page_title: Caci (fighting)
section_title: Cultural significance
hierarchical_section_title: Caci (fighting) / Cultural significance
caption_attribution_description: English: Caci Dance is one of the traditional arts of a kind of typical war dance from the Manggarai community on Flores Island, East Nusa Tenggara Province, Indonesia.
context_page_description: Caci is a form of fighting with a whip or stick. It appears to be indigenous to Flores in East Nusa Tenggara, but it is also practiced in neighboring islands of Bali and Lombok, Indonesia. The art is sometimes called cacing or ende in Flores, and larik or kebat in Riung, while in Balinese it is known as ende.
  Caci is mainly performed by Manggarai people distributed within the greater Manggarai cultural area of western parts of Flores island, which today consists of three regencies; West, Central, and East, and also the neighboring Ngada Regency. Caci performance is most prevalent in Manggarai Regency, especially in the town of Ruteng, where this ritual whip fight has become a major element of its people's cultural identity. Originated as a part of harvest ritual, this whip dueling spectacle has grown to become an attraction for foreign as well as domestic visitors.
context_section_description: Caci at one time served as a form of dispute management or conflict settlement within and between villages. Fighters are divided into the host group (ata one) and the challenger group from another village (ata pe’ang or meka landang). Victory is obtained by hitting the opponent's face or head. In former times, championship bouts were held in which the objective was to blind the opponent's eye. The winner is required to happily sing a quatrain while the loser replies in a low voice to show despair. Participants must be agile, physically fit and able to sing local songs.
  Although caci is often considered as somewhat a playful competitive sporting event, it also has a sacrificial function. According to local belief, if the back of a fighter's body gets whipped, there will be a good harvest. The blood dripping from the wound constitutes as an offering to the ancestors for fertility of the soil.
  Matches are usually held in the yard of a communal house. Younger boys compete during the early part of the day, while senior fighters and champions take part during the afternoon. During the match, musicians, whom usually women are gathering and playing drums and gongs as a musical accompaniment to encourage the contestants as well as the spectators.
  Caci in modern times is often mistaken for a dance, but actually throughout its history until as recently as the 1970s, it was a realistic fighting art. Seasoned fighters were heavily scarred on their upper body, while losers further had the mark of the defeating blow on their face, or worst — having one of his eyes blind. Today however, injuries are usually shallow enough to heal within a few days.
  Fights were traditionally held almost weekly but waned in popularity until they only took place during festivals. Today however, the interest from tourists has made caci more common but with changing agricultural circumstances, the art today is disconnected from its traditional symbolism. The length of the ritual is drastically shortened, showing only fragments of the process.
  Caci can still be seen in its original context during the Penti ceremony, which the most important one usually held at 5-year intervals. Caci is most frequently performed during Penti, a traditional harvest festival to mark the end of harvest and the beginning of the new crop cycle. During Penti festival, caci fights might last at least a full day — but more often they may take two or three days — accompanied by the music of gongs and drums, attracting people to come for cheering and supporting their champion from their village, and it was held in such festivities.
  In East Manggarai Regency, the caci whip fight is performed by the men of the Ndolu ethnic group during the peak of the Karong Woja Wole traditional festival. Karong Woja Wole is a traditional harvest ceremony, marked by delivering newly reaped rice from the lodok puran kae (crop field) on Ndolu Hill, to the gendang ndolu (traditional house) in Waekekik hamlet.
caption: Caci whip fighting is one of the traditional fighting arts of the Manggarai community on Flores Island, East Nusa Tenggara.
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