Music, Identities, and Interreligious Relationships at the Lingsar Festival in Lombok, Indonesia
Abstract
When the final procession was readied at the Lingsar temple festival in 1988, I was surprised to see a leader of the Muslim Sasak faction, Suparman, holding hands with the leader of the Hindu Balinese assemblage, Anak Agung Gede Biarsah, at the front of the line of participants. In earlier conversations, they had both expressed interethnic distrust and proclaimed that their group held the inner position while the other was outer and insubstantial to festival events. And yet, there they were walking hand-in-hand and leading the final procession together as if there were no problems whatsoever. What I was witnessing – as I later realized – was the collapse of contestation into interethnic unity, and what produced this unity was the previous days’ rites and performing arts, which all worked in various ways to construct a bridge to the ancestors, impose a spiritual order and balance on the proceedings and participants, and form a comprehensive union that gradually became palpable. Ultimately, it is this union of complementary dualities (Sasak/Balinese, human/divine, inside/outside, even traditional/modern) that generates the fertility that legitimizes the festival. Though many elements have changed since the 1980s, the goal of union has not. Without it, the festival would either discontinue or radically transform.
Downloads
References
Clegg, Kendra. 2004. “Ampenan: Constructions of Nationalism, Ethnicity and Identity in Lombok.†PhD dissertation, Deakin University.
Falassi, Alessandro. 1987. “Festival: Definition and Morphology.†In Time out of Time: Essays on the Festival, edited by Alessandro Falassi, 1-10. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. “Person, Time, and Conduct in Bali.†In The Interpretation of Cultures, 360-411. New York: Basic Books, Inc.
Gerdin, Ingela. 1982. The Unknown Balinese: Land, Labour and Inequality in Lombok. Goteborg: ACTA Universitatis Gothoburgensis.
Hägerdal, Hans. 2001. Hindu Rulers, Muslim Subjects: Lombok and Bali in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Thailand: Hans Hägerdal.
Harnish, David. 2018. “The Lives of Processions in Bali and Lombok, Indonesia.†In Public Festivities, edited by Jack Santino. University of Utah Press.
———. 2016. “Revising and Revisiting the Ancestors: Performing Arts, Interethnic Union and Balancing the ‘Tradition’ and ‘Modern’ at the Lingsar Festival in Lombok, Indonesia. In Religious Festivals in Contemporary Indonesia, edited by Patrick Alcedo. Manila: Ateneo Press.
———. 2014. “Balinese and Sasak Religious Trajectories in Lombok: Interactions, Tensions, and Arts at the Lingsar Temple Festival.†In Between Harmony and Discrimination: Negotiating Religious Identities within Majority-Minority in Bali and Lombok, edited by Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin and David Harnish, 61-85. Leiden: Brill Press.
———. 2007. “’Digging’ and ‘Upgrading’: Government Efforts to ‘Develop’ Music and Dance in Lombok.†Asian Music 38 (1): 61-87.
———. 2006. Bridges to the Ancestors: Music, Myth, and Cultural Politics at an Indonesian Festival. University of Hawai‘i Press.
———. 2005. “New Lines, Shifting Identities: Interpreting Change at the Lingsar Festival in Lombok, Indonesia.†Ethnomusicology 49 (1): 1-24.
———. 2001. “‘Like King and Queen, Like Balinese and Sasak’: Musical Narratives at the Lingsar Festival.†Ethnologies 23 (1): 63-87.
———. 1991. “Music at the Lingsar Temple Festival: The Encapsulation of Meaning in the Balinese/Sasak Interface in Lombok, Indonesia.†PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles
Kingsley, Jeremy. 2010. “Tuan Guru, Community, and Conflict in Lombok, Indonesia.†PhD dissertation, University of Melbourne
Pepplinkhuizen, Coen. 1991. “Religion: Visions of Duality and Balance.†In East of Bali: From Lombok to Timor, edited by K. Muller, 36-42. Singapore: Periplus Editions, Inc.
Sciorra, Joseph. 1995. “Religious Processions in Italian Williamsburg,†The Drama Review 29 (3): 65-81.
Telle, Kari. 2014. “Changing Spiritual Landscapes and Religious Politics on Lombok.†In Between Harmony and Discrimination: Negotiating Religious Identities within Majority-Minority Relationships in Bali and Lombok, edited by Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin and David Harnish, 35-61. Leiden: Brill Press.
