Acehnese Sitting Song Dances and Religious Conversion » MARGARET KARTOMI In this essay I link an important genre of culture brought to Aceh by Indian traders and IAceh’s performing arts to the broad social migrants’, and the second aliran that developed movement known as dakwah , meaning the ‘when the Acehnese people were convinced early outreach and conversion to Islam and that they should accept the teachings of Islam’, the continuing call to believers to deepen their beginning around the thirteenth century faith and piety. 1 I argue that the origin and and becoming widespread after the sixteenth development of the sitting ( duek ) song-dances century. 3 They identify some standing dances, (performed in the prostrated sitting position for example seudati , as having originated in the of Muslim prayer) were motivated by dakwah pre-Islamic stream, while genres with religious and fostered by the tarèkat (Sufi brotherhoods) texts such as the sitting dance ratéb meuseukat and the Sufi movement generally. Song- may have originated in the Middle East and dances performed in the prostrated sitting been introduced in Aceh by traders from (duek actually kneeling) position (fig. 1) are the Arabian Peninsula, Turkey, or elsewhere distinguished from song-dances in standing during the era of the Acehnese kingdoms (dong ) position. To identify the possible origins (masa kerajaan ). Yet meuseukat ’s group body and development of the sitting song-dance percussion (described below, fig. 2) is much more genre, it is necessary to examine discussion of complex than the simple clapping or finger the liturgy and the arts by Acehnese artists, snapping in comparable Middle Eastern forms. (above) researchers and religious leaders, and to look From the 1980s, artistic genres using song Fig. 1 A sitting at the history of dakwah in Aceh, focusing lyrics on Muslim themes have been described dance ( ratôh duek ) on a few of the Arab, Persian, Indian and approvingly as kesenian Islami (‘Islamic arts’), performance with finger-snapping Acehnese saints who contributed to the early while those more closely linked with Aceh’s body percussion in development of Islam there. syncretic animist and Hindu-Buddhist past Koetaradja around In their discourse about Acehnese music, are described either as sumbang (‘wrong, 1900. dance and religious belief, three teams of off-track’) or, if Muslim phrases are added at PHOTOGRAPH: CHRISTIAAN SNOUCK Acehnese researchers and artists in the 1980s the beginning and at various points during HURGRONJE, THE 2 ACEHNESE , 2 VOLS., and 1990s distinguished between two aliran performances, as being acceptable forms of TRANS. BY A. W. S. (Indonesian), or ‘streams’ [of thought about the ‘art with an Islamic flavour’ ( kesenian yang O’SULLIVAN "LEYDEN: BRILL, 1906# $ORIGINALLY past]: the pre-Islamic ( yoh golom Islam ) and the bernafaskan Islam ). Thus, Isjkarim and his PUBLISHED AS DE ATJEHERS , BATAVIA: Islamic stream ( aliran Islam ) or era ( masa Islam ). team of ‘traditionalist’ Muslim authors express LANDSDRUKKERIJ, Isjkarim and his co-authors wrote about the a preference for arts of the Islamic stream, 1893%94.& II, P. 226. ‘aliran of spirit veneration’ linked to the ‘Hindu dismissing the pre-Islamic stream as being too 44 Humanities Australia mistik (‘mystical’), citing as an example the ulakul ak (‘water(‘ wa te r flowingflo wi ng backwardsb ac kw ar ds dance’)d an ce ’) genre,g en re , be pperformeder fo rm ed wwithoutit ho ut ttheirhe ir llocal,oc al , danced after a shaman makes offerings to the unorthodox components. 5 The traditionalists spirits. Yet these same authors express approval tend to enjoy not only ‘Islamic arts’ but also of the ula-ula lembing (‘weaving snake’) dance, ‘arts with a Muslim flavour’, ‘mystical’ arts, OPINIONS ABOUT THE ARTS VARY WIDELY AMONG ACEHNESE RELIGIOUS THINKERS, WHO DIVIDE BROADLY INTO THE ‘MODERNISTS’ AND THE ‘TRADITIONALISTS’. despite its clear pre-Islamic origins, noting that and secular performing arts, and find ways phrases such as La Ila La Ilallah (‘There is no to resolve the religious ambiguities while God but God’), Alhamdulillah pujoe keu tuhan maintaining local religious ideas and artistic (above) (‘Praise be to Allah’) and Assalamualaikum genres and their variants. Fig. 2 A variant of (‘Peace be with you’) are normally added in Though the precise details of the methods the galombang routine in which performances. They also describe and have lent of Muslim proselytising have been lost over a row of dancers support to the secular arts, including kreasi time, many Acehnese artists and writers alternately kneel baru (‘new creations’) based on traditional or hold that adherence to Islam initially spread down on their heels then up with arms popular music and dance styles, such as the tari throughout Aceh by way of travelling and outstretched to Arab (‘Arab dance’). 4 resident religious leaders who not only gave create wave-like Opinions about the arts vary widely among sermons, taught people how to pray and drilled rotating movements. Performed at Acehnese religious thinkers, who divide broadly them in the recitation of the Qur’an, but also the Bupati’s Arts into the ‘modernists’ and the ‘traditionalists’. promoted the growth of the Sufi brotherhoods and Tourism Although both groups are fiercely proud of (Acehnese tarèkat , Arabic tariqa ) and thereby performance in Meulaboh on Aceh’s Muslim identity, the modernists adhere introduced the physical and mental devotional 7 March 2007. to a literal interpretation of scripture, approve exercises or chants ( ratéb , diké [Arabic dhikr ], PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY only the ‘Islamic arts’, and prefer that rituals liké )6 to inculcate aspects of the liturgy among OF IWAN AMIR. Humanities Australia 45 believers. Local religious teachers across Aceh The devotees, whether traditionalist then passed on the Qur’an reading and related or modernist, say they do not regard their liturgical skills from generation to generation, performances of diké as ‘art’ because their aim especially in the dayah (Muslim boarding is to achieve mystical union, not the worldly schools, fig. 3). All the Sufi brotherhoods valued pleasure which art can bring. Yet it is not good conduct, tended to prescribe how their di'cult to believe that such diké performances devotees should pray and perform the liturgy, were the source of inspiration for artists who and aimed to cultivate the soul’s relationship developed the sitting song-dance art forms, with the divine through singing and frame- whether with religious or secular lyrics. As drum playing, the only musical instrument in the seudati dance, the lead vocalist ( aneuk which the Prophet is said to have approved. syahé , lit., ‘child of poetry’) and the row of Aceh’s most important standing dance— singer-dancers ( rakan ) in the religious ratéb seudati 7—and the Muslim and non-Muslim duek (‘sitting liturgy’) sing Islamic lyrics. In epic ( hikayat , haba dang deuria ) singing, both the secular genre known as ratôh duek (‘sitting of which normally include partly improvised chattering’) or saman (in parts of western Aceh), vocal lyrics, may also have been used long ago the lead vocalist and the row of performers sing to spread the Muslim message, but Acehnese mainly secular texts, about nature, love, and writers regard those genres as having pre- daily life (fig. 4). 11 Islamic origins and associations. 8 Present-day In the very popular ‘extra’ ( éstra or lanie ) modernist ulama do not approve of these section of a secular ratôh duek performance, art forms, even if they are performed in a the lead singers delight—to this day—in ACEH IS RICH IN MUSLIM LITURGICAL PRACTICES, AS WELL AS IN PERFORMING#ART GENRES THAT ARGUABLY DEVELOPED FROM THOSE PRACTICES. building with separate seating areas for men improvising song lyrics that deal with political and women. 9 The gender-segregated dances issues, nature and the sea, and make ribald performed in the prostrated sitting position of sexual references. Sometimes they include Islamic prayer, on the other hand, have a special quizzes, in sung question-and-response form, claim to dakwah origin and status. about the history and doctrines of Islam, which Aceh is rich in Muslim liturgical practices, as serve to educate performers and audiences well as in performing-art genres that arguably about their faith. Thus, the more broad-minded developed from those practices. Over at least ulama see the éstra as potential contributions the past century, and presumably much earlier, to continuing dakwah , but they approve of this members of Sufi brotherhoods in the villages only if men and women perform separately have assembled in the meunasah (communal to separated male and female audiences, and men’s house) or the village head’s home on inside a building rather than in the open air. 12 Thursdays after ’isya prayers to sing religious Male and female groups perform ratôh duek lyrics ( ratéb , diké , liké ) well into the night, as separately, though both sing secular texts about well as on religious holidays and at weddings, romantic love, sailing, work, farming, religion circumcisions and funerals. Such devotees and other aspects of daily life. took up the ‘half-sitting, half-kneeling position Both the religious and the secular genres assumed by a Moslem worshipper after a have been performed in Aceh from at least as prostration in the performance of ritual prayers early as the 1890s, and probably much earlier (sembahyang )’. Snouck Hurgronje also mentions than that, given the time it normally takes that women had a ratéb saman of their own, for such art forms to develop and consolidate probably performed both as female group prayer as traditional practice. 13 Performances of the and as an artistic performance for a female liturgical ratéb duek continue today to promote audience at celebrations, though today, according dakwah as a pious way to maintain the faith, to my field experience, only the latter occurs.