The Mandailing in the Homeland

The Music of the Mandailing People of North Sumatra
By Margaret J. Kartomi

The drum ensemble and solo music of the Mandailing people in the south-west corner - South Tapanuli area - of North Sumatra. As in the neighbouring Angkola area, the music belongs to a tradition which developed in the centuries before the Muslim religion and Dutch colonial power entered the area. Muslim Padri forces from Minangkabau to the south invaded from about 1821, and the whole area was eventually converted to Islam, with a few small Christian and pele begu ("animist") pockets. The Dutch military first entered the area in 1821 and took administrative power from 1835.

Before that, petty chieftains (raja) ruled over the complexes of hamlets, which were inhabited by various marga (clans), such as Lubis, Nasution, Lintang and Hasibuan. Sibaso (shamans) controlled the system of pele begu rituals, which served to honour, above all, the supernatural beings (ancestral and Nature spirits), the raja and the clan elders (namora natoras). Vestiges of these rituals and associated beliefs are still apparent among many of the Mandailing, especially on occasions of small and large-scale deele ceremonies, including housewarmings (horja manaiki bagas), weddings (horja boru tu aek), funerals, and occasions when a shaman is called upon to cure the sick, or to seek clairvoyant knowledge. Raja descendants still sometimes officiate at ceremonies.

The majority of Mandailing people today, however, are Muslim, unlike the mainly Christian Batak areas to the northeast. There are only a few Christian pockets in Mandailing, with a larger Christian area in Angkola. Some local Muslims disapprove of the pre-Muslim music and dance, and encourage, instead, the performance of Muslim music stemming from Egypt and the Arab countries, such as zikir-rapano and nasit. Zikir songs accompanied by frame drums (rapano) are set to religious verse in Arabic or Mandailing Angkola language and with Middle-Eastern influence melodies. Since about 1976, pilgrims (haji) returning from Mecca have brought back cassette recordings of nasit, and arranged for troupes of girls to be taught to perform it. They dance in various formations to their drum accompaniment of solo and choral Middle-Eastern songs, in Arabic or Indonesian language, and accompany themselves or large and small frame drums (sampring and bemercing) and a mambo drum.

The Mandailing region divides into three main areas. The fairly rugged, mountainous Mandailing na Menek (literally, 'Small Mandailing') area in the south comprises the Muarasipongi and Kotanopan districts. Here, some villages have lost their expertise in the traditional Mandailing culture; but the relatively isolated village where it is still alive and well. Some Pakatan emigrants to the city of Medan have formed an art troupes in that city, including the Gunung Kalabu group of musicians and dancers, all of whom are originally from Pakantan. Some villages have a revived interest in the old culture, mainly through the activities of an enlightened village head, as in Tamiang village, or a Mandailing-born city benefactor, such as in Huta Na Godang.

Villages situated on the rich alluvial plains of Mandailing Godang (literally, 'Great Mandailing') to the north have generally not preserved or revived the traditional culture, and consume mainly Muslims and Middle-Eastern music and Western popular music. However, a gordang sembilan ("nine drum") ensemble and a gondang ("two drum") ensemble are still occasionally played there in the town of Panyabungan. Great Mandailing is flanked by the administrative capital - Padang Sidempuan, inhabited by mixed Mandailing and Angkola (Sipirok) people, whose area extends to the northeast and east, including Portibi in Padang Lawas, where a number of ancient temples are situated.

In Pakantan, and among Pakantan emigrants to Medan, three types of ceremonial orchestra are still distinguished. Usually they are played in a sopo godang, a wall-less pavilion. All three orchestras consist of a pair of bronze gongs, a pair of cymbals, a set of gong kettles and an optional male voice. The only difference between the ensembles, apart from repertoire and social use, is the drum component. The gordang ensemble have nine drums graded in size from large to small. The gordang lima ensemble have five graded drums. And the gondang ensemble has a pair of small drums.

In the largest ensemble, the nine drums are grouped into four pairs, consisting of a larger "female" (induk) and smaller "male" (jantan) drum, plus the ninth (smallest) drum which is named enek-enek meaning "child". In traditional practice, this large ensemble was reserved for ceremonies given by the raja, or, more recently, his descendants, and only after at least one buffalo had been sacrificed. In the past centuries, over a hundred buffaloes were sometimes slaughtered for a raja ceremony. The gordang sembilan ensemble was also played at "funerals" of the raja of the jungle - the tiger.
The five-drum ensemble gordang lima also consists of pairs of drums - two female-male pairs and an enek-enek, with a magically powerful buzzer of shredded bamboo attached. Used in the past by the shaman at ceremonies held in front of his home, its music assisted the shaman while dancing to enter a state of trance in order to contact the spirits and obtain clairvoyant information. In most areas today, it is obsolete.

Unlike the thunderous-sounding sets of one-headed gordang drums, the gondang's pair of two-headed drums produces a softer more "refined" (asok) sound. Although it possesses the lowest social status of the three ensemble types, being associated mainly with house-warmings, weddings, funerals, and other ceremonies of non-raja families, the gondang produces the most elegant balance of ensemble sound. Its relatively subdued dynamic level allows the full use of the solo human voice, which tends to be drowned out when accompanied by the larger ensembles. It is also the cheapest and easiest to make or acquire, and is by far the most widely spread and used of the three ensemble types throughout Mandailing and Angkola. Gondang drums are regarded as being especially potent for mystical purposes. Thus, only the gondang was allowed to play the five especially sacred pieces, such as "Jolo-Jolo Turun", which was played to open sacred ceremonies, and especially to help cure a sick person, and "Ideng-Ideng" ("Pray that the spirits settle in"), which was also played at ceremonies, and especially when a child is born. It is also the normal type of accompaniment for the solo song repertoire, consisting of jeir - songs of praising a raja or elder, ile-ile - songs with a sad text, onang-onang songs with a happy text, andung-andung - songs of blessing (for example, on a bridal couple) by a sibaso, unggut-unggut or sikambang (a coastal term) - with their narrative, love or mystical verse, and sitogol - loud singing to lessen one's fear when alone in the jungle.

A fourth ensemble type consists of bamboo percussion instruments called gondang buluh ("bamboo drums"), plus optional cymbals, gong, kettles and the solo human voice. Four bamboo strings, slit out from the surface of the bamboo body, are raised on bridges and beaten with a pair of small sticks to produce several pitch levels. There are no bowed strings.

A number of wind instruments and a xylophone may be played on more intimate occasions, either solo or to accompany singing. Wind instruments, including the suling, sordam, salung, sarune, ole-ole, sinkadu, tulilla and saleot, were traditionally used to express one's intimate emotions, or for self-entertainment, as when girls call their fiancés in the evenings or when someone rests in the fields, or works in the jungle or coffee plantations.
On singing of long legends (turi-turian), of which there are eight main ones in South Tapanuli (for example, "Raja Gorga di Langit"). Special singers performed these epics at weddings and funerals, sometimes singing every night for a week. Lullabies (mabuai or marddo) are formal chants sung by old men at weddings to give advice to the bridal couple (mangatahon pangupa boru).

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