Preret

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Preret , also prereret , is a woodwind instrument with a double reed , which is mainly found on the Indonesian island of Lombok and also among the Muslim minority on the neighboring island of Bali . The sasak melody instrument, played as a soloist and with a small ensemble, is untypical of the Javanese- Balinese musical tradition of classical gamelan ; it is occasionally heard in popular music , at temple festivals of the syncretistic religion Wetu Telu and in the music of the Orthodox Muslims , Waktu Lima .

distribution

The shape of the preret comes from the Persian cone obo type of the surnai , which is known in large parts of Asia. In the Middle Ages, Arab Muslims brought surnai to the Malay island world, where the new religion spread along the trade routes under names such as serune in Malaysia or sarunai in Sumatra . In Indonesia, the preret is the furthest of these double-reed instruments that has penetrated eastwards . While bamboo flutes ( suling , saluang ) are played all over Indonesia, double-reed instruments from pre-Islamic times are extremely rare. Only a few oboes are known on Bali and the neighboring islands to the east of Lombok, in the Sunda region (West Java) a corresponding tarompet accompanies the silat fighting dance, which is common throughout the island region . The name selompret for a cone oboe with a length of 45 centimeters, which has become rare in Central and Eastern Java, now stands for a Clairon . On the island of Madura the cone oboe is called saronen and in South Sulawesi it is called puik-puik . The names prereret, pleret, gempret and gemret have been handed down from the Hindu-Javanese period (up to the 15th century) .

Today the name preret or prereret occurs for a double reed instrument in Lombok and among the Muslim minority in Bali. In the Jembrana administrative district on the western tip of Bali, the prereret was formerly used by young men in courtship songs . Today, accompanied prereret in Jembrana Theater Ensemble SeWo gati .

The preret has also become rare on Lombok. Outside the island there were prerets in traditional ritual music in Bali in the central mountains and in the eastern Karangasem region , where a Sasak minority lives, at least until the 1970s . The instrument type was imported from Lombok. The only other wind instruments in the music of Lombok are flutes of different sizes ( suling ) and the six centimeter long rice straw gendola , a primitive single- reed instrument that needed a very strong air flow to generate sound.

Design

The preret on Lombok is a carefully crafted instrument that consists of a 40 centimeter long wooden tube with six or more often seven finger holes at the top and a thumb hole at the bottom. According to the shape of the bell , two variants are distinguished: with an attached conical bell and with a widened straight tube end. In 1972 Tilman Seebass described a preret with six finger holes made of Merbau wood (Ipil) with a bell. The tube sheets (Sasaksprache pelayah ) are prepared from the leaves of the Lontarpalme ( Rontal made). A chicken feather serves as a mouthpiece, around which a thread is wrapped at the connection point. For the wide lip support , an aluminum coin is tapped flat and pushed over the mouthpiece with the drill hole in the middle. Another material for the lip washer is tortoise shell .

Style of play

Like the other Asian double reed instruments , prerets are blown with circular breathing . The instrument offers significantly more melodic expressions than can be heard from the human voice in Lombok. Most of the preret music is used for entertainment, in ceremonies the instrument was previously used by Balinese and Sasak alike and was part of the opening music at the annual temple festival of the Lingar temple on the west coast (near Mataram ) until 1993 . Since then, the preret has only been ceremonially played by Balinese people at other temple festivals in remote villages. According to a Balinese musician, the preret is used to invoke local deities and invite them to a temple festival.

Decisive for the use of musical instruments in general on the island is their classification in one of the two fundamental religious-cultural traditions: On the one hand, the preret belongs to the pre-Islamic, i.e. Javanese-Balinese culture, through the Balinese Hinduism and a popular variant mixed with ancestor worship shaped by Islam ( Wetu Telu , in its rare form in retreat areas). It is also played by the Balinese minority who live particularly in western Lombok. In addition to the accompaniment of sung poetry, the preret in this area was part of the standard of the Wayang Sasak , an orchestra with which the shadow play of the same name ( Wayang ) is accompanied, which is mainly used for the performance of the saga cycle Serat Menak Sasak .

Another orchestra is the Gamelan Kamput with two melody-leading prerets , alongside a suling and one or more kendangs (barrel drums). Preret and suling perform the melody in unison, but with different ornamentation. The orchestra used to precede wedding processions.

Gamelan Preret is another orchestral line-up that focuses on the wind instrument. Structuring instruments are kempul (hanging gong ), ceng ceng (bronze basin ) and kendang . Also suitable prerets in ensembles used that the Gandrung- and Joget- accompany (Joged-) dance. These un-Islamic entertainment dances used to be part of fertility rituals in the annual rice-growing cycle. The young dancer with a fan sings and asks men from the audience to dance along temporarily against payment of a sum of money. The style of performance is similar to the Gandrung Banyuwangi in the town of Banyuwangi on the east coast of Java.

On the other hand, the preret is considered part of the Islamic tradition that came to Lombok in the Middle Ages via Sumatra, Sulawesi and Sumbawa . Since the beginning of the 20th century, the religious divide has deepened as a result of a strictly religious Islamic tendency originating in Saudi Arabia , which influenced Islam, which had already dominated Lombok under the name Waktu Lima . Followers of the Wetu Telu hardly publicly profess their old faith anymore. Muslim ensembles in which prerets can occasionally still occur are Kecimol and Cilokaq. Kecimol is lively processional music for weddings with melodies derived from Arabic music . Drums , metallophones , keyboards and flutes are part of the accompaniment of a singer who is often equipped with a megaphone and intones love songs.

The Ciloqak style, which emerged around the middle of the 20th century, is also typical of Lombok's Islamic music . As is typical for Lombok, the shallow melodies are a bit melancholy. In both orchestras, rebanas (beaker drums or frame drums ) from the Arab tradition replace the kendangs (barrel drums) from Javanese culture . The four-string plucked gambus and the biola ( violin ) go well with this.

Others

The contemporary composer Dieter Mack studied gamelan music and in 1983 entitled a composition for oboe and piano with Preret .

literature

  • David D. Harnish: The Preret of the Lombok Balinese: Transformation and continuity within a sacred tradition. In: SC De Vale (Ed.): Selected reports in ethnomusicology. Issues in Organology. Vol. 8, University of California, Los Angeles 1990, pp. 201-220
  • David D. Harnish: Bridges to the Ancestors: Music, Myth, and Cultural Politics at an Indonesian Festival. University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu 2005, ISBN 978-0-8248-2914-8
  • David D. Harnish: Nusa Tenggara Barat. In: Terry E. Miller, Sean Williams (Eds.): The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music . Volume 4. Southeast Asia. Garland, New York / London 1998, pp. 762-785; here p. 767 f.
  • Tilman Seebass, I Gusti Bagus Nyoman Panji, I Nyoman Rembang, I Poedijono: The Music of Lombok. A first survey. Forum Ethnomusicologicum. Basler Studien zur Ethnomusicologie 2, ed. by Hans Oesch. Francke, Bern 1976

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jaap Art : Music in Java. Its History, its Theory and its Technique. (2nd edition 1949) 3rd edition edited by Ernst L. Heins. Volume 1. Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague 1973, p. 238
  2. ↑ Ernst Heins, Margaret J. Kartomi, Andrew C. McGraw: Selompret. In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Volume 4. Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, p. 466
  3. ^ Tilman Seebass, p. 41
  4. ^ Tilman Seebass, p. 42
  5. ^ David Harnish: Bridges to the Ancestors , 2005, p. 149
  6. ↑ David Harnish: "Isn't This Nice? It's Just Like Being in Bali": Constructing Balinese Music Culture in Lombok. In: Ethnomusicology Forum , Vol. 14, No. 1, June 2005, pp. 3–24, here p. 11
  7. ^ "Colotomic" instruments, a term from Jaap Kunst
  8. ^ David Harnish: Bridges to the Ancestors , 2005, p. 158
  9. ↑ Preret (1983) for oboe and piano. Homepage Dieter Mack