Randai of Minangkabau

Randai of Minangkabau
The randai is a traditional dance and theoretical form of the Minangkabau people. It incorporates dance movements, singing, instrumental music, story and acting.

Today randai is identified with Minangkabau communities throughout Indonesia and Malaysia.

This theatrical form developed through a number of successive influences and in several stages.

The world ‘randai’ implies a circle or circle like formation around a particular location.

It was derived from the action of a group of people surrounding a particular area as if searching grounds for something while moving in toward the center of the circle.

The randai dance is analogous to such movement and group formation. Other sources of the randai were oral storytelling and the silat.

Oral storytelling was the forerunner of randai. It was the most popular form of entertainment among the Minangkabaus, and through it Minangkabau folklore was handed down orally from one generation to the next.

Storytelling was and still is a professional art and only performed by professional called penglipur lara.

The young boys were familiar with the stories songs and the poetic art of the storyteller. Often these stories were used to boosts their morale for their future travelling mission.

In the meantime, they would be thought the art of self defense – silat by the older members who stayed at the family prayer house and by the returned travelers who were still bachelors.

As a means of encouraging and maintaining their interest in the pencak silat, tunes from the oral storytelling tradition were sung as an accompaniment for the the silat practices.

A variety of dances involving the martial arts gesture were also taught to the young men at the family prayer house, and specific songs from the oral storytelling tradition accompanied these dances.
Randai of Minangkabau