Calling Back the Spirit: Music, Dance, and Cultural Politics in Lowland South Sulawesi: Music, Dance

leondumoulin.nl: Calling Back the Spirit: Music, Dance, and Cultural Politics in Lowland South Sulawesi: R. Anderson Sutton.
Table of contents

UH Mānoa School of Pacific and Asian Studies

The village of Tana Toa has a very dense forest. Almost the entire village is surrounded by rainforests. There are no paved roads in the region, except paths made of stones arranged in a regular pattern as road markers. Plants are cultivated on an area that is quite diverse, including rice, corn, cocoa, coffee, and others.

Rice fields are located at the bottom of the hill near the Amma Toa , The fertile paddy fields are visible from distance. The village is bordered by village Tuli to the north, Limba village to the south, Seppa village to the east and Dor village to the west. The village is named Tana Toa from local language meaning the oldest land in the world according to the customary beliefs of the villagers.

People of Tana Toa believe that the earth was first created by God in a forest called Tombolo. The area was believed to be the oldest area in the world, so the villagers named the area as Tana Toa.


  • How to Run for Local Office.
  • Post navigation.
  • El Tibet rompe su silencio (Ensayo) (Spanish Edition).
  • Food and Nutrients in Disease Management!
  • The Four Benefits: Commercial Real Estate Investing & You.
  • Customer Service.
  • Ganrang Konjo: Searching for Rhythm in Bulukumba, South Sulawesi — aural archipelago!

Geographically and administratively, Tana Toa is inhabited by Konjo people, a sub ethnic of Buginese. These Konjo Hitam consider themselves the original inhabitants and regard their area as the center of traditional custom for all of the Konjo Pesisir.

Kajang tribe is divided into two groups, inner Kajang and Outer Kajang tribes. However, only Inner Kajang tribe live in full customs of Ammatoa. The tribe are known for their motto Kamase-masea , or a simple living and reluctance to adopt many conveniences of modern technology. For them, technology objects can have negative impacts on their lives, because they undermine the sustainability of natural resources.

See a Problem?

The tribe people always wear black clothes, such as pants that almost touch knees, sarong, robe, and headband. These people also practice occultism as part of their animistic worship. They are referred to as the indigenous people of Kajang. The simplicity is also applied to their residence.

All houses in Tana Toa are stilt houses constructed and made of the same material made of wood with roofs of straw. All houses even face the same direction facing the west. At that time, PKI communist party activists were hunted down, to be killed.

Product details

Villagers were asked to burn their old adat clothes. Moreover, Catholic priests often forced them to discard their traditional sacred stones. Now, forty years later, most singers no longer want to perform for the harvest or any other kind of farming work, and duet songs are dying out. Actually, this focus on the outside is quite ancient.

For centuries, wealth and prestige goods in Flores did come from abroad, and gold, metals, Indian textiles, and elephant tusks originating from the West are still the main goods exchanged as matri-monial gifts.

Sutton, Richard Anderson

Villagers are not aware of the importance of their songs, meant to keep the peace among the clans. They do not even think of them as art.


  • About the Dean;
  • Calling Back The Spirit: Music, Dance, And Cultural Politics In Lowland South Sulawesi 2002;
  • On-Call X-Rays Made Easy E-Book;
  • The Black woman of the South (1883?]).
  • The Environment and International Politics: International Fisheries, Heidegger and Social Method (En?
  • Related Video Shorts (0).
  • Frauenrecht (German Edition)!

A straightforward one, for sure. Who else than Yampolsky could actually have answered the initial question? He is the key expert, who traveled all over Indonesia for ten years, spoke with hundreds of artists in many different settings, to get a personal experience of the loss of tradition. Having listened to all those voices, Yampolsky finally speaks his piece, in clear and optimistic pages. Throughout the book, one of the pervasive themes is the precarious position of most traditional arts.

Today, urban styles or repertoires dominate, influence, or threaten rural forms, sometimes to the point that these simply disappear.


  • Internal Server Error.
  • Citation Manager Formats.
  • R. Anderson Sutton's Calling Back the Spirit: Music, Dance, and Cultural Politics PDF?

Many forms of art, too weak to resist, already have died out. A number of art activists in Indonesia are working now to reverse the trend, trying to restore local pride in traditional and local arts and to reaffirm the aesthetics of the local audience. A touching example of an unconventional dhalang puppeteer is given in the book, as a token of the hope that things can be changed in a good way.

How politics, history, and economy influence the arts. Answers are multiple, optimistic, pessimistic or neutral. Listening to personal experiences, in any case, is the best way to understand what is going on in Indonesia right now. Bibliographical reference Philip Yampolsky ed. Full text PDF k Send by e-mail. While the musical style has in some ways come to find a voice and cultural context of its own, Konjo-style ganrang is just one node in a vast network of drumming ritually connected with the martial arts.

As men ritually spar, music is often provided by a core instrumentarium: Like other drums in this network of martial arts musics, the two ganrang of ganrang Konjo are an inseperable pair, often played with the instruments pushed up against each other and the musicians looking right at each other, a formation which helps them to perform this music's tight interlocking rhythms.

The Konjo speak of both drums, the pangngana and the pattahang , in similar terms. Both are made from similar materials: The sound, and thus the function, are made different in other ways, though: This all may sound pedantic, and well, sorry, it is. In Bulukumba, though, the melody-bringing double reed has never been a feature, which maybe explains why some other instruments have stepped in to kick up the variety: The gongs in ganrang Konjo are not just a glorified metronome; they are a funky rhythmic powerhouse with just as much variety as the pop and lock of the ganrang drums.

There are three gongs in a ganrang Konjo ensemble: Of the two drums, it is the bassy, rock-steady pattahang which locks onto that reliable jong , letting the other instruments go wild with syncopation.

Calling Back the Spirit: Music, Dance, and Cultural Politics in Lowland South Sulawesi

Starting in the mid-nineties, though, bands started experimenting with what they call kreasi pukulan , or rhythmic innovations. Tunrung Tallua begins with an opening, or ngampa , where all instruments except the jong play, strangely, in perfect unison, all joining in a chorus that crescendos with the entrance of the jong. As soon as the jong jumps into the scene with its metronomic beat, the interlocking interplay immediately erupts but at a measured pace: After a few minutes of relishing this measured pace, the speed is ramped up for the third and final part, or tahang tallua.

It is in tahang tallua where the musicians' virtuosity really shines, with whip-fast interlocking parts and shifting polyrhythms reaching a fever pitch. The whole piece can last anywhere from five minutes to twenty; when it's over, the musicians take a break, maybe switch instruments, then launch into the same tunrung all over again. It is most associated, though, with pabbuntingang or wedding ceremonies, where the music is believed to protect the bride and groom from malicious spirits who are otherwise likely to possess them.

In Konjo society, there is a kind of caste system with three levels: