Voices of the other: authenticity and consciousness of language in an East Indonesian song tradition

Abstract

Onotani are songs performed in the Bandanese language (or bahasa Turwandan), currently spoken by some 5,000 people in the Kei Islands of Moluccas, East Indonesia. In this community, a history of migrations and trade contracts has resulted in a high consciousness of linguistic and cultural deversity, evident in the extensive use of foreign linguistic items and folkloric elements in Bandanese oral tradition. The case of an onotani performance discusses in the article indicates that the meaning of such elements depends on their acknowledgement as voices of the Other. Whereas this performance gives maximum emphasis to intercultural dialogue, other performances and discourses are more focused on the aesthetic coherence of the language and poetics of onotani. Bandanese verbal arts thus balance between acknowledging the voice of the Other, on the one hand, and integrating it in the style of poetic expressions used to affirm the cultural self. This conclusion suggests the need to rethink the assumption, prevalent in current folkloristics and ethnography of speaking, that the meaning and authenticity of tradition are situational constructs. In the view suggested in this article, the authenticity or social value of tradition depends both on expressive, performative practices and on broader, cultural perceptions of the historical continuity and source of tradition.