This site requires Javascript to be turned on. Please enable Javascript and reload the page.

Song in the Sumatran Highlands

Resource: Phillips, 1981. Sijobang: Sung Narrative Poetry of West Sumatra

Phillips, Nigel. [1981] 2009. Sijobang: Sung Narrative Poetry of West Sumatra. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

This page has tags:

This page is referenced by:

Song Texts
Some performers and devotees consider the texts the window into the soul of the Minangkabau people. The content of texts, like other key forms of Minangkabau oral literature, deal with Minangkabau philosophy, morality, emotionality, and humor. They touch on a range of life and emotional experiences, from the depths of sadness to the teasing budding young romance. To the chagrin of some, they can even cover erotic sensitivity. They are full of references to the natural world, reflecting the tenet of "alam takambang manjadi guru" (nature becomes the teacher). Infused with references to landmarks and places, the texts are also key to navigation of and existence in the Minangkabau homeland. In short, song texts offer an important window into Minangkabau worldviews, deliberately expressed to reflect plurality rather than universality, the contentious erotic texts case in point.

In saluang, the structure and delivery of texts is complex and subject to many variables. Yet the use of pantun, an important Minangkabau literary genre, has received little to no scholarly attention in English language literature compared with other forms of Minangkabau oral literature, such as the kaba (Johns 1958; Junus 1994; Phillips 1981; Suryadi 1993) or pantun found in other parts of the Malay World (Daillie 1988; Matusky 2004; Sim 1987; Thomas 1979; Weintraub 1994-5). The only sustained engagement with the texts of saluang are found in Sanday’s “Songs and the Performance of Desire” (2002). However, her analysis involves an ahistorical ethnographic present that does not take into account important gendered changes within the genre and her texts are only presented in English, not the original Minangkabau language.

One of the most important features of song texts is that unlike popular song, including Minang pop, the texts are not firmly attached to specific melodies. Or, rather, specific tunes do not have fixed texts. In saluang, most texts are interchangeable between songs. Very few are affiliated with a specific song. The adoption of a text to a specific song may require adjustments to make the poetry fit the melodic structure. This includes two different techniques: 1) the insertion of vocables (syllables and words without lexical meaning in the context) or repetitions of particular phrases and lines.

The texts, moreover, have an element of flexibility. Many of the texts are baku (frozen), meaning they are relatively standard in form, known by different singers, repeated, and sometimes event connected with a specific melody. Other texts are more spontaneous, created in the moment of performance. Some of these use predictable formulas used to create part of a text. Others--the most engaging for audiences--are those that are responsive to the performance context, referencing specific people, responding to audience requests, or addressing something about the context. Pak Ketua estimated about 80% of texts are pantun baku, about 20% are pantun spontanitas.

The following sections will break down the structure of pantun, the kinds of pantun, the use of metaphor, all illustrated through examples from performance and interviews.
Genre: Sijobang 6 Sijobang is a regional Minangkabau vocal genre from Payokumbuah that draws on kaba for texts. plain 2021-06-29T19:16:14+00:00 -0.22465, 100.6318
Sijobang is a regional Minangkabau vocal genre from Payokumbuah that draws on kaba for texts, rather than pantun. Kaba are epic stories, adopted in a number of genres. Sijobang was performed over night as entertainment in similar contexts to saluang (for weddings, circumcisions and other life cycles), the performer, always gendered male, weaving a long tale. Historically, the solo vocalist accompanied himself using just a box of matches as percussive rhythm. More recently, kacapi (a kind of keyed zither) were used as accompaniment. But by 2020, the genre has all but disappeared, displaced, in part, by the popularity of saluang in the region.

To learn more about sijobang, consult the follow resource:
- Phillips, Nigel. [1981] 2009. Sijobang: Sung Narrative Poetry of West Sumatra. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Term: Kaba 5 Kaba are Minangkabau epics plain 2021-07-01T00:55:09+00:00
Kaba are Minangkabau epics or stories. As Minang historian Taufik Abdullah writes kaba rely
on an imaginatively constructed narrative to present the social and personal consequences of either ignoring or observing ethical teachings and the norms embodied in the adat system of action. (1999: 336)
They can also incorporate stories about social change and recent events (Abdullah; Yampolsky). Junus (1994) makes the argument that historically kaba were set in the remote past, but their publication in print in the 1920s, along with their proliferation on cassette recordings in the 1980s, has meant that kaba are presented in novel ways today. Newly-composed kaba, such as one that documents the large 2009 earthquake in West Sumatra, introduce an immediate past, rather than deal with the remote past (Fraser 2013).

The manner of presentation can range from live storytelling to theatrical production, print publication, or sound recording. As narratives, kaba become texts for a number of performance genres, including sijobang, rabab Pasisia, rabab Pariaman, dendang Pauah, and randai. As Yampolsky and Hanefi write in the linter notes to an album involving recordings of two forms--rabab Pariaman and dendang Pauah.
In randai the kaba is partly sung and partly enacted; in the others it is sung, to the accompaniment of a single instrument...When kaba are sung, the medium is usually rhythmic lines, without rhyme schemes or stanza forms (1994).
The poetic form means that most of the genres drawing on kaba have quite a different feel than those (see Abdullah 1999: 337 for an excerpt from Johns (1958)), like saluang, that draw on the pantun form.

Related Resources
- Abdullah, Taufik. 1999. "Tambo, Kaba, and History: Tradition and the Historical Consciousness of the Minangkabau." In Walk in Splendor: Ceremonial Dress and the Minangkabau, ed. A. Summerfield, J. Summerfield. Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History. 334-339.
- Johns, Anthony, editor and translator. 1958. Rantjak diLabueh: A Minangkabau Kaba. Southeast Asia Program. Department of Far Eastern Studies. Cornell University., Ithaca., New York.
- Junus, Umar. 1994. ‘Kaba: An Untold (His-)Story’. South East Asian Studies 32(3): 399-415.
- Phillips, Nigel. [1981] 2009. Sijobang: Sung Narrative Poetry of West Sumatra. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.