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The Babukung Festival Preserves Lamandau's Traditions
WINDONESIA August 14, 2024
A babukung performance at the 2024 Babukung Festival in Lamandau Regency, Central Kalimantan. (Kalteng Pos)
The Lamandau Regency Government has held Babukung Festival 2024. This event took place Aug. 8-10, 2024 in Nanga Bulik Subdistrict, Lamandau Regency, Central Kalimantan Province. The 2024 Babukung Festival was implemented in a hybrid manner that combines offline and virtual events.
The Babukung Festival originates from a traditional ritual that is usually performed to comfor those who are grieving. This ritual involves dancing using wooden masks called sababuka or luha. The dancers who wear the masks are called bukung, so the ritual came to be known as babukung.
This year's Babukung Festival has "Preserving Tradition, Caring for the Earth, Navigating the Digitalization Era" as its theme. Various arts and cultural activities are presented at the festival, such as the luha carnival featuring the aforementioned mask, babukung creative dance performances, ethnic music performances, photography exhibitions, workshops, photo competitions, and coloring competitions.
At the opening ceremony, Lamandau Acting Regent Lilis Suryani informed that Babukung Festival 2024 was attended by eight districts and several villages in Lamandau Regency, with more than 1,669 participants from various backgrounds. This year's Babukung Festival also involved other ethnic communities living in Lamandau Regency as a symbol of the region's diversity.
Furthermore, the Babukung Festival has been routinely held as an effort to preserve the positive ancestral, cultural values that so that they do not fade and cause a loss of identity.
"This activity is also [an expression of] our stance and responsibility as receives a [cultural] mandate from the previous generation to be passed on to the present and future generations," Lilis said on Aug. 8, 2024.
On top of being aimed to foster local traditions, the festival that is part of the Lamandau Regency Government's annual agenda also seeks to attract more tourists and support the region's micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs).
The 2024 Babukung Festival was selected as one of the 110 cultural festivals listed in the Karisma Event Nusantara (KEN), a strategic program of the Tourism and Creative Economy Ministry/Agency (Baparekraf) created to promote tourism destinations through events.
Something that also makes the Lamandau community proud, The Babukung Festival have also received an award from the Indonesian World Records Museum (MURI) for the record of most tatakup, bamboo musical instruments, use dancers in a babukung performance.
Source: kaltengpos.jawapos.com
