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Introduction
This article investigates the rules of performing the gondang sabangunan (tuned drum and gong ensemble) of the Toba Batak people of North Sumatra and its associated tortor dancing.2 The study will be focused specifically in the context of pre-Christian Toba Batak adat practices. By "pre-Christian adat practices" I mean those traditional laws and customs that governed the conduct of ceremonial feasts practiced by Toba Batak society prior to the coming of Christianity.3 These feasts included the prefuneral ceremony (saur matua), the exhumation ceremony (mangongkal holi), the communal sacrificial ceremony (pesta bius) and the healing ceremony (gondang saem). The gondang sabangunan ensemble accompanied each of these ceremonies.
Gondang sabangunan consists of taganing (five single-headed, conical, tuned braced drums - individually named tingling, paidua ni tingting, painonga, paidua odap and odap-odap - hung from a wooden beam and struck with a pair of wooden sticks), two bass drums (gordang [single-headed drum] and odap [double-headed-drum]), a set of four suspended gongs (oloan, ihutan, panggora and doal), a sarune (doublereed aerophone) and a hesek (a metal or glass idiophone beaten with a wooden stick or metal rod).4 The gondang sabangunan and its associated tortor dancing must be performed simultaneously. A gondang sabangunan performance without tortor is regarded as incomplete, and inconsistent with the adat or traditional practices of the Batak.
Definition and Functions of Adat
Scholars from different disciplines have proposed various definitions of adat. Each of the definitions given below includes reference to different details, yet all of them indicate that the concept of adat includes the implementation of the pre-Christian Toba Batak belief system. Tampubolon, an expert on adat practices, maintains that adat is a religious norm and law that looks after the relationship between the gods and human beings as well as between the ancestors and their descendants. Adat cannot be changed; it must be obeyed (Tampubolon 1964: cited in Schreiner 1994: 115). The theologian Pedersen asserts that adat is a system established by the ancestors for their protection against each other as well as for preserving the equilibrium of the supernatural powers around them. The aim of practicing adat is to avoid disaster, restore harmony, maintain fertility, and ensure the welfare of villages and towns and their inhabitants. To disobey adat is believed...