Madihin: Banjar Oral Poetry With the Tarbang Drum
Madihin: Banjar Oral Poetry With the Tarbang Drum
Madihin is a sung oral poetry art of the Banjar people of South Kalimantan, performed in the Banjar language and accompanied by the tarbang, a frame drum. It is a form of verse that combines humour, social commentary and moral advice, and it has long been part of weddings, family celebrations and community gatherings in the region. Anyone who attends a performance will hear the lively exchange between the singer and the drum, and the audience’s laughter usually follows the wit of the verse.
A performance usually involves one to four performers, who chant the verses in turn while playing the tarbang. The verses are improvised or drawn from a stock of familiar lines, and skilled performers can respond quickly to the mood of the room, switching topic when the audience starts to tire of one.
The Tarbang and the Sound of the Performance
The tarbang is a type of hand drum in the same family as the rebana, but with a somewhat longer hollow body than an ordinary rebana. The drummer beats a steady rhythm to open the performance, keeps the beat through the verses, and uses the drum to mark pauses and change the mood. The drum is part of the art rather than a background, and its sound helps carry the words across a crowded room or a yard full of guests.
The verse itself has rhythm, rhyme and a clear sense of structure, but it does not follow a fixed rhyme scheme, a set number of stanzas or a dramatic plot. Instead, the performer moves from one topic to another, linking ideas by sound and sense. This looseness is what lets a skilled performer answer a joke from the crowd with another joke, and it is also what makes the form hard to learn well.
Where Madihin Sits Among Malay Verse Forms
Madihin shares features with the pantun and syair of the wider Malay world. Its four-line sampiran and isi structure, the play on sound at the ends of lines and the habit of teaching through verse are all familiar to anyone who knows Malay poetry. The difference is that madihin does not stop at one fixed pattern. It takes what it needs from pantun and syair and then bends the form toward the needs of a live audience.
The Stages of a Madihin Performance
A madihin performance moves through four parts. It opens with a short introduction, followed by a section called memasang tabi, which can be translated as setting out the greeting. The main content comes next, where the performer presents the verses that carry the joke, the advice or the commentary, and the performance closes with a final section that wraps up the exchange. These sections are a common pattern rather than a rigid template.
Solo performances tend to follow the standard sequence closely. Duet performances, where two performers trade verses back and forth, follow a text structure that differs more from the general pattern. The two performers answer each other’s lines, and the balance between them can change from one part of the performance to the next. A visitor who watches both kinds of performance will notice how the opening and the closing stay recognisable while the middle moves freely.
Choosing the Language
Performers adapt their language to the audience. When most listeners are Banjar, the verses are sung in Banjar. When the room is mixed, with guests from several ethnic groups across Indonesia, the performer moves into Indonesian so that the jokes and the advice reach everyone. The shift is a skill in itself, and a good performer can make the switch without losing the rhythm of the verse.
Humour, Advice and Social Comment
Humour is central to madihin. Performers use wordplay, teasing and exaggeration to make their audiences laugh, and they often turn these devices toward local life, social manners and the behaviour of people in the community. The jokes can be gentle or sharp, and a skilled performer knows which kind of joke the room will take.
The verses also carry advice. Listeners are reminded of good conduct, of the value of hard work and of common sense, and the same verse can praise a host, thank a family, criticise a habit or complain about a problem in a way that everyone in the room understands. This range of functions is visible in practice, and a single performance often moves between them within a few minutes. The humour is what makes the advice acceptable, because listeners who laugh are more ready to take the lesson.
Where the Art Comes From
One derivation links the name to madah, an old word for praise or verse, and another ties it to the general word for words. Its roots lie in the Malay poetic traditions that spread through the archipelago with trade and contact, and the form took shape in the Banjar court, where its earliest audiences were the nobility and the palace circles.
Over time madihin moved out of the court and became a folk art enjoyed in villages and towns. Its audience widened, and performers began to adapt the form to new listeners and new occasions. The art now belongs to the wider community rather than to one class, which is one reason it has survived through so many changes in the region.
Occasions Where Madihin Is Performed
Madihin has been staged at many kinds of event. It is often performed on the night before a wedding, at family celebrations such as circumcision feasts, and at the harvest entertainments and communal meals that bring a village together. It is also staged at cultural festivals and on national holidays, where the performance can be shorter and more directed at a general audience.
At a wedding the verses usually mix advice to the couple with teasing of the guests, and the crowd often joins in the laughter. A visitor who attends such an event should expect a long evening, with food and conversation running alongside the performance. The verses are at their most lively when the audience knows the performers, so the atmosphere depends on the community as much as on the singer.
Change and Adaptation Today
Madihin has changed over the decades. Some performers now mix the traditional form with popular music, and groups have created versions that draw on hip-hop and dangdut rhythms. Others have used the art to promote education, tourism or local announcements, and some verses address civic topics that the older form would have left alone.
These changes have kept the art in front of new audiences, but they have also raised questions about how far the form can change before it loses its character. Older performers often value the traditional style and worry about its future, while younger performers see new possibilities in combining it with modern sounds. The debate is part of the living tradition, not a sign that it is finished.
Efforts to Keep the Art Going
A community of young performers in South Kalimantan works to preserve and develop madihin, and it has run training sessions to build the skills of the performers, the pamadihinan. Teachers have also used madihin-based poetry in school lessons, which has helped students learn the verse and the values it carries. These efforts reflect a shared concern that the performers who learned from older masters are now getting older, and that the next generation needs a clear way in.
Madihin Beyond South Kalimantan
Banjar communities who moved to other provinces have carried madihin with them. In Tembilahan, in Indragiri Hilir regency of Riau, the art became part of the tradition of people of Banjar descent, and it is still performed at weddings and other family ceremonies. The art has begun to fade in the regency, which mirrors the concern in the home province about young audiences and fewer active performers.
Seeing a Performance
The best way to experience madihin is to attend a live performance, which is most often held at weddings, community events and cultural festivals. Events are usually arranged through families and community groups, so ask a local person or a family host about upcoming events. Visitors should arrive early, sit where they can see the performers and listen to the verses, because the detail of the performance is in the drum and the voice together.
Ask a local person to explain the verses if the language is unfamiliar. Many performers are happy to talk about their art, and their explanations can make a performance more rewarding. Laugh when the room laughs, and avoid interrupting the performers while they are chanting, because the verse depends on its rhythm and a break can throw off the sequence.
Madihin and the Banjar Community Today
Madihin is one of the clearest everyday expressions of Banjar identity. The verses use the Banjar language, draw on local humour and carry local values, so a performance is also a lesson in how the community talks to itself. For a visitor, this makes madihin a useful window into the wider culture of the province, which also includes the river trade, the older royal history and the crafts of the towns.
The art also shows how Banjar culture moves. A performance in Banjarmasin and a performance in an Indragiri town may look different on the surface, with different jokes and different languages, but they share the same drum, the same pattern of opening and closing and the same habit of turning a joke into a lesson.
Around South Kalimantan
The South Kalimantan province brings together its towns, rivers and cultural life. The Banjarmasin city is where many performances are staged, and the Banjar Sultanate court is where the form first found its audience. Madihin is one of the performing arts of the wider country in Indonesian culture, and the Banjar communities who keep it alive are among the peoples of Indonesia.
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