Pesantren have endured as an age-old educational institution that continuously evolves through the gears of time. Their lengthy journey has seen them coexist with every conceivable human problem across eras. This difficult adaptation process has led some pesantren to fall, while many others have persevered. Therefore, they offer a wealth of knowledge for us to explore and study, whether old or new, providing ample information to develop into formal knowledge.
As a subculture, pesantren carry cultural values that intermingle with cultures outside the schools. The thin boundary between them enables pesantren’s cultural values to thrive within the broader society. Similarly, pesantren absorb many societal aspects as benchmarks for grounding Islamic values, ensuring they are embraced and accepted by the community.
The reciprocal relationship between the two, tightly intertwined, gives rise to unique cultural characteristics compared to others. Take, for example, the oral traditions of pesantren. Although there’s no clear definition of these traditions, let’s start discussing the potential phenomena that could arise from them.
Oral tradition is a discipline emphasizing spoken aspects in encapsulating culture and human life. Long before the advent of printed media, and even longer before the emergence of writing, humans communicated orally. They lived amidst the beauty of poetry and narratives sung exquisitely. Through these oral traditions, they formed societal norms.
The emergence of chants, traditional games, traditional performances, and the ways of honoring life cycles through rituals have all become meaningful and handed down orally from generation to generation. Even today, anything closely associated with orality loses some of its significance if passed down in writing. Just like a chant losing its magic, that’s what it feels like when the sanctity of a tradition is confined to writing and reproduced through printing technology.