SOUNDS OF SUMATRA

Vigilance in verse  

   

There’s a buffalo thief abroad. Be on guard. We need a plan.  It must be good. Best recruit a seer who can spirit a tiger.

Those lyrics in Minangkabau were sung and played by New Zealand ethnomusicologist Dr Megan Collins as part of her initiation into the mysteries of West Sumatran music.  They were composed as an exercise in imagining a potential threat.

A tuneful community alert.  A song instead of a siren.

Government orders, official posters and stern pronouncements about dangers by grim men in uniforms have their place, but nothing comes within a chord of a memorable ditty.

In 1907 an earthquake and tsunami killed thousands who rushed to the beach in Simeulue Island [150 kilometers off the west coast of Aceh] to collect fish when the ocean retreated. The survivors wrote and recited the song, which became part of the local folklore.

“Spreading important safety messages through music storylines continues,” Collins said.

“It was effective when the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami hit.  Only seven islanders from a population of 78,000 on Simeulue perished.”

Elsewhere more than 250,000 coastal dwellers in 14 countries were swept away.  The heaviest death toll was in Aceh where about 170,000 died.

Even earlier, memories of the gigantic 1883 Krakatau volcanic explosion in Sunda Strait, which killed an estimated 36,000, have also been preserved in verse.

Collins is an expert on the music of the rabab pasisia selatan.  She says the instrument looks like a baroque violin, though purists who think only a Stradivarius is worth caressing with a horse-hair bow might label it a folk fiddle.

Which isn’t far wrong.  “It’s the people’s instrument,” Collins said.  “It’s made in the villages by craftsmen.  The music is usually heard at weddings and other community events, often accompanied by a flute and a singer.

The rabab’s ancestor may have been the European violin carried by Portuguese or Dutch sailors centuries ago. Collins, who has studied organology, the science of musical instruments, says its provenance is still unproven.

Perhaps a nostalgic minstrel mariner off a three-masted Dutch fluyt and fiddled to remind him of another land. A Minangkabau person was drawn to friendship by the music, which happens in a perfect universe, and was gifted the violin.

Of course it could have been acquired through robbery, not romance, but we digress.

For more than two years in the 1990s Collins studied the music of the Minangkabau at the Indonesian Arts Institute in the West Sumatran capital of Padangpanjang.  Her doctoral fieldwork with masters of the art was in Pesisir Selatan village on the coast.

The rabab is not played like the violin with the musician standing or sitting, but by squatting cross-legged.  It can’t be held hands free under the chin.  It’s a four-string fiddle though only two are played; one lies slack while the other has mystical powers which some claim to be curative.

The instrument is often played by dukun the traditional healers and spirit mediums

Collins modestly claims she has still to reach the level where she can understand the instrument’s supposed magic qualities.

In the meantime Collins’ skills can entice and enchant Kiwis who hear her CDs, play in concerts or on national radio where she’s performed in six one-hour programs featuring the sounds of Sumatra. 

Collins was raised in a musical family that traces its ancestors back to mid 19^th century migrations from Ireland, England and Scotland.  As a child she was “a closet bagpipe fan girl” but instead learned the piano and violin.

Now her mission is to “exoticize music, to get rid of its orientalism” so it speaks to all whatever their ethnicity or national allegiance.

And Indonesians can enjoy her talents too when she tours Java in mid 2016 with the Wellington-based Gamelan Padhang Moncar playing in Yogya, Solo and Malang.

Collins, 43, now manages the gamelan, a role entrusted to her by Professor Jack Body who died earlier this year.  He led the orchestra on a tour of Java in 1993 when Collins was one of the players.

“That kicked off my enthusiasm for Indonesia,” she said. “I won a Darmasiswa Indonesian Government scholarship.  Java was too crowded which didn’t suit a Kiwi country girl, so I went to Padangpanjang. 

“Apart from a few tourists passing through I was the only foreigner.  I lived with a local family so became immersed in the language and culture.” 

Her initiation included rubbing her fingers with limes over an open fire to make her hands supple. She is now fluent in Indonesian and Minangkabau, which she prides herself on speaking with the accent of a native speaker.

Don’t assume all this is esoteric stuff for oldies and academics.  Sumatra’s sounds survive because they’ve adapted, embracing pop and dangdut the throbbing amalgam of Middle Eastern and Indian music.

“Minangkabau music isn’t rare, it’s popular,” Collins said. “It’s played on television and radio and uploaded to YouTube.  A song about a  flash flood that took out a major highway has been viewed more than 50,000 times.

“Siril Asmara’s VCD Sum-Bar Mananggih [West Sumatra Weeps] about other natural disasters following the 2004 tsunami sold 15,000 copies in 2013.  Composing and playing music can have a cathartic effect.”

Collins is now cooperating with NZ geomorphologist Dr Noel Trustrum and Indonesian scientists to produce a multi-media book on preparing for emergencies; it’s based on the principle that local oral wisdom trumps imported knowledge.

Trustrum has worked on aid projects in Indonesia including Aceh and recently published a book of photos and essays about the restoration of Banda Aceh and the resilience of its people.

“Messages can be locally generated, changed and moved between genres,” Collins said.  “They are an amazing way to create awareness and remember the tragedies of the past.

“Think of the Western children’s song Twinkle, twinkle little star. We all know the tune.  Now swap lyrics or create new ones. The rabab is ideal for this because it’s a story-telling instrument.”

(First published in The Jakarta Post Friday 2 October 2015)

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STAMFORD RAFFLES - A NEW APPRAISAL

The man who loved Java                                         

On 2 February 1824, Sir Stamford Raffles, his sick wife Sophia and their son Charles left Bengkulu (then known as Bencoolen) on board the Fame.  They had been waiting months for a passage to Britain and had booked on another ship, the Borneo.

Then the Fame arrived and the impatient family’s goods were transferred. The former Lieutenant Governor of Java thought this was one of the happiest days of his life.  He wrote presciently: ‘We were, perhaps, too happy.’

That evening a steward ignorant of chemistry went into the hold to uncork a brandy cask.  He was carrying a candle. Also on board was a load of saltpetre, an essential ingredient in gunpowder.

The ship was about 50 miles off the coast of Sumatra.  All made the boats before the Fame was ripped apart, but the story doesn’t have a happy ending.

Also in the hold was what Raffles described as  ‘the cream and best of everything I had collected learnt and attained.’ 

According to Victoria Glendinning’s Raffles and the Golden Opportunity the collection included 300 bound volumes and many unbound, shadow puppets and craft, even a gamelan orchestra. 

All Raffles’ notes, maps, drawings, plants and stuffed animals were also lost. Fortunately his History of Java had already been published.

The value (in today’s currency) was US$4 million, but the loss to Indonesian history and appreciation of the archipelago was immense.  Raffles collected ‘for cultural propaganda to prove back in England that Java had been, and could be again, a great and civilised country’.

Lesser men would have dissolved in despair.  The family was already grieving from the earlier death of yet another child, and the Fame fire would have suggested a curse. But Raffles set about drawing the map of Sumatra that had been lost with the ship to the admiration of Sophia.

When he eventually managed to sail Raffles wrote: ‘Perhaps I was too much attached to the things of this world. The lot of man is a mixture of good and evil, and we must be content with it – and at all events we know that all worketh for good in the end.’ 

Are these the words of a devious wrongdoer?  Raffles was admired, but also mauled by critics during his brief lifetime – he died aged 45 of a brain seizure.  Many were driven by jealousy of a former clerk with limited education and contacts who became a star administrator and founder of Singapore.

It didn’t help that he was English, small, had no military experience, was a faithful lover, keenly interested in other cultures and the environment, and ‘physically fragile’ – hardly the sort of man who’d appeal to the Scottish and Irish warriors subservient to his civilian rule. 

The British invaded Java in 1811 during the Napoleonic Wars and held the Dutch colonies till 1816. 

Raffles and his boss Lord Minto understood their interregnum would be brief should peace break out in Europe.  Reforms had to be swift. ‘While we are here let us do as much good as we can,’ he said.

The new Lieutenant Governor agreed. His motives were not religious – he had little time for missionaries and was ‘vituperative’ about the Dutch administration. Raffles set up a committee with the instructions to ‘consider the inhabitants without reference to bare mercantile profits.’ 

Comments Glendinning: ‘But the relationship between the common good and the profit-making purpose of the (East India) Company answerable to shareholders, was uncomfortable.’

Raffles’ committee recommended the abolition of ‘all kinds of servitude’ and a major shake-up of the taxation system. He ‘sought to promote the value and beauty of the indigenous culture and its pre-Islamic Hindu heritage’. 

Once the bloody work had been done and the Dutch suppressed, Raffles set about his benign dictatorship. 

In this biography he comes across as a free trader, a visionary reformer ahead of his time who loved Java and its people, particularly villagers, supporting them against claims of indolence. Inevitably he attracted haters.

But they were up against Raffles’ determined widow Sophia, his second wife.  His first, Olivia, famous for reversing the Dutch policy of excluding Eurasian wives from functions, died in 1814. Sophia bore Raffles five children but only one survived to adulthood and then died unmarried.

Sophia wrote a biography of her husband celebrating his public service.  Yet Raffles died in debt to the East India Company, undermining his detractors’ allegations of corruption.

This is Glendinning’s eighth biography, written in her early 70s. She writes with clarity, impartiality and controlled enthusiasm.

There have been many biographies of Raffles, some hagiographic. This isn’t, but that doesn’t mean it’s hostile.  ‘Raffles’ story, in a work of fiction, would strain credulity,’ she writes.  ‘His good fortune and his ill fortune were both of an extreme kind.  He became the entrepreneur of his own ideals and an utopian imperialist.’ 

She described writing the biography as ‘an act of concentration in both senses. There are a great many strange characters churning around in this book, and a great many clamouring outside it.’ 

So she’s set up a website www.rafflesbook.co.uk including titbits, links and an events diary celebrating the life of an extraordinary Englishman, famous for founding Singapore, but fascinated by Java, an island he served briefly – but well.

Raffles and the Golden Opportunity

Victoria Glendinning

Profile Books 2012

350 pages

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JOHANNES HAMMERLE

Uncovering the mysterious past

Wanted: A university with a strong commitment to anthropology and archaeology, or a passionate philanthropist with similar interests.

The task: To build on existing scholarly research and maintain an outstanding collection of artefacts, thereby preserving records of a mysterious past and its unique treasures.

The reward: International acclaim.

Last year Father Johannes Hammerle (pictured above), the founder and director of the Nias Heritage Museum had a major health scare, undergoing a prostate gland operation at a Sumatra hospital.

No cancer was detected and the German-born priest looks exceedingly spry. But he’s just a few months from turning three score and ten, and there’s nothing like an encounter with a surgeon’s scalpel to sharpen the mind.

Not that a Capuchin friar needs a mortality alert, but it just helps make the need for future planning even more urgent.

Nias was Father Johannes’ first posting. He arrived on 21 July in 1971 after spending months in Sumatra learning Indonesian.

“At the time if I’d had the chance to choose I would have stayed in Sumatra,” he said. “Why should I go to a little island?”

Apart from discovering that the majority were Protestant (though ministers say the introduced religions don’t run deep), the first shock was discovering that his Sumatra studies were of limited help.

The people of Nias spoke their own language. But where did it originate? Where did the people come from? What was their history and culture?

It had long been known that Nias had a megalithic culture, using stone slabs to make monuments, graves and religious symbols. But few researchers had probed deeper.

Blessed with the sort of curiosity that annoys pedestrian minds Father Johannes started to explore his strange parish, assembling more questions than answers wherever he trod the rugged mountain tracks into the dark interior.

His searches in libraries overseas were equally frustrating. Very little was known and even less had been written. During the 1920s a Danish doctor involved in a vaccination program on Nias had collected some artefacts, but these are now in Europe.

Although he had no background in anthropology Father Johannes had all the skills of scholarship necessary to help fill some of the gaps. He learned the local language and started building an information base constructed from oral traditions.

Unlike other parts of Indonesia no batu tulis (stones engraved with words) have been found to help provide clues to the people of the past. The first written record comes from an 851 account by an Arab trader and translated into French.

Some stories told of people living in a cave known as Togi Ndrawa just outside Gunung Sitoli, the west coast capital – though that’s too grand a title for what is little more than a large village. There are only around 600,000 people living in the 45 kilometer-wide island, slightly smaller than Bali but far less accessible.

The cave faced east towards Sumatra, more than 100 kilometers distant, and ideal to catch the morning sun. It opened deep into the limestone mountain 130 meters above sea level, and could have accommodated several families.

With assistance from local and overseas institutions, including Surabaya’s Airlangga University, excavations showed the old stories were true.

“We now know that people were there from at least 12,000 years ago till about 600 years before the present,” Father Johannes said. “We also discovered that some were also living in tree houses to get above the mosquitoes and snakes.

“Development started when the Chinese arrived in the 14th century AD, probably with the explorer Zheng He. They established a shipyard at Singkuang on the west coast of Sumatra opposite Nias.

“The newcomers brought new technologies, ideas and materials like iron and gold. The people began to live in simple houses and these developed into the oval-shaped timber structures on massive poles that we see today.”

However these buildings are disappearing in favor of modern homes, the changes accelerated by reconstruction programs following the December 2004 tsunami and March 2005 earthquake that together killed around 1,000 and injured many more.

Also vanished is the gold used in the elaborate crocodile skin armor and headdresses worn by the warlike people who specialised in head hunting, the trophies used to buy brides. Once colonialists arrived the gold began to move off the island.

Along with the treasures went the wildlife. The island is now strangely lacking in birds and animals.

Unlike many missionaries Father Johannes didn’t follow a philosophy of purging communities of the artefacts associated with their earlier faiths. Instead he began to collect them – and write a book denouncing the attitudes of some Christians towards pagan symbols.

Once word of a buyer got around, the market started to make demands beyond the capacity of Father Johannes’ budget. But he’s still been able to collect around 6000 items. Some are displayed in the splendid purpose-built museum, constructed mainly using donations from Germany, including his Black Forest hometown of Hansach.

As an exhibition of Indonesian culture it’s far ahead in content, quality and layout when compared with the pleasant but limited provincial State Museum in Medan, the capital of North Sumatra.

The Nias collection includes sharks’ teeth from millions of years ago when the island was under water and marvellous carved tigers, more like dogs with dragonheads for the artists had never seen such animals

Apart from linguistic studies, the latest project to uncover the origins of the Nias people involves collecting hundreds of DNA samples from people across the island. These are being processed in Europe.

Although he has become an Indonesian citizen, Father Johannes isn’t optimistic that the government will step in to help. Nor does he anticipate much assistance from overseas visitors. Most come for the surf.

“The people here are not yet interested in preserving the past,” he said. “They are too poor and concerned with getting enough food to survive, and surfers have no culture.

“I think it’s important that young people know about their culture and we have many schoolchildren visiting the museum.

“There are lots of rich people in Jakarta who were originally from Nias. Maybe they should be providing support.”

(First published in The Jakarta Post 18 Aug 2010)

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