Let me start by saying that each culture has their own philosophical meaning. It can be social, mental, or other philosophy that add more worth to the culture it self. This will later affect the procession and the form of the traditional event that will happened.
In this post I'm not gonna talk about the ritual steps and how to do it. Instead, I'm gonna talk about what did i see and admire when i followed the ritual until the final day of 10th Muharam. If you look for the step of Tabuik's ritual there are plenty of other blog that talk about it, but not many blog try to expose the real deal of a culture.
First thing that i admire from this festival is the feel of "Gotong Royong", it's a very typical indonesian words which can be translated to mutual cooperation. This kind of relation can easily be found in most of the ritual, where every people helping each other either for building the tabuik statue, playing the music, or simply giving moral support to other.
Then the spirit for keeping the tradition goes was filling the air in each festival. You can see it in the face of people, smile and laugh in every moment, then get emotional when the situation get serious. But above all of that the young blood shows their attention and support in this event, helping with all the power they got, simply giving the water to the old, bringing the ritual equipment, or join the music play to make the fun and joy atmosphere thicker.
In the other side, this festival show the meaning of desire, first it comes from each tabuik group that try to make their statue beat the other in term of beautiness, structure, and power. Second it came from a belief. That if you manage to get one part of the statue, it will bring you fortune in life (and makes your life better they said). It is interesting how this belief pushed people to compete to get this part and take it home, they pushed and "fight for it".
Also, the things that makes me really admire this event is that it brings all people together with it's euphoria. Young, old, man, and woman take their part in this festive event, coming to each ritual to see how it's going and talk to others. It's just beautiful when our world is starting to get apart where people doesn't really care much about others. Beside of that, the Tabuik statue it self has it's own value of bringing people together, each part of it represent a part of the people. Starting from Bundo Kanduang (the elder woman in minangkabau), until the youngster get their own symbol in this statue which make it a great symbol of unity.
But in other hand this beautiful values are starting to disappear, it looks like turning this event as a tourism object make these value fade slowly. I'm just hoping that pariaman's government will do some changing to combine the tourism value (in term of business) and keeping the real value of this festival, which make it unique, and most important keeping the pariaman's real identity.
I think that's it, thank you for reading.
PS : I'm working on a photobook about this festival, it's still in process.
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