains information and photography about the dances.15 The
Museum Siwalima in Ambon contains valuable collections of musical instruments from
many parts of the province. Maluku's office of the Department of Education and
Culture and the Maluku Studies Centre at Ambon's University of Pattimura have col-
lated some data on the performing arts, but it is incomplete and largely unpublished.
Malukan Music as a Whole

The province of Maluku contains many diverse micromusics, each based on a
unique, creative synthesis of local traditions and outside influences. Many musical
forms are linked to religious practices, including the church missionary practices of the
Christians, the Middle East-influenced musical expressions of the Muslims, and the
music associated with animist religious beliefs, i.e. those based on veneration of the
ancestors and the spirits of nature. Most of Maluku's population is Protestant, but
there is also a substantial number of Catholics, especially in Kai and Tanimbar. There
are small Muslim pockets throughout the central and southeast areas of the province,
such as in parts of Dullah Island in the Kai archipelago. Inhabitants of some mixed
villages divide into Catholics and Muslims, or Protestants and Catholics, or Protestants
and Muslims. However, the mainstream performing arts are based primarily on in-
digenous beliefs that pre-date the arrival of Islam in the fifteenth century and Chris-
tianity in the sixteenth.
Ceremonies comprising daytime male martial dances and night-time round dances
performed by women (e.g., lego-lego) or men and women (e.g., badendang, "dance
song") are common throughout central and southeast Maluku. The round dances are
marked by different styles of musical accompaniment and costumes in different areas.
Processional music and dance on boats, which were referred to by Valentijn in the
1720s, are still performed — though rarely, in the central and southern parts of the
province. Bronze gongchimes called totobuang (from the Malay: tabuh "to beat") and
drum ensembles are found all over Maluku; and court ensembles of bronze instruments
are still found in the palace-cultures of Ternate and Tidore. Indigenous flutes, multiple
reed instruments, Jew's harps, and bowed and plucked string instruments, as well as
instruments of European and Middle Eastern origin, are also widely distributed.
The drum is the dominant musical instrument. The ubiquitous term for the single-
headed varieties of drums found in many shapes and sizes all over Maluku is Ufa or
tipa, with various other local names such as tihato and tihal also being used in central
Maluku, and tibal (Fordate) and titir (Aru) in the southeast. In 1724 Valentijn referred
to two kinds of Ufa: (i) single-headed hand or stick-beaten drums which hung from
a house or mosque and were mostly used for signalling, and (ii) small hand-drums
which were played with bronze gongs to accompany dancing and singing. The short
14
Margaret J. Kartomi, "Appropriation of Music and Dance in Contemporary Ternate and Tidore",
Studies in Music 26 (1992): 85-95; and Margaret J. Kartomi, "Revival of Feudal Music, Dance and Ritual
in the Former 'Spice Islands' of Ternate and Tidore", Culture and Society in New Order Indonesia, ed.
Virginia Hooker (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 184-211.
15
S. McKinnon, From a Shattered Sun: Hierarchy, Gender and Alliance in the Tanimbar Islands
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991).
hand-drums, which are held under the player's left arm and beaten with his right hand,
occur in various sizes and shapes (see Plate 1). In Ambon, Uliase, Seram, Buru and
elsewhere in central Maluku, the small hand-beaten varieties (of about 30-40 cm in
diameter) have cylindrical wooden bodies to which a single piece of skin is attached
by rattan lacing, usually in a vertical parallel pattern, which is linked into a rattan hoop
stretched around the circumference. Small rattan-laced drums in the Kai archipelago
occur in both an elongated and a squat variety. Some are conical in shape, with their
wooden bodies flaring out at the base for stability when placed in a standing position.
The rattan hoops and lacing occur in various patterns and sometimes cover both the
upper and lower parts of the body.
In Aru, tifa are often cylindrical in shape with broad double flares at the base; and
their skin heads are attached by rattan lacing tautened with wooden wedges. In Tanim-
bar, the skins of the small conical hand-drums, called tibal or tifa (which may measure
between 30-45 cm in height and 15-20 cm in diameter), are attached to the body by
a rattan hoop and lacing, while large cylindrical three-legged drums (mbambal) in
upright position are beaten with sticks by a standing player. Tifa and other drums are
usually played with a pair of bronze suspended gongs and, in some areas, also with
a set of gongchimes (totobuang) to accompany dancing and singing. In addition, there
are split drums such as the walikane (which measure 1 to 1.5 m. in length and have
a ca. 50 cm. slit) in west Seram and the letlot in the Kai archipelago. Various two-
headed drums are also found. In Muslim communities, frame drums {rebana, rabana)
are often added to or replace the tifa, or substituted with small two-headed drums
(marwas) or Middle Eastern origin, in which case a wooden, short-necked lute (gambus)
and/or a vocal part are sometimes added.
The music-cultures of Maluku and neighbouring Sulawesi share many common
elements. For example, the music-culture of the Minahassa people of North Sulawesi
is closely related to that of northern Maluku, especially the former spice sultanates
of Ternate and Tidore and other islands in the Halmahera and Bacan group. In the
Tanimbar and Babar archipelagos in southeast Maluku, round dances with choral sing-
ing of the type found in Southeast Sulawesi and central Ambon are common, as well
as war dances similar to those of North Sulawesi. Ambon and Seram in Central
Maluku also share martial dances and other cultural attributes with North Sulawesi,
partly as a result of inter-island trade. Musical links also exist between the island of
Butung off Sulawesi's southeast coast and those orang Butung who migrated to Banda
Island from the late nineteenth century to the present (see section on Banda below).
Likewise, there are similarities between the music-cultures of the Aru archipelago and
the coastal Fakfak area of Irian Jaya.
North Maluku, With Special Reference to Ternate and Tidore

Apart from the descriptions which Valentijn recorded in Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien,
the following account of music in north Maluku, especially the subcultures of Ternate
and Tidore, is based on two publications by the author (see note 14) and her recorded
material and personal experiences in the field. The other main surviving subcultures
about which some data has been gathered are those of the Galela, Tobelo, Togotil,
Tobaru, Lingau, Kadai Marge, Bajak Laut and other subcultures of Halmahera island.
Plate 1. Bp. de Silva, the maker of variously shaped Ufa in the village
of Soya Diatas on the island of Ambon. Photo: H. Kartomi,
December 1989.
The musical intercultures of north Maluku have been shaped by several factors.
One early influence came from Chinese and Arab traders from the seventh century or
earlier. The area had acquired great wealth from the spice trade, especially in the native
cloves, and had also developed a rich repertoire of music, dance and ritual.
From the mid-fifteenth century the people's animist religious beliefs, which had
coloured their cultural identity, gave some ground with the acceptance of Islam from
north Java. The two Sultans (whose forebears were known as raja [M] (heads of adat
[M] or traditional customs) were in constant conflict with each other and with the
neighbouring Sultans of Jailolo and Bacan (see Map 1) as well as with the Portuguese,
Spanish, English and Dutch. The Europeans, who from the arrival of the Portuguese
in the early sixteenth century had their eyes focused mostly on the spice trade, brought
Christianity to the island of Halmahera and some other parts of North Maluku and
left lasting influences on local cultural expressions.
In view of the continual warring over the spice trade with and between the Euro-
pean powers and between the Sultans themselves, it is not surprising that the main
male dances in the courts were martial in character. Many of the performing art forms
were transformed into syncretic cultural expressions, influenced by art forms of Java,
the Middle East and Europe. Javanese court links also influence the music and dance.
According to the present Sultan of Ternate, the kulintang (bronze gongs) set in the
palace museum today was a gift from one of the wali sanga (the nine Muslim Javanese
hold men) to the twentieth Sultan of Ternate, Zainan Abidin Shah.16 Javanese are
known to have held official offices in the Tidore court in the seventeenth century.17
Over the centuries, specific artistic repertoires and practices developed in each of
the four courts. Though based mainly on village arts and rituals of pre-Muslim origins
such as ronggeng (social dancing) and salai jin (healing rituals) as well as adapted
Muslim forms such as dabus, samroh and salewat (devotional singing and/or ritual),
these artistic expressions were adapted continually to meet the political and artistic
requirements of the courts by gifted artists living in villages selected by the Sultan.
When guests visited the palaces in Ternate or Tidore, for example, they were received
by the respective sultan with his entourage and martial dancers and musicians per-
forming in the front pavilion. On state occasions and holy days and at celebrations,
hundreds of the sultan's subjects came to the palace to perform music and dance.
Travelling ronggeng were performed at court, and the sultan himself sometimes danced
with female professional dancers. These practices have been revived in Ternate since
the coronation of the present Sultan of Ternate in 1987. As a result the court cultures
of Ternate and, to a lesser extent, Tidore are somewhat known. Little is known to date,
however, about the distinctive identity of the Bacan and Jaiolo courts.
The pre-Muslim, adapted Muslim, and syncretic Portuguese-Malay music and dance
forms which are still practised in villages and palaces of many coastal areas of Indo-
nesia, such as the many islands of Riau, coastal Sumatra and coastal north Maluku,
are clearly part of the greater Malay culture. One of the most popular forms of greater
Malay art which developed over the centuries in the villages of Ternate and Tidore was
ronggeng. A special court form of the ronggeng dance — tari lala or tari yon (mixing
16
Kartomi, "Revival of Feudal Music, Dance and Ritual", p. 198.
17
Andaya, The World of Maluku, pp. 216-17.
dance) — was also developed for certain kedaton (royal residence) ceremonies. In both
the courts and the villages, its musical accompaniment was a synthesis of Middle
Eastern and local Malay characteristics. Typically, a melodic introduction on filutu
(bamboo duct flute) (see Plate 2) was followed by an entry on a pair of Ufa. This was
followed by a female vocalist who sang a version of the filutu melody to an improvised
pantun (quatrain verse), after which a male singer from the audience would improvise
a response. This exchange of pantun would continue indefinitely. Arabic-influenced
Malay dancing in Ternate and Tidore such as samroh, dana-dana, or japin, resembled
dances found in Riau and other Malay coastal areas of Indonesia. These repertoires
are still performed in some villages and towns, at the Ternate palace, at private celebra-
tions, and in Ternate's and Tidore's government buildings on official government
occasions.
Musical accompaniment for ronggeng social dancing features syncretic Portuguese-
Malay melodies played on the filutu, which are doubled by the vocalist and punctuated
in cycles on the drums and gong. The filutu player plays a short introduction (maku
nonako, meaning "getting to know each other"), followed by entries on the drums,
gong and voice. The lead and follower drums play in unison, or the follower drum
interlocks (siduniru) with the lead drum. At the end of a piece the flute player usually
trails off with a short melodic postlude. Sometimes a gambus, two pairs of marwas
(small two-headed drums) and a male and/or female singer substitute for the filutu
ensemble. An ensemble comprising electric guitars, rebana and Western drum kit often
replace the wind or string ensemble at weddings and other celebrations today.
Before a pre-Muslim healing ritual called salaijin begins, incense is burnt in front
of the gong, and offerings are prepared. The participants then join in the singing and
dancing to the accompaniment of rababu, Ufa, rebana and saragi (gong). When the
shaman enters into a state of trance, he is able, it is believed, to contact the ancestral
spirits. Following a melodic introduction on the rebabu, the drummers play loud, mainly
high-pitched rhythms and the shaman begins to sing, using a very restricted range (for
example, sometimes three neighbouring half-tone pitch levels are used).
There are two categories of martial dances and music in the Ternate palace. The
most refined and serious martial dances, performed by one or two men of the highest
military rank (the kapita), are called hasa or soya-soya. The less serious, male protocol
dances are called cakalele (where caka means "spirit who can cause harm" or "inner
power" and melele means "jump here and there"). These martial dances are traditionally
performed in the palace pavilion (pendopo [J]) in front of the Sultan, either before
or after battle, by a consort of ten soldiers who wear yellow and red costumes and
carry swords. Standing in front of his men, the leader gives commands and calls out
war cries. All the group dances feature vigorous hopping (muhega) and jumping
movements. Some of the male and female dances performed at court over the centuries
have recently been re-choreographed by government-organized troupes in Ternate and
Tidore, and this is one of the major movements for artistic change at present.18
Other village entertainment brought into the courts on special occasions included
the telling of legends and ancestral histories by gifted story-tellers. Their performances
were marked by axioms (dahlil) and improvised verse in pantun form. The now rare
l8
See Kartomi, "Revival of Feudal Music, Dance and Ritual".
mouihpiece
hole -coder, 3-STRINGED RABABU 1-STRINGED RASABU
plug Irom Temale
FILUTU
duel Mule
Ironl back
OR
OR OR
blowing hole
SULING
side blown Mule
\
cul node
O_R
coconut shell disc
SARUNE
I
quadruple reed
TIFA PODO
SARAGI
dopolo ("head")
— ngao ("ears")
cama ("neck")
70 cm
duku
(palm-tree string)
goat stomach skin
hall coconut shell wood
RABABU
Plate 2. Wind or bowed instrument ensemble, North Maluku. Reprinted with permis-
sion from Margaret J. Kartomi, "Revival of Feudal Music, Dance and Ritual
in the Former 'Spice Islands' of Ternate and Tidore", Culture and Society in
New Order Indonesia, ed. Virginia Hooker (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University
Press, 1993), pp. 203, 206.
Musk-Cultures of Maluku 151
bamboo idiochord tube zither Ufa tui ("bamboo drum") was also played to accompany
singing or dancing. Several of the palace female dances were performed by the ladies-
in-waiting of the Sultan's wife, the Sultana. One court dance which they performed
was the lego-lego, accompanied by a female tampiang (small frame-drum) player and
female vocalist who sang advice to and even criticism of the Sultan. Such female
dances may be centuries old. In 1724 Valentijn mentioned that four or more twelve-
year-old girls danced and sang to the accompaniment of a rabana, which he described
as a "round, not very thick drum", played with a small gong.19
At most celebrations today, as in past centuries, Muslim music and dance are domi-
nant. At a wedding, the groom's procession moves from the home of his parent to that
of his wife's parents, preceded by small girls bearing plates of flowers. Dancers per-
forming the art of self defence follow, accompanied by rebana players who sing the
Muslim confession of faith. On arrival the groom joins a room full of men playing
rebana and singing hadrat nabi (songs of praise for the Prophet) after which the imam
performs the marriage rites. At weddings and other celebrations, a Sufi form of wor-
ship, dabus (from dabbus [Ar]) is performed by a group of cross-legged men who sing
the names and praises of Allah and the various prophets. Two imam syek (religious
leaders) lead the unison singing and group frame drum playing, while a third presides.
His role is to care for the main performers (ngufa-ngufa) whose religious joy inspires
them to perform spectacular acts of self-mutilation, such as stabbing themselves with
metal awls (dabbus [Ar]) without feeling any pain. On mentioning the name of the
prophet Muhammed the singing and drumming reaches a very high degree of excite-
ment. The small frame drums (tampiang) produce fast, loud high-pitched sounds over
the lower-pitched cyclic rhythms played on the large frame-drums (aluari).
Other Muslim art forms performed at religious and life crisis ceremonies are salewat
(songs to request Allah to bless the Prophet), and girls' devotional dances called
samroh, tari dana, or japin [M], in which a mainly descending Arabic-style melody
is repeated many times with gambus, Ufa and rebana accompaniment, while ronggeng-
like dance movements are performed. Under the present Sultan of Ternate the badansa
(a group martial dance of post-Portuguese origin) has been revived. It is performed
at the foot of the front stairs of the palace as the Sultan descends to receive his guests.
The dance is accompanied by an ensemble which combines local and European in-
struments, where the Ufa and rebana belong to the former category and the violin
(biola), triangle (besi tiga hoek) and cymbals (dabi-dabi) belong to the latter. Addi-
tional instruments are used for some dances. Melodies played on the biola feature
European characteristics such as dotted rhythms and near-diatonic tuning, though
melodies are often restricted to five tones (for example: g f e d c), while the cyclic
rhythms played on the Ufa and frame drums are indigenous in style. European-derived
dance movements such as hopping, marking time, and removing and replacing hats
on the dancers' heads are combined with movements derived from the local ronggeng
dance style.
Bronze ensembles called kulintang or kolintang in the Ternate palace and jalanpong
in the former Tidore palace are played only during the Sultan's processions to the
19
Valentijn, "Beschrijvinge van Amboine", p. 19.
palace mosque on the occasion of the Idul'fitri and IduPadha festivals. The kulintang
(see Plate 3) contains a set of eight horizontal gongs called momo (which are collec-
tively called kulintang or remoi sahi-sahi, where remoi means "one voice" or "melody"
and sahi-sahi means "many voices"), a vertical gong (saragi), a double-headed drum
(baka-baka), a set of four Ufa podo (short drums), a triangle (besi tiga hoek), and a
pair of locally made cymbals (dabi-dabi or cik). The sound of the whole ensemble is
referred to by the onomatopoeic expression cikamomo bum, where cik refers to the
sound of the cymbals, momo to the horizontal gongs, and bum to the vertical gong.
The Ufa podo is either held horizontally on the player's left knee or rests on the
floor, although during processions it is held vertically under the player's left arm (see
Plate 4). The player beats the drum with both hands. Four musicians play a pair of
momo each. The interlocking sound texture includes "dotted rhythms" of European
origin played on the triangle, and local-style cyclical patterns played on the vertical
gong, horizontal gongs and drums.
Kulintang ensembles have existed in north Maluku for centuries. Valentijn referred
to a set of gongs of different pitches, or "copper bowls" played with two hammers or
sticks, in Ternate.20 These he called totobuang (which is the term used today, as we
have noted, for a set of small gongs in central Maluku, but not north Maluku). He
mentioned that totobuang were played with gongs and a big drum on the cora-cora,
i.e., the "very long and very wide" boats used by the kings of Ternate and Tidore.21
He also mentioned "a big Ufa or drum".22
Perhaps the most spectacular royal ceremony still maintained in Ternate today is the
kololokie.23 As tradition demands, in this extended ceremony the Sultan encircles the
island sitting on his throne in his flagship (prahu juanga), which contains a small stage
for dance performances, accompanied by a fleet of smaller boats called Ufa oti (boats
carrying Ufa drums). Under the previous Sultan the kololokie was normally held every
year after the Lebaran feast at the end of the fasting month, but it is now held when-
ever the Ternate volcano threatens to erupt as it is said to have done in the early
eighteenth century, and more recently in 1984 and 1987. On the boat the Sultan's
chosen musicians play two or three Ufa and a gong to accompany a dance by a male
dancer and a group of ladies-in-waiting.
Central Maluku
(a) Ambon and the Uliase Archipelago

Snippets of the history of the music-cultures of Central Maluku are known to us
mainly through works by Valentijn, Wallace, Snellemann, Tauern, Cooley, Gieben et al.,
20
Ibid., p. 22.
21
Ibid.
22
Ibid., p. 23.
23
According to a verbal communication from Ibu Syarinsad Syah, sister of the present Sultan of Ternate,
the term is based on the words kololo, meaning "circumnavigate", and kie, meaning "mountain". According
to a verbal communication from Leonard Andaya, the term should be kololokie (not kolokie). See Kartomi,
"Revival of Feudal Music, Dance and Ritual", p. 194.
Saragi
Kulmiang
(vertical gong)
20 cm
Dabi-dabi dutu-dulii IA |
or Cik (beater) j
nionto r
(cymbal)
(small horizontal
gong) r
35 cm IX
L 50-60 cm diameter
hohu ekor badan dopdo (eye, boss)
(feet) (belly button) (body) (leader)
X maifa
4 Tifa Podo (body)
(short drums)
X X
or
beater Baka-baka avocado tree or held either vertically or on lap

(two-headed drum) other wood
X = ngo/a-iigufa bua (player)
Plate 3. A Kulintang Ensemble from Ternate. Reprinted with permission from Margaret J. Kartomi,
"Revival of Feudal Music, Dance and Ritual in the Former 'Spice Islands' of Ternate and
Tidore", Culture and Society in New Order Indonesia, ed. Virginia Hooker (Kuala Lumpur:
Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 199.
Plate 4. The Tifa Podo, a commonly used drum in North and Central
Maluku, played by tf/a-maker, Bp. de Silva in Soya Diatas,
Ambon. Photo: H. Kartomi, December 1989.
Valeri, and Andaya.24 The following account of music and related arts in Ambon and
the Uliase archipelago is based on the colonial literature and recent secondary sources
supplemented by recent field data, part of which was supplied by Bp. Nus Tamaela,
his son Mr Chris Tamaela, and their colleagues.25 Besides the music and dance of the
so called original peoples of Seram, there are important syncretic forms belonging to
the Dutch-Malukan and the Middle Eastern-Malukan intercultures.
For over three centuries Protestantism has long been the dominant religion in
Ambon and the Uliase archipelago. Some of the performing arts there are still in-
fluenced by European models, including church music and local versions of dances and
dance music that were popular in Holland in the nineteenth century. Bamboo flute
orchestras comprising scores of side-blown flutes of different sizes (see Plate 5), op-
tional drums and a clarinet as well as wind orchestras containing locally-made clarinets,
trumpets, trombones etc. are played in near-diatonic tuning in church. However, some
of the pre-Christian musical instruments and practices still remain; for example, a
village above the town of Ambon called Soya Diatas is still noted for making good
quality tifa to sell to musicians and tourists, and the local Department of Education
and Culture officials are actively promoting the performance of modernised versions
of what is still known of the Alifuru music and dance.
As has been noted, some central Malukan people were converted to Islam from the
fifteenth century. After the Portuguese had assumed power in 1512, however, the non-
Muslim population of central Maluku was converted to Catholicism and began to prac-
tise Portuguese Catholic church music. In Ambon and other heavily Dutch-influenced
areas, most of the people were then converted to Protestantism. As Wallace mentioned,
the indigenous music and dancing in mid-nineteenth century Protestant Ambonese
feasts and processions was still mixed with music of the formerly dominant Catholic
church.26 Thus the Catholic music remained influential long after the Dutch took over
the area and its spice trade from 1605.
In general, the colonial literature depicts the people of Maluku as having been keen
to perform music and dance at any opportunity — for celebrations, life-crisis ceremon-
ies and at work, for example, when rowing boats and producing the staple sago.27 One
autochthonous dance in Ambon was the bambu gila ("magic bamboo dance"), in
which a group of male dancers bounced long bamboo poles up and down to tifa ac-
companiment. After a while the dancers entered a state of trance and the poles seemed
to bounce of their own accord. A performance of this dance in the Muslim area of
Hitu (a town on the north coast of the island of Ambon) was described by van Hoevell
in 1875 and it was recorded by the author in the same place in 1991 (see Plate 6).
^Wallace, The Malay Archipelago; Valentijn, "Beschrijvinge van Amboine"; Snellemann, "Muziek en
muziekinstrumenten"; O.D. Tauern, Patasiwa und Patalima; Vom Molukkeneiland Seram und seinen
Bewohnern. Ein Beitrag zur Volkerkunde (Leipzig, 1918); Frank L. Cooley, "Altar and Throne in Central
Moluccan Societies", Indonesia (October 1966): 135-56; Gieben et al., Muziek en Dans Spelletjes; Valeri,
"Autonomy and Heteronomy"; Andaya, The World of Maluku.
25
This field data was collected and recordings made in Ambon and Seram by H. and M. Kartomi in
July 1993. Bp. Nus Tkmaele is the founder and owner of a museum of Seram artifacts, including those of
several generations of his Seram ancestors in Soahuku, Seram (near Masohi).
26
Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, p. 300.
27
Gieben el al., Muziek en Dans Spelletjes, p. 19.
Plate 5. Part of a bamboo flute orchestra, played during a church service in Waai,
Ambon. Photo: H. Kartomi, December 1989.
Plate 6. Male dancers perform the bambu gila dance in the village of Hitu on Ambon
Island. Photo: H. Kartomi, December 1989.
Meanwhile a special genre of European-influenced Ambonese music and dance was

developing in the Dutch military camps. Despite the fact that by 1864 the Dutch clove
monopoly in Maluku had come to an end, Dutch cultural influence remained strong.
From about 1900, many Ambonese and other Maluku men had served in KNIL
{Koninklijk Nederlands-Indisch Leger) military camps which the Dutch had established
all over the Dutch East Indies. As a result a special military life style and culture was
developed in the barracks, including a particular form of Maluku-Malay dialect and
European-influenced dance forms called by the generic name of katreji. These dances
are still performed in some villages in Ambon today.
By the early twentieth century then, these European-influenced dances had become
popular in most Christian villages in Ambon, coastal Seram and the Uliase archipelago.
They were accompanied either by a small orchestra comprising a viol or vihola (bowed
string instrument) or an accordion, a tambur (frame drum) and a gring-gring (triangle),
or a large orchestra consisting of pairs of the above-mentioned instruments plus gongs,
flutes (bangsi [duct flutes] or suling [side-blown flutes]) and clarinets, played by
male musicians only. The katreji dances included the polonaise, wals manis (a slow
waltz), the katreji itself (a quadrille), the polka, the mazurka, the polka-mazurka, the
hakatincis (from the Dutch: hakkateentjes) and other locally-named dances such as
the cakaiba and the longa. Based on dances that were popular in ballrooms in Holland
from the mid-nineteenth century, these Malukan dances eventually almost replaced
the indigenous dances of central Maluku on the island of Ambon and in the Uliase
archipelago.28
Dutch control of Ambon came to an end after World War II. However the Dutch
attempted to regain control of the former Dutch East Indies between 1945-49, using
Malukan KNIL servicemen to fight against the Indonesian republicans. After the
Dutch had been defeated in 1949, some Malukan families fled to Holland, while others
remained due to an amnesty granted them by the Republic of Indonesia. In 1950, those
Malukans who had remained sympathetic to the Dutch set up the Republic of South
Maluku, which was then suppressed by the government of the Republic of Indonesia
under President Soekarno. The amnesty period then came to an end and large numbers
of soldiers and their families had to flee to Holland. In Holland they and their
descendents continue to practise the European-influenced Maluku dances and music,
as do some members of the older generation and some of the young people living in
central Maluku to this day.29
The island of Ambon is much more economically developed and cosmopolitan than
the large, neighbouring islands of Seram and Buru. As communications are only just
beginning to be developed, remnants of the pre-Muslim, pre-Christian culture of
the original inhabitants of the area — the Nuaulu, Huaulu and other ethnic groups
formerly known as the orang Alifuru — still remain;30 and they are being revived and
28
Ibid., pp. 25, 27. Today these European-influenced dances and musical pieces are also still performed
by Ambonese migrants living in Holland (ibid., pp. 90-100).
29
The author recorded and videoed katreji dances performed by primary school children accompanied
by adult musicians of Waai village in Ambon in July 1993.
30
For a discussion of the competing calls of the altar and the throne in Central Maluku, see Frank L.
Cooley, "Altar and Throne in Central Moluccan Societies", Indonesia (October, 1966): 135-56.
revised for modern concert audiences.31 In some areas, musicians still play double-row
gongchimes (totobuang) comprising nine or twelve small near-diatonic bronze gongs
on a wooden underframe as well as portable near-diatonic xylophones (tatabuhan
kayu),32 usually with Ufa, rebana and gong. Formerly bronze ensembles were owned
only by members of royal families and their descendants, who valued them greatly as
heirlooms.33 Today they are owned mainly by groups of musicians and government
departments and used for performances on official occasions and for tourists; for ex-
ample, they are played almost daily by resident musicians at the State Museum Siwa-
lima in Ambon. In 1724 Valentijn reported that there were totobuang that consisted
of five or six small gongs in a frame and were beaten with a pair of sticks.
The main traditional dance of the so-called Alifuru people in central Maluku are
the mixed-sex round dance performed by night, and the martial cakalele danced by
men by day. Traditionally, the cakalele is danced by men holding shields and swords
before they leave on a hunt or for battle,34 and it is accompanied by drums {Ufa) and
a gong. Valentijn reported that Ufa were used both as musical instruments and signal-
ling agents. Formerly they were suspended at the door of a house or in a mosque and
musicians used to beat out specific rhythms on them, such as Ufa orang mati ("rhythm
to announce a death") and Ufa marinyo ("rhythm to call people together"). Suspended
bronze gongs (ahuu) of various pitches were beaten with a soft hammer. These in-
struments were greatly valued as bridewealth and were seen as the expression of status
and power. A blown bamboo wind instrument comprising a narrow tube inserted
within a wider tube called gumbang is also known in Saparua.
The traditional cakalele dance ceremony is still performed in some Ambonese
villages (e.g., in the mountainous Salahutu district) on formal occasions, such as the
occasion of appointing a raja (chieftain). A modified version is also performed on
occasions set up for visiting tourists. The dancers' bodies are rubbed black with char-
coal, as is still the custom in the ceremonies of the Ambonese as well as the Nuaulu
and Huaulu people. As has been mentioned, these peoples are seen as embodying the
original culture of Maluku, and live mostly in the forests of Maluku's mother island,
Seram.35 The structure of the dance formations parallel the structure of the village
military units (pasukan hongi, or hongi) (see Plate 7) which used to take part in petty
3
'For example, the author made a video-recording of a polished kreasi baru ("new creation") concert
performance of Alifuru-based music and dance directed by Chris Tamaela of the University of Pattimura
in Ambon in July 1993. It was based, however, on the music and dance of the Amahai area of Seram, where
the traditional music and dance still survives in isolated areas. The university student members of his troupe
are increasingly being asked by government officials to perform on official occasions and to receive visitors.
32
Ernst Heins and G. van Wengen, "Maluku (Molukken)", in P. Collaer (ed.), Musikgeschichte in
Bildern, Siidostasien, Leipzig: VEB Deutschen Verlag, 1/3 (1979): 142.
33
Gieben et al., Muziek en Dans Spelletjes, p. 22.
34
Baron G.WW.C. van Hoevell, Ambon en meer bepaaldelijk de Oeliasers, geografisch, ethnographisch,
politisch en historisch (Dordrecht, 1875), p. 23.
35
In colonial Dutch times, this dance was called Cakalele Alifuru Waai due to its resemblance to the
dances of the so-called Alifuru forest-dwellers in central Seram, i.e., the Huaulu and Nuaulu peoples. The
name Alifuru, which is believed by some to possess perjorative implications, is not the name preferred by
the Huaulu and Nuaulu people, who today prefer to be known by their ethnic group names. However, the
term Alifuru is still regarded among government circles as a useful term for these groups.
wars and still become involved in disputes in central Seram. The following description
of a cakalele dance ceremony as performed today in Waai is based on the work of
Lainsamputty36, parts of which the author confirmed as being the practice also on
Seram, on the basis of an interview in July 1993 with Bp. Nus Tamaela, an elder of
Soahuku village in southern central Seram.
In Waai village, Ambon, the ceremonial proceedings are as follows. Two days before
a ceremony begins, the military leader (kapitan) and the spiritual leader (mongare
mentar) leave the village on a journey into the forests to collect the symbolic "clothes"
of the cakalele dancers, including the charcoal, which is gathered from a burnt sago
tree trunk (gabu-gabu), and other ceremonial offerings. A conch shell (siput, tauri) is
blown by the head of traditional customs (amun apu) to let the ancestral spirits know
of their departure. The spiritual leader prays to God and to the two original ancestral
spirits (Teta Bapa Nene Moyang) to request permission to dance, and then cuts the
gabu-gabu into three pieces, after seeking the permission of the kapitan and reciting
incantations to bless the water. At dusk they return home to the village, carrying the
holy water in two bamboo containers (balu sero). Their arrival is marked by the
sounding of a conch shell and the performance of a cakalele dance by the elders
(malesi). Finally, they prepare the ceremonial objects in the yard outside the village's
ceremonial house (baileu), and go to inform the chieftain at his home that their
preparatory mission has been completed. They then collect water from a pond in the
old village (negeri lama), i.e., Eri Nani.
That night, the nine cakalele dancers sleep in the kapitan's home ready to awake
at 3 am for the "putting on of clothes" ceremony. The dancers circle around the
three pieces of gabu-gabu, which are ceremonially burnt into charcoal and are then
extinguished by sprinkling them with the holy water collected earlier. The kapitan and
spiritual leader then use the charcoal to draw a cross on their foreheads, chests, and
backs, whereupon each dancer rubs another with the charcoal till his whole body is
black. The dancers then go home to put on full ceremonial dress, including the distinc-
tive red cloth headdress; long red loincloth, or shorts; shields (salawaku) and daggers
{parang) (see Plate 7); and they collect their large and small Ufa (drums). At dawn they
assemble at the kapitan's home where the ceremonial table (meja adat) has been laden
up with their breakfast. This consists of dried sago, dried fish, boiled bananas and
a sweet hot ginger drink (ten halia). A dagger is placed on both ends of the table.
After beating seven strokes on the large drums, the participants sit on the floor and
consume their breakfast without plates or cutlery, as is the custom, at a major village
alliance (panas pela) ceremony. They chew a betel nut preparation and beat the small
tifa to signal the completion of this part of the ritual. They then engage in solo and
choral response singing of traditional verses in old ceremonial language), accompanied
by the drums; this music is called kapata. Finally, they proceed to the homes of the
raja negeri and raja longi to report that they are ready to start their day of cakalele
dancing and they collect the sacred communal daggers from the home of the adat
head, who is now dressed in full ceremonial attire ready to receive their expressions
of homage.
36
See Marie Lainsamputty, "Bentuk Adat Istiadat di Negeri Waai, Kecamatan Salahuku", unpublished
paper (1993), 31 pp.
Three strokes on the large drums call the village and guests together, whereupon
the performance begins in the baileu yard. After the musicians play the small tifa, the
kapitan and aman apu perform the vigorous movements of the cakalele dance. The
aman apu holds the community spear and defends it when the kapitan attempts to
take hold of it, but eventually he loses it to the kapitan. The mongare mentar and
malesi tengah make their entrance and also try to gain possession of the spear. Who-
ever manages to get hold of it is allowed to hold it as he dances. Eventually the
kapitan circles around the whole military group (anak-anak hongi) and stands respect-
fully before the mongare mentar as a sign of the completion of this segment. Now all
the dancers are free to dance in the baileu yard to celebrate whatever they have chosen
to celebrate, for example, the completion of a new bathroom. Finally, they report to
the raja negeri and raja hongi that the dancing is over. The kapitan and mongare
mentar lead them all to a bank of the river Waai into which they throw all the unused
charcoal, and they bathe together in the river.
Frequently included in celebrations at festivals, life crisis ceremonies and coopera-
tive work gatherings were dance parties lasting two or three days, with the dancing
interspersed with solo and group response singing of pantun (two-couplet Malay
quatrains).37 Pantun singing is often referred to as kapata tunak ("indigenous poem-
songs")38 or badendang. It features the slow singing of poetic text and responses, some
of which contain erotic allusions. The songs are performed in a work context such as
the rowing of boats, as well as at performances of mixed-sex round dances at night-
time celebrations, in which case they may be accompanied by tifa and gong. Some
elderly musicians in inland Ambon can still sing the songs, but large-scale ceremonial
occasions formerly marked by such major singing activity are now rare.
Other vocal music in Christian areas of Maluku includes psalm (mazmur) and hymn
(tahlil or nyanyian rohani) singing in churches and by gravesides to the accompani-
ment of bamboo flute orchestras and other double-tube bamboo wind instruments
called gumbang. In 1724 Valentijn referred to the practice of funeral singing.39 Van
Hoevell described the hymn singing in 1875.
The European sacred and secular music that was adopted in central Maluku from
the seventeenth century was eventually transformed in Maluku into a large repertoire
of indigenous Maluku folk songs. Many of the songs are decades or centuries old, but
they are performed in various popular music styles in modern Indonesia by people of
all ethnic groups. Harmonised Ambonese folksongs called lagu Ambon or lagu Maluku
such as Buka Pintu ("Open the Door"), Ayu Mama ("Oh mother") and Hela-hela
rotane ("Hand the rattan!") are very well-known throughout Indonesia. They are ac-
companied by a local kroncong (small guitar) or Hawaiian-style band. In the past few
decades, the early twentieth century Ambonese guitar-like instrument called kroncong
has been supplemented or replaced by guitars, mandolins, ukeleles, banjos and a violin
or flute and tifa.
37
Ibid., pp. 25, 27.
^Kapata tunak were referred to by Valentijn as kabata (Valentijn, "Beschrijvinge van Amboine", p. 164).
See also Van Hoevell, Ambon, pp. 128-32. A musical transcription of a kapata which is still used as a
rowing song is given by Gieben (Gieben et al., Muziek en Dans Spelletjes, p. 29).
39
Valentijn, "Beschrijvinge van Amboine", p. 256.
Figure 1. Three Rows of Cakalele Dancers
X X X
gong malesi mongare tifa
negeri mentar kecil
X X X
kapitan, tifa besar anak-anak
anak-anak hongi malesi tengah hongi
X X X
malesi aman upu malesi
{tuan negeri)
Elders:
raja negeri village chief
raja hongi, anak-anak
hongi or kapitan military leader
aman upu, tuan negeri village adat head
malesi negeri senior elder
malesi elder
mongare mentar spiritual leader
pasukan hongi, hongi fighting force,
anak-anak hongi cakalele dancers
Plate 7. Ancient ceremonial dress worn by cakalele dancers, pictured in Soahuku

Museum, Masohi, Seram Island. Drawings by Bp. Nus Tamaela. Photo by
H. Kartomi, July, 1993, by kind permission of Bp Raja Soahuku.
(b) Seram
The ancestral music and dances are quite well-preserved in central Seram which is
still relatively untouched by the outside world. As in Ambon and many other parts
of Maluku, ritual music and dance in Seram divides into the male martial dances per-
formed all day and the mixed sex round dances performed all night, accompanied by
Ufa. The original inhabitants of the large island of Seram, collectively called the orang
Alifuru in colonial times, are divided into two social and kinship groups. They are the
Patasiwa, who formerly lived in the western inland area, and the Patalima, who lived
in the eastern inland area. They are further divided by their belief system into the hitam
(black) and putih (white) groups40. Their beliefs in the spirits of nature and the
ancestors contrast with those of the coastal Christian people of Seram, whose culture
is strongly influenced by that of Christian Ambon. Coastal Seram Christians play flute
orchestras like those in Ambon.41 Muslim villagers in Seram perform Muslim devo-
tional singing, mostly hadrat accompanied by frame drums.
There are many sizes of hand-beaten drums, normally called tipa in Seram, which
are used to accompany both day and night dancing. In central and southern Seram
they are mostly large drums (about 60 cm in diameter), whereas in the north they are
quite small (only about 30 cm in diameter).42
The main ritual of the Huaulu people of northern Seram is the kahua feast. Such
feasts are still held several times a year in some inland villages. Their most important
element is the night round dance, in which men and unmarried women participate.
The men hold hands and stamp and dance in an outer circle in clockwise motion,
while the women also hold hands, dance and stamp in a circle in clockwise motion.
A lead singer and refrain chorus sing texts in the ancient local language, accompanied
by hypnotic, repetitious drumming on the tifa drums. In past times, the kahua was
intimately connected with headhunting. In fact, it was held every time a head, or several
heads, were captured. Some local police in Masohi in inland Seram report that they
still sometimes come across evidence of head hunting and the associated feasts, but
these reports are officially denied. Today, then, the feasts are usually held to celebrate
any major event which enhances social or self esteem, or confirms its vitality, such as
the initiation of boys, the installation of an elder, or the rebuilding of a community
house. The night kahua dance has its counterpart in the cakalele-style diurnal war
dance called usali. These day and night dances alternate throughout the kahua feast.
The usali dance commences when the elders ritually take down the drums which
hang from the crossbeams of the community house and place them with the gongs
on the veranda. While some of the men play usali music, the others dance frenetically
in front of the community house. They dance all day until sunset. When the darkness
is complete, the singers and drummers sit in the centre of the veranda. Then the kahua
dance begins. It must never be interrupted until well after dawn. When daylight has
arrived, the slow night beat suddenly turns into the frenzied one of the day; and the
men, mustering all of the energy left to them, rush out and break into a spirited war
distinguishing mark of the Patasiwa Hitam men is that they tatoo their skin, and the tatoos have
secret religious meanings.
41
Heins and Van Wengen, "Maluku", p. 142.
42
Gieben et al., Muziek en Dans Spelletjes, p. 39.
dance. After this they rest until the afternoon, when they dance the usali again and,
after sunset, they dance the kahua until dawn. They continue for at least five days,
and more often for ten. Then the feast may slacken. But for several months (and
sometimes, as in 1987-88, for more than one year) dances will now and then be held
for a few nights in a row. While the dancing is not continuous, the innumerable taboos
which mark the ritual period are. It is taboo to perform any other ritual that involves
the use of drums, although curing rituals may be performed in an incomplete form,
that is, without drumming and dancing. At the completion of the feast, the partici-
pants spend between one to five nights in sewa, a kind of competitive singing which
is required at funerals to send away the shadows of the dead.43
In western Seram, the Patisiwa Hitam dance the so-called maro round dance at
night. They gather in a religious house at midnight where they dance and stamp slowly
in a circular or a spiral formation to specific Ufa rhythms and perform songs (rorone)
in parts, mainly in fifths and thirds.44 When they stamp, the bamboo floor of the
baileu bounces and the sound resonates. By day the men perform the martial cakalele
dances out of doors wearing full battle dress and holding a sword and a small shield.
A solo singer, a choir, a gong player and a conch shell (tahuri) and/or bamboo horn
(tahuri) player accompany the dance. Formerly, cakalele dances were a part of the
headhunting rituals. Today the dance style is still vigorous, but less warlike than in the
past as it has been modified for the requirements of a ceremony to welcome important
guests. The people also sing ritual choral sewa songs with archaic texts which are
suitable for all feasts45 and love and rowing songs.46 Shamans sing special songs for
the soso healing ritual.
Today, tourists sometimes pay up to A$200 for an all-night kahua performance,
replete with food, cigarettes, and offerings. They are led by Nuaulu elders and their
relatives, who occupy houses provided for them by the government in a settlement
near Masohi.
(c) Bum
Unlike the many transmigrants who live on Buru, the original orang Alifuru mainly
live in inland areas, with a few living along part of the coastal areas of the island. As
in Seram, only the men play the small conical tifa (of which the largest is about 39
cm long), and both men and women sing and dance the night round dance lego in
circular formations at ceremonies. Valentijn described lego as being a round dance ac-
companied by slow "assoy" (asoi) responsorial songs47. The head of a group of families
(a soa), begins the dance, after which the guests and others present join in, with the
male dancers each carrying a shield and a sword. The daytime cakalele dance is also
known on Buru, accompanied by a large tifa and a gong. Musicians also play inter-
locking patterns on a metre-long bamboo zither named totobuang kawat. It consists
43
Valerio Valeri, "Autonomy and Heteronomy in the Kahua Ritual", pp. 62-67.
^ e e musical transcription in Gieben et al., Muziek en Dans Spelletjes, p. 39.
45
See O.D. Tauern, Patasiwa und Patalima, pp. 187-88.
^See musical transcription in Gieben et al., Muziek en Dans Spelletjes, p. 45.
A1
"Assoy" or "tutohato" are forms of slow, responsorial singing intended to honour a selected person as
opposed to hasuha-a ceremonial singing in fast tempo (Valentijn, "Beschrijvinge van Amboine", p. 164).
of five bamboo strings raised on two bridges with a bamboo tongue which resonates
over an opening in the tube. Homemade, three-stringed, bowed string instruments
called viol are also common. Formerly, ensembles comprising a gong and set of toto-
buang (five gong chimes) were exchanged as part of a bride price.
(d) Banda Archipelago

The present-day Bandanese are intercultures of mixed descent; they include people
claiming European, Chinese, Arabic, Maluku and Sulawesi ancestry. The Bandanese
language differs from Indonesian in only a handful of words. Thus the Bandanese are
a group based not on descent but on Bandanese birth and use of a language barely
different from the national language.
The main town in the Banda islands group is the former Dutch colonial capital
Bandanaira, situated on the tiny island of Naira. The population is divided into two
groups: Bandanese (prang Banda) and Butongese (orang Butong). The latter came to
Banda at the end of the nineteenth century from the Butung islands to the southeast
of Sulawesi, new migrants arriving sporadically until the present. (This was confirmed
by the 76-year-old Sultan of Butung, Haji Drs. H. La Ode Manarfa, during the author's
visit to the Kraton Wolioi in Baubau, Kabupaten Buton or Butung in June 1993.)
Butungese speak their own language as well as Indonesian and Bandanese. It is said
on Banda that the original Bandanese were not eliminated but were integrated into the
present orang Banda.™
As in neighbouring islands, the chief traditional ceremony consists of dancing called
cakalele. Though performed for centuries, the meaning of the cakalele had been lost.
Recently, however, a document was recovered which shows that this dancing represents,
through secret symbolism, the names of the slaughtered original-Bandanese nobles.49
The dominant musical styles today, however, are Maluku folksongs and international
popular songs.
Southeast Maluku
(a) Kai Archipelago

The inhabitants of the Kai archipelago in southeast Maluku are Malays who believe
that they, or at least the noble class, probably originally migrated from the islands to
the west,50 perhaps via the north. This is in contrast to the populace of the Aru archi-
pelago just east of Kai who are predominantly Melanesian.51 Not only the Kai islands
but also Aru and Tanimbar have "social orders".52 In northern Kai, the "first social
^Tsuchiya Kenji and James Siegel, "Invincible Kitsch or As Tourists in the Age of Des Alwi", Indonesia
50 (1990): 61-76.
49
Ibid., p. 64.
50
See Barraud, "A Turtle Turned on the Sand", p. 35.
51
Most of the data in this section are based on field information from the author's 1989-90 trip.
52
See Barraud, "Wife-Givers as Ancestors", p. 196.
order" comprises the "original inhabitants".53 The three-level social order system in
Kai (called melriniri, an acronym based on the names of the three social orders) is
believed by the local people to have been influenced by contact with Bali; indeed,
much of the Christian and Muslim population adheres to Hindu-like beliefs and prac-
tises ancestor veneration. Because they are believed to possess superior knowledge of
seafaring and weaponry, newcomers are traditionally looked up to by the indigenous
Kai people as being superior. The nobility (second) in Kai are believed to have migrated
there from Seram.54
Today, the Kai performing arts appear to be better maintained in Kai's Catholic
communities than in the Protestant or Muslim ones.55 The Catholic services incor-
porate suling bambu (bamboo flute) ensembles and traditional songs. The indigenous
religion, which is based on worship of the ancestors and various nature spirits, includes
veneration of ancient bronze kettle-gongs (nekara) as ancestral objects. Remnants of
a Dongson drum called Tiva Mas ("golden drum") are the object of ancestral venera-
tion ceremony in Faan village, Kai Kecil, led by its tuan tanah (keeper)56. Ivory, gongs
and old Portuguese coins are used as forms of bridewealth in the area.
A typical musical ensemble in Kai today comprises two gongs (medium and small
size) called dada; tiva laai and Ufa kot (large and small Ufa);51 and a bamboo flute
(sawarngil). Another instrument which is almost obsolete is the musur tao ("bowed
string instrument"), which has a half-coconut shell body and a horsehair bow. Some
conch shells called tuwuir were formerly used to call people together and for other
signalling purposes. Instrumental music, called mumur-mamir ("the loud sound of a
Ufa ensemble") is used to accompany all dance forms, such as the guest-welcoming
sasoi or beben ("dance"). There are fifty-two known types of dance in Kai, of which
the fan (beben kibas) and umbrella {beben baing) dances are normally preferred at
weddings58. Formerly, the beben ular (snake dance) ceremony was the means by which
a new chieftain was installed. Male martial dances called sasoi damar (torch dance),
sasoi panah (arrows) or sasoi katar (shield dance) may be merged with the softer
53
The first social order, called melfuar or yang punya pulau/tanah (meaning "landowners"), is said to
be the original inhabitants of Kai. The second is called malantar ma, lear, or rin, meaning "people from
overseas". The third social order is called iri, iriri, budak belian or melfuar (consisting of servants who had
been defeated in war). The traditional customs on which the musical culture is based are called "mel and
ren", and the whole set of beliefs and social cooperative help system is termed "melren". Information from
Raja Dullah, Bp. Nohor Renuat of Kampung Dullah, Kai Besar, and Bp. G.W. Raharawin of the Department
of Education and Culture in Tual.
54
Barraud found that on the Tanebar-Evav island in the southern Kai archipelago, all members of society
belong to the noble order, "while in the northern part of the archipelago there are generally three social orders
in each community: nobles, the servants of nobles (often called slaves or dependants), and commoners"
(Barraud, "Wife-givers as Ancestors", p. 196). On Kai Besar and Kai Kecil islands where the author recorded
the music, only three social orders were found.
55
On the island of Kai Kecil, only thirteen of about a hundred villages are Christian, with the remainder
being Muslim. On Kai Besar island, on the other hand, over half are Protestant and the rest are Catholic
(information from Bp. Rahandra, Bupati of Kai archipelago in 1989).
56
The remnants of the nekara were photographed by H. and M. Kartomi in 1989.
51
Tifa parts are as follows: the head, un; the body, arumun; the feet, yean; the tuning agent, rit-rit; the
beater, fur, rotan lacing, warat.
58
My sources of information are Bp. Gregorius Raharawin and Bp. Oni Labetubun, Department of
Education and Culture officers in Tual, December 1989.
Malay/Portuguese-influenced female dancing to symbolise the termination of warfare

in victory and peace.
Unaccompanied refrain singing with allusory poetic texts is the basis of song (sekar)
in Kai. Magical songs are sung to aid in the collection of honey, to bring safety at sea,
and for orphaned children to mourn. Ngel-ngel are traditional songs sung all night
long at weddings and other ceremonies in free metre with a highly melismatic style.
Their texts offer advice on male/female love or family relations, or relate historical
tales or genealogies. When — ominously — whales are washed ashore, special magic
songs are sung for a whole night for protection of the community. An identical song-
ceremony is held once a year to cleanse a village and its villagers of misdeeds.59
Unaccompanied songs are sung with refrains at ceremonies to request rain in times
of drought, to pray for safety at sea before departing on a voyage, or when ownership
of ancestral land is formally subdivided. Special genres of songs are known on Kai:
one is to give advice to young men going abroad, known as snehet-snehet; a second
genre as mentioned above is for weddings and other celebrations, known as ngel-ngel
and tananit; a third is to praise and welcome important guests, called wawaar, a fourth
is for funerals, called maruruin; and a fifth consists of epic songs called baut-baut,
for processions on a ceremonial boat to tifa accompaniment60.
In past centuries, local chieftains' long boats carrying performing musicians and
dancers were common in Kai just as they were in North and Central Maluku. In Kai
the long boats carried ensembles called tiva tipa balang or kora-kora (Valentijn refer-
red to them as cora-cora) along with the local Raja and elders (pemangku adat) to
pick up important guests from other places. The tifa ensemble accompanied dances
performed on a platform in the front part of the boat while the raja sat in the middle
on another platform. The artists performed celebratory sasoi ngel-ngel dances or, in
time of war, sasoi fuun (war dances). Weapons stored on the boat would be used in
battle if an enemy were to be encountered at sea. After battle, a victory celebration
would be held, led by the Raja and elders61.
In Kai, Muslim music is typified by devotional singing (zamrah or hadrat) accom-
panied by violin, gambus and guitar. Martial dances are accompanied by one gambus
and five to six mewas or marwas (small two-headed hand-played drums). Tari sawat,
59
Barraud, "A Turtle Turned on the Sand", p. 44.
60
We recorded songs in all genres in Letwuan village, Kai Kecil in December 1989. A group of women
singers were led by the seventy-year-old Ibu Yuliana Refo, a Catholic woman who was born into the noble
class. We also recorded the following dances: tifa farsohad in which boys perform a martial dance with
katar (shields), temar rubil (bow and arrow), followed by an entry by a group of female dancers who depict
the making of peace; tifa panam, danced to the slow tifa nam rhythm; tifa sawat, in fast tempo; tifa hatu,
in fast tempo; tifa silat, in very fast tempo; and tifa taran/mumur-mamir. All dances are accompanied by
an ensemble comprising tifa, flute and gongs, except for the sawat dance, which substitutes four rabana for
the tifa.
61
This paragraph is based on a verbal communication from Raja Dullah whom we met at the site of
the belong boat in Dullah village in December 1989. Raja Dullah says his office has descended from that
of the Sultan of Jailolo who fled from the Portuguese in the sixteenth century to settle in and spread
Islam in the Dullah area. Today there are several Rajas in Kai Kecil, six in Kai Besar and one in Dullah.
the main Muslim-based social dance for young people62, and sasoi are special dances
to honour the raja. Tiwa nam is a ronggeng-like Malay fan-dance performed by
adolescent girls.
(b) Abu Islands

East of the Kai archipelago lies the Aru island network. Due to the lack of com-
munications in the Aru islands in the past, virtually every village has developed its own
repertoire of songs (didi), including many kinds of rowing songs sung on boats when
at sea (marerei, bela and jer lavlavi). The main instruments are the drum (tifa or titir),
the gong {daldala), the jews harp (berimbak) and the conch shell (tapur). Gongs are
used as bridewealth and occur in various sizes under the following names: daldala
sermin, jawa, talakoka, sigila, sigkodar, jawa tapuran, sepelpel, bumbong and wangur
gural63 At feasts the Aru people perform the traditional dalair dances accompanied
by singing and drum.64
(c) Tanimbar
The population of the Tanimbar archipelago is predominantly Catholic and Protes-
tant, with strong undertones of ancestral veneration. Like their neighbours in the Babar
and Kai Islands, their beliefs incorporate the ceremonial use of intricately carved
wooden statues of the ancestors and elaborate ceremonies comprising music and
dance.65 Migration myths describe the ancestors arriving from Sumatra and Java by
way of Flores and Timor, and continuing on to Seram, but none describe migration
to Tanimbar from central Maluku. According to the indigenous religion, after death
Tanimbar souls go to Selu Island (west of Tanimbar); thus, the ceremony to prepare
the soul of a deceased person for the journey is called tnabar rbadar mangwate
("ceremony for the soul's journey"). Some villages, such as Aruidas village, still use
a large stone in the shape of a boat as the elders' meeting place. In Aruidas, an ancient
bronze nekara kettle-gong lies in a place of honour. In both places the people place
62
A recording of tari sav/at [M] which we made in Mangon village, Kai Besar, was accompanied by a
gong (dada, with a boss called kaman) playing cyclic rhythms, three to seven frame-drums (rabana) (of which
two pokok ["main"] drums interlocked to produce the main onbeat rhythm, and one pengikut [I], ["follower"]
drum played an interlocking offbeat rhythm), and an endblown, 22 cm-long bamboo duct flute (sawarngil),
having a backhole and six finger-holes. The lead drum part is called ain, meaning "first to enter", or "solo";
the second frame-drum to enter is called anru, meaning "second to enter", or him, meaning "two playing
together"; and the third to enter is called antel, meaning "third to enter", or hirtel, meaning "three playing
together". The drumming is marked by three tempo variations, of which the tiwa nam ("deep sea rhythm")
is the slowest and linked to the ceremony to pay respect to the ancestors, the tiwa sawat is the fast tempo,
and the tiwa farsohad is the very fast tempo. The third drum decorates the "main rhythm" (hevari) with
variations (bung-bung). Devotional sawat is played on boats to request a safe voyage or to call the wind,
and social sawat is performed at weddings and other celebrations. Annual sawat music and dance competi-
tions are now being run by the government to popularize this form (based on a verbal communication from
Bp. Awat, leader of the sawat group in Mangun village, December 1989).
63
Gieben et al., Muziek en Dans Spelletjes, pp. 78-79.
M
Ibid.
65
For a discussion of sound structure types in Tanimbar, see F.A.E. van Wouden, Types of Social Struc-
ture in Eastern Indonesia (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1968; originally published in Dutch in 1935). For an
ethnographic study by a missionary-scholar who lived in Tanimbar, see P. Drabbe, Het Leven van den
Tanembarees; ethnographische Studie over het Tanembareesche Volk (Leiden: Brill, 1940).
offerings to honour the ancestors. Ancestral customs, music and dance have been com-
bined with Christian practices in many instances. For example, model boats are
sometimes placed in churches and used as altars (e.g., in Olilit Lama village) and tradi-
tional lullaby melodies are sung to texts about Baby Jesus.
In the kecamatan of southern Tanimbar, where we recorded several kinds of music
and dance, there are two suku [I] (subcultures): (i) the Suku Yarn, who speak the
classical language called Fordata, which is also the name of an island off Tanimbar's
north coast; and (ii) the Suku Timur Lau, who speak four other local languages, i.e.,
Timurlau, Selaru, Selwasa and Makatian. However, the two subcultures possess some
cultural unity through their common usage of two sets of pela customs called daun
and lolat, i.e., the giving and receiving of bridewealth (vat velin or "the value of the
woman" in Fordata language) and complementary gifts from wife-givers to wife-takers
(baiyau).66 At weddings the male side is called daun and the female, lolat. The songs
and dances of each group are also similar to each other.
Ceremonies with music and dance (tnabar) were formerly frequently held for births,
requests for bridewealth (tnabar lilike), funerals, new houses, to request rain67, for suc-
cessful fishing, and to celebrate clearing the forest to create a new garden (the latter
ceremony is called tnabar pemiri keburi). When rice was planted the occasion was
marked by the holding of a tnabar fanewa (planting ceremony). When rice ripens in
the field, a "rice-ripening" ceremony called tnabar fusuk fase is held with dance depic-
tions of winnowing, rice stamping and other work components. In areas of southern
Tanimbar visited by the author, the church forbids pre-Christian ceremonies but en-
courages Christianized versions of them performed in the church. For example, in the
past two decades whole villages have celebrated harvests by bringing dances, songs
and ritual objects into church and performing adapted versions of them, with the
local priest presiding and giving the blessings.
Today there are choreographed performances of ceremonies that lack the former
religious meanings. Tnabar Has or tnabar panas pela is a ceremony (or now a choreo-
graphed dance) in which the headmen of two villages drink one another's heated blood
to indicate that they are friends and cannot go to war. Some ceremonies are performed
only by women and others by men. Mixed dances symbolise the cooperation of the
villagers working together in the fields. The war dance (tnabar mpuk-ulu: lit. "happy
head dance") refers to the warrior's display of an enemy's head. As part of the angkosi
dance, men and women sing and dance in standing position while responding to
pantun verses from each other as a way of teasing and getting to know one another.
In the lilike dance, on the other hand, they dance and sing while seated. Competitive
pantun singing is also an important feature of the New Year celebration.
The key ritual dance, the tnabar ila'a, reflects the place of the boat in ancestral
migration myths. This "great stomp" dance is performed before a village renews its
brotherhood alliance with another village.68 Men and women stand in a huge, open,
McKinnon, From a Shattered Sun, pp. 144ff.

67
At the ceremony to request rain to fall (tnabar tutuk alu), long horizontal bamboo poles are arranged
in criss-cross fashion and are clapped rhythmically across each other to imitate the sound of the elements,
while the dancers hop in and out of the poles between the claps (we recorded this dance in Wowonda village
in December, 1989).
68
McKinnon, From a Shattered Sun, pp. 75-79.
boat-shaped circle in line of precedence of the arrival of each family founder in a

village (though normally only the first and last dance are precisely determined in this
way). Drummers stand near the bow and to one side within the circle and play the
"front drums" (tival ulu) and back drums (tival muri), as well as a large three-legged
drum (nfeffik babat). The lead singer (kuat) stands at the back of the circle of dancers.
The four drummers who stand toward the bow are thought to compose the "sail"
(/aw) of the boat and, just as the sail must fill with wind before the boat can set
out, so too the drums must sound before the dance can begin. The dance formation
of some villages includes four women who "dance like noble frigate birds" (rsomar
wean taran meld) in the middle of the boat, toward the front end. They dance with
their arms outstretched like the great wings of frigate birds, hovering in place as
if they were riding the same winds as the boat itself. Finally, the community nobles
alone are allowed to sit in the center of the dance formation and, as captains, direct
the village boat on its steady course.69
Male musicians accompany many ceremonies by playing on a large three-legged
drum called empa-empaP0, while women seem to be the exclusive players of Ufa
drums (usually called tibal). Gongs (titir) are also played. Formerly, the ceremonial life
of the Tanimbar people was very rich and intense, based on veneration of the ances-
tors. They would begin their day with dancing, gardening or hunting until the after-
noon, then dance again. Today, however, this sort of lifestyle is obsolete in Tanimbar.
In the first half of this century, the church fathers forbad the ceremonies, the use of
ancestral statues (which they termed "idols"), and the ceremonial dance and music. As
a result the performance practice of most of the repertoire is known now to very few
artists. However, as in many parts of Maluku, the round dance is still widely practised.
In it, a large group of women and girls sing and dance badendang (e.g., the melody
of the popular song "Amelin") in a circle together. Badendang are even performed in
churches today, though with Christian texts. Church services incorporate elements of
the songs and tnabar with Christian content, with the participants wearing traditional
costume including bird-of-paradise feather headdresses. The latter are imported from
Irian Jaya. These are worn together with ivory anklets and bracelets and other in-
herited objects during ceremonial dancing because it is believed that the ancestors
wore them.
As in many other parts of Maluku, traditional performing arts in present-day
Tanimbar are often adapted to suit the protocol and political ends of New Order Indo-
nesia. Today new dance choreographies based on the traditional dances include the
weaving dance angkosi petitais, the long criss-cross bamboo-pole bouncing dance
formerly performed to request rain (tutuk alu), and the dance to contact the ancestors
to improve the fish catch (silabat angkus ansoli)1[.
69
Ibid., p. 76. Photos of a performance and a design of the dance formation are also given in ibid.,
pp. 76-78.
70
The woman who opens and closes a ceremony or dance is called mangasyoru, while the woman who
leads the dancing is called tnabar ual, and the other female dancers are called mangasabrar. My main source
of information is Bp. Eusebius of Wowonda.
71
We recorded the Angkosi Petitais and Tutuk Alu dances in Sifnana village and the Silabat Angkus
Ansoli dance in Lauruan village (near Saumlaki) on 30 December 1989.
(d) Babar Archipelago — Marsela and Luang Island

In the very arid Babar Islands (Kecamatan Pulau-pulau Babar) west of Tanimbar
in southeast Maluku, there is a striking similarity between the central theme of the
fertility ritual and the main theme of the myths of creation, centring on the so-called
sacred marriage of heaven and earth. This applies both in the patrilineal, patrilocal
social structure of the eastern islands such as Marsela, and in the matrilineal, matri-
local order in the western islands such as Luang. Fertility rituals played an important
part in the village communities. Despite the influence of Christianity, indigenous
beliefs and practices are still apparent in the month-long New Year celebration on
Marsela island, where the ritual purpose has been to implore the ancestors and the
deity to bring rain for fertility and prosperity. During the New Year fertility ritual on
Marsela, which lasts nearly a month, the lulya ("sacred") dances are performed. They
include a men's anti-clockwise round dance, accompanied by a very long song with
fixed lyrics describing the warriors' return from battle, a women's anticlockwise round
dance accompanied by a song comprised of improvised lyrics which refer to fishing,
and a mixed-sex dance in a single row, accompanied by a song imploring rain.72
Conclusion
As the sketchy and unevenly distributed data about the music of the regions of
Maluku indicate, we are still in the early stages of musicological research in Maluku.
Although detailed anthropological research in a few areas has recently been carried out
and published (especially on northern Seram and the Kai, Marsela and Luang islands),
only passing reference, as we have noted, has been made to the musical components
of the rituals described. Our own more detailed fieldwork on aspects of the musical
cultures of but two of north Maluku's hundreds of inhabited islands — Ternate and
Tidore, as well as Ambon and Seram in Central Maluku, and south Tanimbar, Kai
Besar and Kai Kecil in Southeast Maluku, is preliminary and recent. The extant histor-
ical sources over the past four centuries give us only a glimpse into the musical expres-
sions of Maluku's past; and the data they offer are not sufficient or reliable enough
for us to document musical change except in its broad outlines. The Christian
Pedagogical Study Centre is to be congratulated for publishing the booklet by Gieben,
Heijnen and Sapuletej on some of the music, dance, games and children's songs of
central and southeast Maluku, but this contribution serves mainly to whet the appetite
for a more thorough investigation into the many subcultures and intercultures of
Maluku and the history of the relationships between them.
The main directions of change throughout the province at present result from ef-
forts by the New Order government, via the "functional groups" (Golkar), to adapt
the traditional performing arts for protocol and political purposes. Wherever possible,
government officials enlist the help of local leaders, for example the Sultan of Ternate
or church functionaries, to promote their artistic endeavours. They also employ the
services of the most talented musicians and dancers who comply with their artistic
directions, though little money actually passes hands. All groups of artists are required
to register their names and details in the local Department of Education and Culture
Office. In this way the government tries to keep control of any potential political
72
van Dijk and de Jonge, "After Sunshine Comes Rain", pp. 3-20.
activity of artists who are known to have criticized authority in the past. Individual
artistic expression is not highly valued, but then this never has been the main aim; the
tradition of group artistic activity is maintained. Contributors of new artistic ideas and
techniques are not specially singled out for praise. The spokespeople of groups are
normally their business leaders of administrators. Artistic prominence is usually
absorbed into the regional glory of a particular Bupati's or Dharma Wanita's (Govern-
ment Officials Wives Association) group of artists.
It is also these groups that are the main directors of style change in music and
dance performances. Since the late 1960s, officials of the Department of Education
and Culture and the Dharma Wanita have selected certain kinds of traditional items
of music and dance and created new ones (kreasi baru) which they feel are attractive
and interesting for national and international audiences. Provincial pride in the national
scene is a strong motivator in this respect. The government bodies have also offered
patronage and training to selected artists and groups who are constantly called upon
to perform for election campaigns, official receptions of important guests, national
celebrations, and the media. Some of the more technically difficult items, such as the
hasa martial dances in Ternate, are being lost as their elderly performers die without
having succeeded in attracting young pupils or patronage to carry them on. In the
more isolated areas of Maluku, such as in inland Tanimbar and the Aru Islands, the
traditional music and dance continue to be practised in their agricultural and life-crisis
ceremonial contexts of ancestor and nature veneration, while in some villages (e.g.,
Wowanda in southern Tanimbar) segments of these ceremonial dances have been
choreographed and their music arranged for long, staged ceremonial shows for
audiences. In strongly Christianized areas such as Ambon and the Uliases, the main
form of social music making takes place in the churches. Yet even the church flute
and brass ensembles which were so strong in Ambon until the mid-twentieth century
are now found only in a few churches, as in the village of Waai. Church music in
southern Tanimbar today is a successful synthesis of local pre-Christian music styles
and European church humns, and these creative developments are encouraged by an
enlightened church leadership and policy. In Muslim areas such as Dullah in Kai, the
pan-Malay forms of Middle East-influenced music and dance, are still strong, but they
are strongest in the Muslim north, especially Ternate. Artists still regularly rehearse
and perform sacred and secular music at weddings, other celebrations and for govern-
ment occasions.
This paper has aimed to expose the need for the intense study and properly archived
documentation of the musical cultures of the large province of Maluku in all its diver-
sity. If we can serve to interest others making a concerted effort to collect the data
and encourage them to take the study further, this publication will have been worth-
while, and the region will then no longer be musicological terra incognita.

Kartomi 1994

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Kartomi 1994

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Journal of Southeast Asian Studies

Additional services for Journal of Southeast Asian

Email alerts: Click here

Is Maluku Still Musicological terra incognita? An

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0022463400006718

How to cite this article:

Request Permissions : Click here

Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/SEA, IP address: 138.251.14.35 on 17 Apr 2015

Is Maluku Still Musicological terra incognita?

What do we know about the music-cultures: the micromusics3, subcultures and

Malukan Music as a Whole

North Maluku, With Special Reference to Ternate and Tidore

goat stomach skin

hall coconut shell wood

(a) Ambon and the Uliase Archipelago

beater Baka-baka avocado tree or held either vertically or on lap

X = ngo/a-iigufa bua (player)

Meanwhile a special genre of European-influenced Ambonese music and dance was

Plate 7. Ancient ceremonial dress worn by cakalele dancers, pictured in Soahuku

(d) Banda Archipelago

(a) Kai Archipelago

Malay/Portuguese-influenced female dancing to symbolise the termination of warfare

(b) Abu Islands

McKinnon, From a Shattered Sun, pp. 144ff.

boat-shaped circle in line of precedence of the arrival of each family founder in a

(d) Babar Archipelago — Marsela and Luang Island

You might also like