Adakah Kesenian Tradisional
Batak?
(Tempo, 7 Oktober 1989)
Kehadiran acara Gita Remaja di
layar TVRI yang disajikan mirip dengan Berpacu Dalam Melodi disambut gembira
sebagai salah satu wadah pembinaan generasi muda.
Yang menarik perhatian saya
adalah ketika pembawa acara menyebutkan penampilan kelompok kesenian
tradisional dari Sumatera Utara, yang menyuguhkan “Musik Tradisional Batak”
(Acara Gita Remaja tanggal 14 Agustus 1989). Apakah ada kesenian atau
kebudayaan “Batak” ? Dari mana datangnya istilah “Batak” dan apa yang dimaksud “Batak”
itu sendiri. Suku bangsa Mandailing, Angkola, Simalungun, Pak-pak/Dairi, Toba,
Karo, itukah yang dimaksud dengan “Batak”
?
Coba sekali-sekali anda berwisata
ke Sumatera Utara. Ajaklah berdialog masyarakat Mandailing, Angkola atau Karo.
Tanyakan apakah mereka orang Batak. Umumnya anda akan memperoleh jawaban : “Tidak.”
Suku bangsa itu masing-masing
memiliki budaya dan adat yang berbeda. Kenyataan ini dapat dibuktikan dari segi
sejarah, sosial-budaya, maupun musik.
Jadi, apabila yang dimaksud
pembawa acara Gita Remaja bahwa kesenian tradisional Batak tersebut adalah
gabungan dari beberapa etnis di Sumatera Utara, jelas itu tak benar. Kesenian tradisional yang dipertunjukkan pada acara tersebut adalah satu repertoar kesenian
tradisional Toba.
EDI NASUTION
d/a Yapebuma
Jalan Nibung Raya 194
Lantai III – Medan
 |
| Edi Nasution playing the tulila |
Biography Penulis:
Edi Nasution hails from Gunung
Tua-Muarasoro, Kotanopan – Mandailing Julu, where he was born on 13 March 1963.
He obtained his bachelor degree in Ethnomusicology in 1995 from the University
of North Sumatra (USU) in Medan, Indonesia. He is the author of Tulila: Muzik Bujukan
Mandailing, a study of Mandailing courtship music, published in 2007 by Areca
Books (www.arecabooks.com) Penang, Malaysia.
Blog yang dimiliki Edi Nasution
Gondang Mandailing
Gondang Mandailing
Author Name : Nasution, Edi
2007. Areca Books
Soft Cover, 24.1cm x 16.5cm, 180 pages.
ISBN: 978-983-42834-4-5
“Flutings of Love”
One newspaper reviews Tulila: Muzik Bujukan Mandailing, Edi
Nasution’s important account of his experience with an increasingly rare source
of music.
by Himanshu Bhatt
It may seem to be just a simple
little instrument made out of plain bamboo, but it produces the sweetest of
sounds when played.
The thin tulila flute has
produced some of the most passionate and romantic music to come out of the
remote region of Mandailing on the western coast of Sumatra.
Today, the knowledge of making
the flute and the technique of playing it have become endangered, as only a
handful of communities still know how to do these things.
A fascination for the flute
gripped ethno-musicologist Edi Nasution, a Mandailing himself, to research the
origins and special features of the music the little strip of wood could
produce.
Edi’s research, which he started
in preparation for his student thesis at the Universitas Sumatera Utara in
1995, is now published in a book called Tulila: Muzik Bujukan Mandailing.
What makes the research precious
is that the tradition of making and playing the tulila is expected to become
extinct by 2010.
“In this era of globalisation, a
large portion of our traditional culture is on the brink of disappearing,” says
Edi.
The awareness consumed Edi to
travel around 18 districts in Mandailing to document and chronicle the
unwritten legacy of this folk instrument.
Edi found that the tulila
tradition developed a rather complex repertoire of music that was largely
inspired by sounds of nature, as its music emulates the buzz of insects, the
chirping of birds and the rustle of the wind.
“What makes the bamboo flute
particularly distinctive is that it was, until a few decades back, commonly
used by men to court women,” Edi explains.
It was common for men to play the
flute while reciting improvised pantun (rhymes) in the vernacular language.
Played over hundreds of years,
the hand-made tulila flute is a cultural unique feature as it evolved to fuse
the art of music among common people.
“There are today about 40,000 Mandailings,
descendents of migrants since the 19th century, still living in Malaysia,” says
Abdur-Razzaq Lubis, the Malaysia-Singapore representative of the Mandailing All
Clans Assembly.
Many cultural traits, including
the Mandailing dialect, have dwindled tremendously in Malaysia over the past
few decades, he adds.
“The research done by Edi is
significant to us in Malaysia as there is still some Mandailing music, like the
gordang sambilan, being practised here.”
Edi’s efforts triggered an Asian
university to express interest in recording the existing repertoire of the
tulila tradition before it disappears.
The story of the tulila and its
impending demise as an art form and a cultural practice is a reminder to all
Malaysians of how fragile and precious the cultural treasures we still have
are.
Tulila: Muzik Bujukan Mandailing
is available at major bookstores.
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