Satirical Allusion and Tug-of-Rattan on Seram: Poetic Form and Informal Social Control in Nuaulu Performance of Sung Verse

Nuaulu tug-of-rattan performances on Seram (eastern Indonesia) are accompanied by collective sung verse. These secular events are infrequent, but the sung verse, which has a quatrain pantun structure, is widely composed and performed outside the tug-of-rattan setting by individuals in private and semi-public situations. The composed stanzas may relate to, or mark, personal life-history events. They are sometimes historical but often contemporary, allusive, and satirical. It is argued that the genre more generally, and the performance of tug-of-rattan more specifically, provides, therefore, not only entertainment but a kind of public commentary, which both sanctions individual behaviour deemed by some as unacceptable as well as marking events that are commendable. Thus, it serves as part of a wider system of informal social control. The article also reflects on methodological and ethical issues relating to sound-recording in the field.