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.
But it’s important to remember that orality doesn’t possess the same permanence as writing. Human memory is fallible, and the interests behind individuals or groups often result in many shifts in the values and forms of oral traditions. Therefore, it’s crucial to have a specific discipline to safeguard the integrity of these values and forms, uncovering them academically to be substantiated with empirical data.
Bringing to light the Oral Traditions of Pesantren is an attempt to narrow the gap within academia and deepen and broaden the search for related data. Within the pesantren’s oral traditions, we will inevitably observe the intricacies of traditions and rituals that live and grow in the pesantren. Moreover, we can even revive what has perished in the past rituals through the memories still attached to involved individuals or groups, directly or indirectly.
Some examples of pesantren’s oral traditions include Burdah Keliling, Rebo Wekasan, Mandi Safar, and other rituals aiming to ward off plagues. These rituals are deeply connected with Islamic history, including the stories of how the traditions originated and spread throughout the Nusantara.
There are many more pesantren’s oral traditions to delve into. Each pesantren, with its variety of rituals and traditions, has its unique color. This is what makes studying the pesantren’s oral traditions increasingly appealing as a field of knowledge.
Simply put, the oral traditions of pesantren can be defined as the traditions and rituals that are maintained and preserved within the pesantren. The rich diversity of traditions and rituals in each pesantren represents the full manifestation of the heterogeneous cultural dynamics of the Nusantara. Therefore, it is crucial to devote serious effort and time to study the development of pesantren’s oral traditions and start documenting them meaningfully.