more on the sasandu: instrument of the troubled grass
[“Feto Bo’I” performed by Daniel Huan in Roti, Indonesia. I really love this song...]
From: https://asia.si.edu/essays/article-basile/
Rotinese mythological tales associate the sasandu with the polar forces of rejoicing and mourning, the natural and the supernatural, and life and death. One oral, poetic narrative describes how a man is so bewitched by malevolent spirits that he sprouts a “monkey’s tail and swine’s hooves” and loses his humanity. The sound of the sasandu finally draws him back from the realm of beasts to the world of men. Another tale traces the sasandu’s origins to the “first wedding” between the Clan of the Heavens and the Clan of the Seas. ...
Another mythological narrative pairs the origin of the sasandu with the origins of death and mourning. In this tale, the Rotinese try everything to assuage Death from its first victim. They offer Death bribes of livestock and riches; they try to convince Death to settle for taking the victim’s eyes and nose; they even try hiding the prospective corpse in an iron shelter without a door. Nothing works. With this first death the Rotinese come to know mourning and weeping, and they express their sorrow through the sasandu. The manahelo (poet) who chanted this tale evoked the overwhelming despair that inspired the creation of the sasandu through a metaphor comparing the rocking of the inconsolable mourners to the swaying of the tall grass and their weeping to the howling wind in a bamboo grove.
Sampa nitu ma lalo mula Death came into being Hu nde na Starting from that time Hu ndia dede ta’e Because of that we say Mana depo hitu Concerning sasandu Kala depo hitu ma falu fik Sasandu is like the troubled grass Sari sandu nai soda ok Sasandu is like the crying bamboo
On Roti, song with sasandu is a lively performance tradition created by singing poets and musicians who improvise versions of traditional songs and who sometimes compose wholly new ones. Thus, a skilled performer of sasandu-accompanied song employs Rotinese bini poetry to evoke deep associations and meaning for Rotinese listeners, creating a flexible, individual, and distinctly Rotinese music performance art.
[“Batu Matia” performed by A. A. Malelak in Roti, Indonesia]
Most Rotinese singers draw almost exclusively on a well-known repertoire of traditional songs, such as “Batu Matia” (Heavy Rock), which describes the plight of a Sisyphus-like figure.
Roso roso non doi doso batu matia, batu matia tian natun telu Dragging and pulling a heavy rock, a heavy rock the weight of three hundred
As a singer performs “Batu Matia,” he alternates the song’s refrain in bahasa Kupang (the regional version of Malay) with verses based on couplets in Rotinese bini ritual language, freely incorporating repetition of words and phrases with interjections. Traditional oration in Roti finds its most sophisticated expression in bini, a poetic register of Rotinese that employs canonical parallelism. Ritual, poetic languages in parallel form are found throughout Eastern Indonesia. These language forms express and encode social wisdom and significant ritual knowledge that depict reality as being fundamentally dualistic, in a syntactical form that is itself pervasively diadic. For example, the Rotinese bini couplet Hata hori au masik, oe dae ana noe (Man is like salt, touched by water he dissolves) metaphorically expresses the dualistic nature of the human condition, which seems solid and enduring even though it is fragile and ephemeral, in bini form using canonically paired terms hatahori:oe (man:water). Rotinese song texts are based on these sorts of parallel couplets, and a singer’s talent is judged primarily on his knowledge of bini and his skill in using it. Some other examples of bini couplets employed for sung verses in sasandu-accompanied song are Tasi nbesi neu ein, nale tasik bali de (When you are in deep water, the will of the sea prevails), Biti boak manu tolak, dae dusi basa sira (Even a shapely leg is ultimately dust), and Anak mak ndule dae, ina falu ndule oe (Orphans and widows are everywhere).
