52 2005 YEARBOOK FOR TRADITIONALMUSIC

Meukaphe - theWestern associated stream of instruments

As noted above, for the sake of completeness a third socio-historical stream or

stratum of instruments needed to be included in Chart 1.
The earliest-known and longest-lasting adaptation of a European
instrumentby Acehnese musicians is the violin, called biola Aceh ("Acehnese
violin"). The biola Aceh somewhat resembles a large European viola, but the
player rests it on his upper breast rather than his shoulder and he tunes at least
two of its four strings to a viola-like range (see figure 11).36 From the early days
of their empire in Southeast Asia, the Portuguese probably brought quantities of
musical instrumentssuch as guitars and bowed strings-possibly alto violins
called viola in Portuguese and biola in Malay (Goldsworthy 1979:421) with
them toMalacca and other colonies.37 These instruments and associated playing
skills then spread around coastal Sumatra and other (especially Malay-speaking)
areas, where a number of syncretic Malay-Portuguese musical genres that include
the biola (for example, kroncong and langgam Melayu) developed and remain
extant to this day. European instruments are documented as having been played
by seventeenth century slaves in the great colonial houses in Portuguese Macao
(Boxer 1969:307) and Batavia (Boxer 1965:240). Philipe de Caverel wrote that
ten thousand guitars went with the Portuguese toMorocco in 1582 (according to
a reference in an Embassy report to Lisbon in 1582, see Pinto, 1969 [1653]).
In Aceh, however, biola players did not play syncretic European-Malay
melodies and implied harmonies, as occurred in neighbouringMalay-speaking
areas. Acehnese biola players perform in an ornamented melodic style that
resembles that of the now obsolete hareubab (pers.comm. from the musician H.
Husin Amin in Samalanga, 1982). Current recordings of the playing of biola
Aceh artists clearly indicate their strong stylistic resemblance to the traditional
Acehnese vocal style of hikayat story-singers. Indeed, traditionally a biola Aceh
player (called the syeh, leader) doubled as a vocalist to accompany a pair of
comic dancers (pelawak, B.I.) named Linto Baro (a man) and Dara Baro (a man
dressed as a woman). The three-artist troupe entertained at weddings and other
functions, with the comic actors dancing to the melodies played or sung by the
biola player, engaging in couple's dialogue, telling stories, and improvising
humorous, witty or clever answers to each others' singing of pant6n (Isjkarim et
al 1980-81:72-3). Sometimes a rapa'i was added to the ensemble (Burhan et al

36
For a photograph of a player of a large, handmade biola, tuned like a viola and held on
the upper breast while bowing it inManna, Sumatra, see Kartomi 1985:26.
37
The Portuguese brought bowed instruments with four strings (probably alto violas)
called viola, which became known as biola in local Indonesian languages, to their

sixteenth-century colony in Malacca, from whence they spread throughout the

archipelago. Goldsworthy (1979:421) wrote that as the violin had been developed in Italy
about 1550 and was probably used in the Iberian peninsula from the early seventeenth

century, it probably replaced the earlier alto violin in Southeast Asia from the seventeenth

century. As Acehnese and other Sumatran biola are larger than violins and tuned about a
fifth lower, it is likely that the earliest bowed strings brought to Southeast Asia by the
Portuguese were indeed alto violas. Marsden (1966 [1811]: 195-6) referred to the violin on
North Sumatra's west coast in 1783, but did not specify its tuning or size.