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Sasando Music Festival Revival Gets Flat Reception

Organizers of the Sasando Music Festival were looking to introduce the traditional art form to a younger generation of audience over the weekend. The message and the music, however, appear to have fallen on deaf ears.

The government expressed disappointment over the crowd that turned out at an event it set up in the provincial capital of Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara, promoting sasando, a native violin made up of three strings and dried palm leaves.

Tjetjep Suparman, director general of cultural values, art and film at the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, said the festival, which drew nearly 300 participants across the country, clearly didn’t appeal to the youth market. “The audience was not that big, unlike when there’s a concert by bands from major cities,” Suparman said.

Numbers on the crowd at the festival held on Friday and Saturday, as well as the number organizers were expecting to attend, were not available.

Ansgerius Takalapeta, head of the East Nusa Tenggara tourism, arts and culture agency, said the festival drew nearly 300 participants nationwide, most of who came from Rote Island, where sasando originated.

He said globalization was a factor in the waning appreciation for traditional culture.

“We thought the festival was a very positive event, because it defended our culture, Indonesia’s identity, which has been losing the battle against the excesses of globalization,” Ansgerius said.

Yusak Meok, a young resident of Rote, said the conservative tendencies of the island’s inhabitants contributed to the slide in popularity of the sasando.

“Rote people are not used to passing on their sasando skills to other than their own siblings,” Yusak said during a seminar on sasando preservation. “Worse, not a lot of people in Rote have a really comprehensive program to preserve the sasando.”

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