Indonesian music,dance and religion

Costs are rising and times are tough.
Please consider a donation to keep this
place going.

Welcome to one of the most active flamenco sites on the Internet. Guests can read most posts but if you want to participate click here to register.

This site is dedicated to the memory of Paco de Lucía, Ron Mitchell, Guy Williams, Linda Elvira, Philip John Lee, Craig Eros, Ben Woods, David Serva and Tom Blackshear who went ahead of us.

We receive 12,200 visitors a month from 200 countries and 1.7 million page impressions a year. To advertise on this site please contact us.

You are logged in as Guest

Users viewing this topic: none

Printable Version

All Forums >>Discussions >>Off Topic >>

Page: [1]

Message

<< Newer Topic Older Topic >>

Richard Jernigan

Posts: 3433
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA

Indonesian music,dance and religion

Bill, your post in the folk music thread evokes memories.

One of my more interesting musical experiences was at Parang Tritis on the shore of the Indian Ocean just south of Yogyakarta. A significant part of the Sultan's magical powers result from his periodic sexual liasons with the Goddess of the Sea which occur here.

A posh hotel sits on a high cliff above the beach. Looking south over the sea there's no land between here and Antarctica. The surf crashes loudly. At night the beach is fitfully lit by occasional torches.

After dinner in the large outdoor pavilion, there was a dance performance. Beautiful young women performed gracfully on a marble floor strewn deeply in rose petals.

The musical accompaniment was by about twnty people playing western stringed instruments, violins, violas, cellos and basses, but all plucked pizzicato all the time. Bows were never used. The scales and harmony were largely European, with occasional excursions into Javanese. Though the music was clearly European at some time in the past, none of the melodies were familiar to me.

After this performance was done, more traditional Javanese instruments were brought out. All artificial light was extinguished, leaving us in flickering torchlight.. An unusual feature were some large, deep voiced log drums. The players wore masks, as did the dancers. A chant began in Kawi, the archaic dialect of Javanese that narrates the Sanskrit dance dramas.

Fairly soon it became clear that this dance performance depicted some of the occult features of the Sultan's connection with the sea goddess. Much of the performance had for me an aspect of mystery and even menace. My Javanese companion said that when she heard the Kawi chant begin, chills ran down her spine.

After the performance I asked my guide and translator friend to find someone who could tell us more about the performance. One of the musicians seemed glad to oblige. He told us that the sea goddess drama was performed only at Parang Tritis.

But what I found fascinating was his account of the string orchestra, utterly unique in my experience. It was descended from a Dutch trained string orchestra, who played dance music for the colonists of the Dutch East Indies. At some point after the Dutch departed the orchestra abandoned the bow. As older players dropped out and new ones came in, they evolved their own music. He said there was no other band like it that he knew of.

As to religion, when touring the Sultan's palace in Yogyakarta, the Sultan's splendidly uniformed servant pointed to the ceiling of the pendopo where the coronation of the Sultan took place. It was yellow at the center, green on the periphery. "Like us," the official said,"Hindu on the inside, Muslim on the outside."

But on the two occasions I traveled by auto from Bali to Central Java, I was warned by my Javanese friend, guide and translator, that in East Java I was likely to encounter a more "fanatik" form of Islam. All went well, but I was the recipient of some harsh stares and groups of people falling silent as I entered shops and restaurants in smaller and medium size towns.

In response to a glance from my friend and guide, I suggested, "I suppose they're not used to seeing foreigners."

My friend, fluent in five Indonesian languages, Spanish and Russian, an honors graduate in English from the University of Malang, a native of the cosmopolitan port city of Surabaya, responded, "They have seen plenty of foreigners. They may not especially look forward to the experience."

All went according to the law of hospitality and I enjoyed the trips, but I didn't feel the warmth and friendliness of Bali or Central Java in personal interactions.

Checking out of a five star hotel in Nusa Dua in Bali, I was presented with an outrageously inflated bill. I complained to the desk clerk. He said the charge was for an extra guest. I showed him the written confirmation for Mr Jernigan and Miss Lia (my Javanese friend).

He responded, "You can't expect to just bring anyone in off the street."

At least twenty years before I had learned never to show even impatience, much less anger in southeast Asia. I replied calmly, but without a smile, "I have known this woman for seven years. She is the book keeper for the most famous restaurant in Nusa Dua. I am paying for her younger brother's university education."

I even went so far as to stand up straight and look down my nose for about a second, but adopted a more accommodating posture before it became an insult that could not be ignored. This brief assertion of status failed to produce the intended result.

"I am not interested in your personal finances. Do you have marriage documents?"

"No, because we are not married."

"Then you must pay the fee."

I had plenty of time and decided to waste the afternoon of the hotel staff. Maintaining southeast Asian equanimity and good manners, I spent 2 1/2 hours working my way through four levels of staff. At last, a polite, but distant man in a nice suit and tie invited me into his well furnished office.

Closing the door, he said, "This hotel was recently bought by a fanatik Muslim, a good friend of Suharto's family. If I do not charge you the fee, i will lose my job. I ask you as a favor, please sign the bill, but complain to your travel agent in Honolulu. I believe he may be able to get you a refund."

That was how it turned out. I had used the Honolulu travel agent, a gay man who owned the business, for years. He was scandalized by my story, got my refund, and said he had broken off dealings with that hotel. He asked if I had been mistreated elsewhere. I said that everywhere else in Bali and in Central Java we were treated with friendliness and even affection.

I never learned whether it was the man in the nice suit and tie who authorized the refund in the privacy of his well furnished office.

One learns not to rely upon assumptions and to adapt to local attitudes.

RNJ

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Sep. 29 2012 6:59:21

BarkellWH

Posts: 3460
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC

RE: Indonesian music,dance and religion (in reply to Richard Jernigan)

quote:

Fairly soon it became clear that this dance performance depicted some of the occult features of the Sultan's connection with the sea goddess. Much of the performance had for me an aspect of mystery and even menace. My Javanese companion said that when she heard the Kawi chant begin, chills ran down her spine.

I have visited Parang Tritis, and I thought the entire landscape and seascape had a strange and vaguely menacing character. The water always seems to have a pewter hue, and the shore consists of sand that is slate grey to almost black in some places. "Raden Loro Kidul" is the name of what in Javanese is known as the "Queen of the Southern Ocean" (sea goddess), and she has a malevolent reputation. Legend has it that she takes young men who enter the ocean wearing green, as green is her color (It has nothing to do with Islam, in this instance.) No one will enter the sea in that area wearing green. In fact, there are treacherous flows and rip currents in the waters off the coast of southern Java, so there no doubt have been enough drownings to lend credence to the legend.

I am sure you must have visited the two great centers of Central Javanese Hindu-Buddhist culture: Borobodur (Buddhist) and Prambanan (Hindu). Both were established in the ninth century. Borobodur was built by the Sailendra dynasty and, in my opinion, is one of the three greatest archeological sites of Southeast Asia (the other two being Angkor Wat in Cambodia and Pagan, located on the Irrawaddy plain in Central Burma). The Hindu-Buddhist legacy is deeply embedded in Central Javanese culture, and as a result, Islam is more or less a veneer, deceptively covering a much deeper, syncretic form of religion. Those "syncretic" Javanese Muslims are known as "Abangan."

My Foreign Service assignments to Jakarta, indonesia and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia were the only two which I extended from three years to four years each, for a total of eight years in the area. I love the history and culture of Maritime Southeast Asia, as it is now called; although I prefer the old handles by which it was known: the Malay World, or the Malay Archipelago. No doubt this is a reflection of my antedeluvian and archaic worldview, represented as well by my attitude toward, and taste in, flamenco (Old School for sure!). But then, I have always considered myself to be a nineteenth century man born a century too late. Or, as I would put it today, an analog man living in a digital age.

Cheers,

Bill

_____________________________

And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."

--Rudyard Kipling

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Sep. 29 2012 18:13:47