Within the country, none is more of a pace-setter, or more lively, progressive and pioneering. The Department has consistently been the national leader in terms of, for example, research output, curriculum development, and the study of both traditional and urban-popular African music. The Lingsar temple festival is the largest and most important religious celebration in Lombok, the island just east of Bali in Indonesia. Both the migrant Hindu Balinese, a religious and political minority, and a portion of the Muslim Sasak, the majority culture, particpate in the festival, which has traditionally acted as the context in which to harmonize relations and worship together for the common good. Several different musical genres representing each group are performed to open and to close the festival, and to accompany all of its major rites.
Music thus plays a crucial role in the festival.
Exhaustive interviews, multiple analyses, and extensive field work were conducted over several years to uncover the significance of the music within the festival context. This dissertation explores the temple and its festival, describes and analyzes the musical traditions, and explicates concepts on music and context, music and myth, and on the experience of performance in trying to establish the multiple meanings of the festival music. Today, however, many Sasak leaders are reinterpreting part of the mythic past to account for the emerging Islamic identity of Sasak culture, and the minority Balinese are responding with their own reinterpretations to protect their interests. Although these reinterpretations have caused some changes in the meaning of the festival, the music maintains its function of encapsulating the festival experience and of referencing and representing the cosmos, the mythic past, and the evolving cultural identities of the Balinese and Sasak in Lombok. First drafts of many articles, ranging in size from 3,000 to 20,000 words, have been completed, but WECT needs assistance identifying writers for the countries listed above.