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Song in the Sumatran Highlands

Why Saluang?

In the middle of the night, deep in the highlands of the Indonesian province of West Sumatra, populated by people who identify as Minangkabau, female vocalists sing in front of predominately male audiences. They are vocalists in a genre known locally as "saluang" for the flute that accompanies them, performing in pairs from about 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. Saluang is the most prominent Minangkabau vocal genre today, centered largely in the Minangkabau heartland, the darek, but found wherever Minangkabau people have migrated. There are hundreds of songs in the repertoire: attendees may request any song and vocalists have to be prepared to deliver them. But this is an oral tradition. The texts for a given song are not fixed: they can and do change from one performer to the next, vocalists fitting stock verses to melodies or creating them anew in response to the performance context and attendees. The genre, moreover, features lively interactions between the performers and their audiences. Devotees sometimes travel up to a couple of hours by motorbike to hear their favorite singers. Men are attracted to such performances by a range of motivations:

love of the music, often the "sad" songs at the heart of the genre;
the intimate, interactive, and participatory atmosphere;
the lyrics, sometimes deep and contemplative, other times lighthearted and playful;
a particular singer’s attractiveness, sartorial choices, and her beguiling voice;
and camaraderie with other attendees.

It is a fascinating, dynamic genre. Each performance is an entirely unique event. The performers don’t rehearse in advance and they may not necessarily have performed together before, but they share a set of conventions that allow them to perform together even if they have never met in person before.

The genre, moreover, has changed significantly over the last seventy years. Back in 1950, women did not perform in public; in Minangkabau etiquette codes, informed in part by adherence to Islamic worldview, it was not seemly for women to be on stage in front of men. The gradual inclusion of women in the professionalized scene since then has significantly changed the genre. Today, it is hard to find a working male vocalist. But the inclusion of women has also changed the nature of requests, the kinds of songs requested, the content of the lyrics, and the nature of the interactions. Using more than twenty years of ethnographic research, research reports and other archival documents, this site traces these shifts.

The project design--the interface of our site--is based on the four most important components of the saluang genre: the songs that make up the repertoire, the people who perform or are devotees; the performances where songs are activated by people who perform and those who request specific songs; and the places connected to songs, people, and performances. Our hope is to give the user a sense of how saluang lives and breathes in West Sumatra.

In addition to the repository of information about songs, performers, and places, the site engages the following themes

the sonic manifestations of place
gender dynamics in and through performance
the process of ethnographic research
oral literature
interactive performance
analysis of song structure
and more.

What you encounter in the following pages is Phase 1 of the project. Phase 2 aims to provide a parallel site in Indonesian.

Why Saluang?

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