Author: Saiful Anwar Matondang*
Celebrating the local traditions either as rituals or aesthetic cultural performances in currently globalizing the world create a new cultural phenomenon in a great variety of forms. A number of religious processions, festivals, carnivals that often organized by local governments, universities, performers’ groups, business joint-venture groups and local communities shows the revival of cultural identity. To address this cultural phenomenon and propose theories of culture based on anthropological data, this research was conducted in a specific field in 2014 to explore the local traditions of urban communities of two polyethnic cities; Medan in North Sumatra and Georgetown in Malaysia. The aforementioned two polyethnic cities are rich in local traditions which were brought by their parents from the South East Asia, India, Middle East, and South China surrounds. The rituals and cultural performances of Chinese Straits Chinese (Lion and dragon dances) are reenacted in the Malaysian city of Georgetown while the Mak Yong and Mak Inang Malaysian performances are performed at the Maimoon Palace in Medan North Sumatra, Indonesia as key sites to identity construction, maintenance, contestation as well as a heritage for regional and global tourism.
Keywords: Celebrating local traditions, regional and global tourism, rituals and cultural performances.
*PhD. Social Drama, Anthropologist & Multilingual Education Specialist, Faculty of Education, Universitas Muslim Nusantara AW, Medan, Indonesia & University of Fribourg-Switzerland. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
