Knowing Acehnese Singing Art without Music

-The way Acehnese sing and teach-

Singing is an art to express someone’s feeling, wish and hope, this kind of art is very familiar to every community of human being whenever they live. Including The Acehnese people, a community who stay in Malacca strait coast; the western most part of Indonesia. They have their own way to sing time by time. They sing as a part a dakwa activity (holy mission ) to spread Islam to entire South east Asia.

Here we will focus on Aceh Ethnic Singing with no music instrument involved.

1. Ikayat
   Ikayat is the art in narrating a story (story telling) by a narrator to the audience with tidy and structured narration, the audience will feel entertained while understanding story the singer tell in his song. One of famous ikayat in Aceh society is whose title Indra Budiman. In era of 1970, The Acehnese people was still familiar with ikayat, They used to narrate the ikayat at traditional school and market place. Nowadays we can still find any Ikayat narrator in any traditional market, they narrated the Ikayat while selling traditional herb of aceh.
2. Rukon (Religious Quizzing)
   Rukon (also known nalam, nazam agama) is an art in informing the Islamic law/worship to the audience. The rukon performance usually involved two or more group where each group has about five men or more. An group leaded by a lead vocal that called Syeh, another men sing and harmonize together with syeh at the same time. Syeh is to responsible to ask and answer the question to/from opponent group.
3. Dikee (Barzanji Reciting)
   Barzanji is book that consist of the last Prophet (Muhammad Peace be upon him)story from the birth time until he passed away. Barzanji usually recited and sang by one group in commemorated the birth of Muhammad. A group consist of two or more syeh (lead vocal), while onother sing and harmonize together with syeh. Ther is no questioning activity during the performance, because it’s a single group performance.The Acehnese people usually perform it in Traditional School, government school,Surau (small worship place) an so on.
4. Saman (saman dance)
   Saman dance is performing art which combine singing/narrating a story and improvising, a group of saman dance consist of a syeh (lead vocal) and several dancer. Syeh sing and narrate the story while the dancers improvise the story. We can say it is theatrical performance without musical instrument. A single performance usually involve two group of saman dancer (including syeh). Another version Saman dance is Central Aceh Saman Dance, while the above version is the one cultured outer Central Aceh.