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Lot 671
Lute "hasapi" with two strings
Estimated Value:
500 € - 800 €
Result:
incl. Premium and VAT
Description:
North Sumatra, Toba-Batak, 19th cent.L. 67 cm
Wood, metal. Batak stringed instrument with a blackened body made of medium-hard wood, strung with 2 strings. The fingerboard is crowned by a crouching ancestor figure. The foot of the body is cantilevered. The instrument stands for a very highly developed musical culture, which applies to the whole of South East Asia, but is particularly evident among the Batak. As with all metal-age Austronesians, the Batak also have a distinct musical culture. The Batak are also regarded as outstanding singers and musicians in Indonesia and also play an important role in contemporary Indonesian music. There is even a modern music genre known as Batak rock (which also has its own labels). It is interesting to note that even in the early states in Southeast Asia (Funan Empire), Chinese diplomats and traders attested that the locals had an exceptional musical culture, which even received imperial patronage.
Collected from an old German private collection since the 1950s
Batak music was sometimes demonized and banned by the missionaries because of its trance-like effect. Adepts were sometimes called upon to destroy instruments - especially the gendang drums, which could induce a trance effect. To this day, the Batak are known to perform traveling theater (“Opera Batak”), accompanied by an orchestra consisting of two hasapi (boat-shaped lutes), sarune (oboe), sulim (transverse flute), garantung (xylophone with five plates) and usually a beer bottle as a beat generator. Otherwise, the Batak use forms of the widespread double drum gendang and the humpback gongs in traditional music, which are called ogung by all groups except the Karo-Batak. Instead of drums, the Karo-Batak beat the bamboo tube zithers keteng-keteng during ceremonial music in the house. Music was a “man's thing”. The jew's harps, which are rare today, are one of the few instruments that were once played by women. The two jew's harp types saga- saga (made of palm wood) and genggong (made of metal) were mainly used for courtship)
