Hasapi

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The famous Kulcapi player Si Datas from the village of Purbakti of the Karo-Batak, North Sumatra. Between 1914 and 1919. He was also called "Si Beethoven".

Hasapi , regionally different kacapi, hapitan, kulcapi , is a two-stringed boat-shaped lute that is played by the Batak people on the Indonesian island of Sumatra . The plucked instrument was previously used in ancient religious ceremonial music, today it is used more for entertainment and belongs to the accompanying orchestra of the touring theater Opera Batak .

distribution

Related lute instruments are common throughout the Malay cultural area of ​​Southeast Asia under similar names. The name kecapi is widely known for boat-shaped lutes , not to be confused with the boat-shaped box zither kacapi (kecapi) , which is played together with the suling flute in West Java . The Gayo in Aceh , a little north of the Batak region, have the tubular zither kacapi or canang kacapi, which are also unrelated .

The name comes from the ancient Indian kacchapi vina , which had a calabash resonator . Kacchapi, on the other hand, is associated with kacca , Sanskrit and bengali kacchapa , pali kacchaco , and could mean the tree Cedrela tuna (family of the mahogany family ), from whose wood the Indian sitar is still made today. If one assumes a Greek influence of the ancient Indian Gandhara empire on the Indian lute instruments, their forerunner was a simpler form of the five-string ancient kacchapi , as it was depicted on Gandhara reliefs at the turn of the times. The ancient Greek word for plucked instrument, Χελώνη ( cheloni ), literally means “turtle”, as the sound box was made from its shell . The word kacchapa could have taken on the Greek meaning and should also be translated as “turtle”. Only the name and not the construction seems to have been transferred, since lute instruments with turtle shells are unknown in India.

The name kecapi has been brought into line with the regional language. With the Toba-Batak the instrument is called hasapi , with the Karo-Batak kulcapi , with the Simalungan husapi and with the Pakpak (both ethnic groups also belong to the Batak) and Minangkabau kucapi .

The Dayak of Borneo know a long four- stringed sape ; The two-string Filipino boat lute kutiyapi is similarly long . On Sulawesi there are the two sounds kasapi and katjapin . The probable Indian prototype of these instruments reached Southeast Asia by the 14th century at the latest. According to Curt Sachs , the name kecapi was transferred to Southeast Asia at the end of the 1st millennium. At that time there was intense trade between India and Sumatra. From the beginning of the 11th century, Indian Hindus established settlements on the edges of the Batak area, which existed until the end of the 14th century. Numerous Sanskrit words have entered the Batak language. The general spread of the sounds in this century coincides roughly with the sphere of influence of the Hindu kingdom of Majapahit , which was flourishing at this time , which is taken as further evidence of the Indian origin. A century later, with Muslim traders from the Arab region, the gambus began to gain a foothold, which has largely displaced the Indian sounds in today's Islamic areas.

A source from 1663 mentions a stringed instrument called coryapi on the northern Philippine island of Luzon . This gave rise to the Tagalog word kudyapi , which still appears in song lyrics and has been used to describe a guitar since the end of the 19th century. The original Filipino lute instrument of that name has disappeared. Other types of instruments of Chinese origin that have taken over the word kecapi in modified form are the Cambodian long-necked lute chapey dang veng and the Thai krajappi.

Design

Hasapi before 1966

The hasapi , made from a piece of wood, has a slim, pear-shaped body that seamlessly merges into the neck. The attachment point of the pegbox can be cranked downwards, while on some instruments the narrow lower end protrudes a few centimeters above the ceiling like a bowsprit . In museum hasapi , the peg box is carved as a human crouching figure or a bird's head. The two wire strings do not run over a bridge to the lower end, but are attached to a block at the point of a bridge in the lower center of the ceiling. The strings are tuned a minor or major third apart . At the beginning of the 20th century they consisted of a rattan garden ( riman ). In the case of instruments that can only be found in museums, the one-piece body is hollowed out from below except for a thin cover and slightly thicker sides, today a flat cover is nailed or glued on. The kulcapi of the Karo Batak is narrower overall.

Style of play

The Toba Batak know two traditional music ensembles: The gondang sabangunan or gondang sarune (or gonsi ) is the ceremonial music for the socially most important ancestral festival, as well as for festivals that are not subject to customary law ( adat ) such as Thanksgiving and youth dance. The instruments are a tuned drum set ( taganing ) and individual drums ( gondang from Malay gendang , "drum"), the gong group ogung , which consists of four humpback gongs of different sizes, two of which are muffled with the arm. In addition to the conical oboe sarune, there are other wind instruments.

Hasapi before 1986
All pictures from the Tropical Museum in Amsterdam

The other traditional instrumental group is called uning-uningan ("instrumental music") or gondang hasapi , today it is the secular counterpart to the gondang sarune . In earlier times, before Christianization, it was also used to invoke spirits, in ceremonies of the priest ( datu ) and in the tondi cult, in which the central belief of the animistic religion in the life soul tondi is the focus. A hasapi solo was often played at these ceremonies .

The instruments of uning-uningan are a sarune na met-met (“little sarune”), two hasapi and an ezek-hesek as a clock . This is an iron impact plate that can be replaced with an empty beer bottle struck with a nail. There is also a xylophone ( guarantee ) with five to eight wooden panels and the bamboo transverse flute sulim or the short bamboo longitudinal flute sordam . The playing styles of both ensembles imitate each other and sometimes use the same repertoire. A hasapi that hasapi taganing is called, and the xylophone play the part of taganing . The second hasapi is called hasapi doal , named after the generic term for the gongs of the group of four, which it replaces. One string mimics the open-sounding undamped gongs with this instrument and the other string mimics the muted gongs. It is unclear which of the two ensembles is the older. According to the Batak, the string instrument is older. The sasando - players from the small East Indonesian island of Roti , who imitate the gong orchestra with their tubular zither - practice just such an imitating takeover . The two lute instruments can also be called hasapi ina ("mother lute") - plays the main melody, and hasapi anak ("child lute") - plays the melodic decorations.

The instruments of the gondang hasapi ensemble have a range of less than an octave. Today they serve to accompany the traveling theater Opera Batak . This is a popular form of entertainment with shallow music influenced by European melodies, with actors performing spoken drama, singing and dancing. By using traditional instruments, Opera Batak music is tied to their technical capabilities, as well as to the old tone scales and other musical structures. The best-known Opera Batak ensemble is the group around Tilhang Gultom, who attracted attention in a multitude of numerous small theater groups in the 1920s through patriotic themes without coming into conflict with the Dutch colonial authorities. At least until the 1980s, the group, now under the name Serindo , had success with their glorification of the mythological Batak past.

The hasapi as a song accompaniment has faced strong competition from modern guitars outside of tourist performances on Lake Samosir . In Opera Batak music, some of the ancient musical instruments exist in a musical environment adapted to the entertainment taste . The diffusion of radio and tape cassettes has ensured the survival of these musical instruments within new musical forms.

Discography

  • Instrumental music of the Toba and Karo Batak. Museum of Ethnology. National Museums in Berlin Prussian Cultural Heritage, CD 24/25. Edited by Artur Simon , 1999. CD 24, tracks 12-14

literature

Web links

Commons : Hasapi  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jaap Kunst, Fig. 7, p. 178
  2. ↑ Emmie te Nijenhuis: Dattilam. A Compendium of Ancient Indian Music. Ed .: K. Sambasiva Sastri, Trivandrum Sanskrit Series no.102. Trivandrum 1930, p. 83
  3. ↑ See: Curt Sachs: The musical instruments of India and Indonesia. At the same time an introduction to instrument science. Georg Reimer, Berlin 1915, p. 124
  4. ^ Arsenio Nicolas: Early Musical Exchange between India and Southeast Asia. In: Pierre-Yves Manguin, A. Mani, Geoff Wade (Eds.): Early Interactions between South and Southeast Asia. Reflections on Cross-Cultural Exchange. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore 2011, pp. 347-370, here p. 350
  5. ↑ Artur Simon 1985, pp. 114f
  6. ↑ The Batak. Music Instruments. Virtual Collection of Masterpieces (photos); Lute (Hasapi), late 19th – early 20th century Indonesia, Sumatra, Toba Batak people. Metropolitan Museum of Art
  7. ^ Jaap Kunst : Music and dance in the outer provinces. In: Tropenmuseum, University of Amsterdam (ed.): Jaap Kunst. Indonesian music and dances. Traditional music and is interaction with the West. A compilation of articles (1934–1952) originally published in Dutch. Amsterdam 1994, p. 175
  8. ↑ Margaret J. Kartomi, Artur Simon, Rüdiger Schumacher: Indonesia. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . Sachteil 4, 1996, col. 827
  9. ^ Henry Spiller: Gamelan Music of Indonesia. (Focus on World Music Series) Routledge, London / New York 2008, pp. 20f
  10. ↑ Margaret J. Kartomi: Hasapi. In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments , p. 634
  11. ^ Gondang and Opera Batak for Sitor Situmorang. Youtube video (excerpt from the musical part of an Opera Batak, with a flute sulim on the left, the oboe sarune na met-met on the right, the drum set taganing and a hasapi on the left in the background)
  12. ↑ Margaret J. Kartomi: Sumatra. In: Terry E. Miller, Sean Williams (Eds.): The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. Volume 4. Southeast Asia. Garland, New York / London 1998, p. 608
  13. ↑ Most extensive publication on Opera Batak: Rainer Carle: Opera Batak. The Toba Batak touring theater in North Sumatra. Drama to preserve cultural identity in the national Indonesian context . Seminar for Indonesian and South Seas languages ​​at the University of Hamburg. 2 volumes. Dietrich Reimer, Berlin 1990 ( KITLV ( Memento des original dated November 16, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this note. Book review, p. 521f) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kitlv-journals.nl
  14. ^ William Robert Hodges Jr .: "Ganti Andung, Gabe Ende" (Replacing Laments, Becoming Hymns): The Changing Voice of Grief in the Pre-funeral Wakes of Protestant Toba Batak (North Sumatra, Indonesia). University of California, Santa Barbara. Diss. September 2009, p. 139 ( Summary )