Yaaaa laaaa laaaaa yaaaa laaaaaaa laaaaa...
The lantang sounds from the mouth of the dancers when welcomes the arrival of a number of guests. Women's dance wears a colorful dressed orange and yellow while her man is tied to the head with the inhabited parang.
The day the village community Wainyapu, Sumba Barat Daya, established seven indigenous houses, an exceptional event because hundreds of people, both families and communities of various villages are present to gotong royong.
The tower-shaped custom house with horn ornaments and pig skulls charged on the ceremony. Wainyapu’s society is obliged to the rules of customs, they are “Merapu”, a belief in the ancestors.
A number of men emphasize parangs, stopping feet, women continue to shout the spirit when a number of citizens began to raise the bamboo pole on the construction of the home roof tower.
Building a custom house should pass a series of complex ceremonies, even building materials should not be in bed. The 20 meters high tower house is generally made of round bamboo with four main buffer poles and the roof should be made of alang-alang. Overall house building without using nails but wearing ropes from trees.
That’s, the house’s roofing tower has been established to continue to be glorious as a disclosure of happiness and the development procession is stopped temporarily, four pigs are recycled to be shared to workers. Because according to the custom istiadat every stage of the procession requires a quarrel animal, no wonder the cost needed for a custom house can reach hundreds of million rupiahs. It is not cheap, but the house will become the pride of the people with the values of the ancestors.
Yaaaa laaaa laaaaa yaaaa laaaa laaaaa............. .
The sound is still sounding like their ancestors first, the spirit of gotong royong has not been the dizziness of the watch. Until when the value is the root of the Indonesian nation’s cultural root lasts, when we all care about local wisdom that should be kept.
Text & photo : Saptono