Transmission and Sustainability of the Kelentangan Tradition in Dayak Benuaq Ritual, East Kalimantan

Abstract

The continuity of an oral musical tradition is ordinarily explained by the effectiveness of its transmission, yet transmission alone does not account for why some traditions persist while others fall silent. This article examines how kelentangan, the gong-row ensemble of the Dayak Benuaq of East Kalimantan, is transmitted, and how that transmission relates to the continuity of the tradition. The study draws on musical ethnography, which treats music both as sound and as the product of a set of social activities, and on the interaction of concept, behaviour, and sound together with the idea of participatory performance. Fieldwork was carried out in the villages of Tanjung Isuy, Mancong, and Muara Lawa in Kutai Barat Regency, and combined participant observation of the gantar dance, of the belian bawo and belian sentiu healing ceremonies, and of the kwangkay secondary mortuary rite with in-depth interviews with fifteen informants selected by snowball sampling: players of two generations, ritual specialists, dancers, and customary elders. The findings show that the tradition is inherited without any dedicated institution, curriculum, or scheduled lesson. Learning proceeds aurally and by imitation within the occasions on which the music is performed, along a graded path from the hanging gong to the drum and finally to the gong row, and it regenerates two populations at once: players and the public against which playing is judged. Continuity therefore rests less on transmission itself than on the ritual occasions that host it, and safeguarding measures addressed to transmission alone will not secure the tradition.