Bridges to the Ancestors : Music, Myth, and Cultural Politics at an Indonesian Festival

The spectacular Lingsar festival is held annually at a village temple complex built above the most abundant water springs on the island of Lombok, near Bali. Participants come to the festival not only for the efficacy of its rites but also for its spiritual, social, and musical experience. A nexus of religious, political, artistic, and agrarian interests, the festival also serves to harmonize relations between indigenous Sasak Muslims and migrant Balinese Hindus. Ethnic tensions, however, lie beneath the surface of cooperative behavior, and struggles regularly erupt over which group--Balinese or Sasak--owns the past and dominates the present. __Bridges to the Ancestors__ is a broad ethnographic study of the festival based on over two decades of research. The work addresses the festival's players, performing arts, rites, and histories, and considers its relationship to the island's sociocultural and political trends. Music, the most public icon of the festival, has been largely responsible for overcoming differences between the island's two ethnic groups. Through the intermingling of Balinese and Sasak musics at the festival, a profound union has been forged, which participants confirm has been the event's primary social role. __Bridges to the Ancestors__ effectively reveals the Lingsar festival as a site of cultural struggle as the author explores how history, identity, and power are constructed and negotiated. He addresses the fascinating interaction between music and myth and the forces of modernity, globalization, authenticity, tourism, religion, regionalism, and nationalism in maintaining "tradition."

In 2006 dejected members of the Bukit Jalil Estate community faced eviction from their homes in Kuala Lumpur where they had lived for generations. City officials classified plantation residents as squatters and, unaware of years of toil, attachment to the land, and past official promises, questioned any right they might have to stay, wondering "How can there be a plantation in Kuala Lumpur?"

This story epitomizes the dilemma faced by Malaysian Tamils in recent years as they confront the moment when the plantation system where they have lived and worked for generations finally collapses. Foreign workers from Indonesia and Bangladesh have been brought in to replace Tamil workers to cut labor costs. As the new migrant workers do not bring their whole families with them, the community structures need no longer be sustained, allowing more land to be converted to mechanized palm oil production or lucrative housing developments. In short, the old, long-term community-based model of rubber plantation production introduced by British and French companies in colonial Malaya has been replaced by a model based upon migrant labor, mechanization, and a gradual contraction of the plantation economy. Tamils find themselves increasingly resentful of the fact that lands that were developed and populated by their ancestors are now claimed by Malays as their own; and that the land use patterns in these new townships, are increasingly hostile to the most symbolic vestiges of the Tamil and Hindu presence, the temples. In addition to issues pertaining to land, legal cases surrounding religious conversion have exacerbated a sense of insecurity among Tamil Hindus.

Based on seventeen months of ethnographic fieldwork, this compelling book is about much more than the fast-approaching end to a way of life.It addresses critical issues in the study of race and ethnicity. It studies how notions of justice, as imagined by an aggrieved minority, complicate legal demarcations of ethnic difference in post colonial states. It demonstrates which strategies, as enacted by local communities in conjunction with NGOs and legal advisors/activists, have been most "successful" in navigating the legal and political system of ethnic entitlement and compensation. It shows how, through a variety of strategies, Tamils try to access justice beyond the law - sometimes by using the law, and sometimes by turning to religious symbols and rituals in the murky space between law and justice.

Contents Acknowledgments Chapter One. Encounters, Constructions, Reflections Chapter Two. Festivals and Cultures of Lombok Chapter Three. Myths, Actors, and Politics Chapter Four. Temple Units, Performing Arts, and Festival Rites Chapter Five. Music: History, Cosmology, and Content Chapter Six. Explorations of Meaning Chapter Seven. Changing Dimensions, Changing Identities Chapter Eight. The Final Gong Notes Glossary Bibliography Index About the Author