This dissertation is a multifaceted investigation of the ways in which Protestant Toba Batak mourn their dead through song during the pre-funeral wake period preceding the burial of older Toba Batak. It investigates the way in which a musical practice contains and conveys meaning, cultural value and identity to members of that community in the present day.

Toba Batak mourning rituals today are marked by an internal and emblematic opposition between the need to fulfill long-standing practices of ancestor spirit veneration in association with Toba Batak adat law and the obligations which the primarily Protestant Christian Toba Batak feel to live in accordance with the doctrinal teachings and practices of the Batak Protestant Christian Church (Huria Kristen Batak Protestan—HKBP). The tradition of lamenting in funerary contexts is challenged by church leadership which views the veneration of ancestor spirits through laments as inconsistent with the doctrinal teachings of the Batak Protestant Church.

In contemporary practice, many of the formal and stylistic characteristics of traditional Toba Batak funerary lamenting are being replaced with the singing of Protestant Christian hymns drawn from the corpus of hymns in use by the Batak Protestant Church—a phenomenon captured in the oft heard expression ganti andung, gabe ende, translated as “replacing laments, becoming hymns.” This dissertation is an examination of the processes (cultural, religious, historic, etc.,) surrounding the replacement of laments for the dead with the singing of hymns in the context of Protestant Toba Batak funerary ritual. These processes not only represent changes in the way a community voices its grief, but also reflect dynamic and ongoing processes of cultural and religious identity negotiation for Toba Batak Protestants in the present day. My thesis is that the dialectic nature of present day mourning rituals (particularly the pre-funeral wake period) for Protestant Toba Batak, as evidenced through formalized expressions of grief (i.e., laments for the dead and Protestant funerary hymns) reflects the larger and ongoing processes of both socio-cultural and religious identity formation, negotiation, and expression for Protestant Toba Batak.