First steps in Batak

Marsada band - Sihutur Sangul

In many ways, Batak music seems to be a very generic keyword recovering various sides of music from North Sumatra: some of them being very traditionnal, others having more to do with popular songs full of midi orchestrations.
Even on the traditionnal side, you'll find many variations in styles and band composition, as a reflect of the huge diversity among Batak people: linguistic differences, as much as specific music styles, will then allow you to locate wether they come from the North, the East ... All of them having in common the celebration of adat.

Marsada band is a Toba-Batak indigenous group of musicians blending both traditionnal elements with slightly more modern arrangements (incorporation of western acoustic guitar): it's dance music, pleasing our appetite for metronomic percussions and slightly detuned flavors of wooden instruments.
An album, Pulo Samosir, was released and still avalaible here. In many ways, it is odd how much those productions can be related to the peruvian ones, as if they developped symetrically at differents points of the globe (check theTecno San Juanitos post as an example). Besides, many other bands are worth having a look at and starting a transe: