GAMELAN - THE MUSIC of JAVA

The Music of Java embraces a wide variety of styles, both traditional and contemporary, reflecting the diversity of the island and its lengthy history. Apart from "traditional" forms which maintain connections to musical styles many centuries old, there are also many unique styles and conventions which combine elements from many other regional influences, including those of neighbouring Asian cultures and European colonial forms.

Gamelan

The gamelan orchestra, based on metallic percussion with winds and drums, is perhaps the form which is most readily identified as being distinctly "Javanese" by outsiders. In various forms, it is ubiquitous to Southeast Asia. In Java, the full gamelan also adds a bowed string instrument (the rebab, a name illustrative of Islamic influence) and voices. The rebab is one of the main melodic instruments of the ensemble (together with the xylophone "gendér") and is often played by the senior musician. Voices consist of male and female choruses, together with soloists; however, the voices are not usually featured in court gamelan (as opposed to wayang kulit, shadow puppet theatre) and are supposed to be heard discreetly in the middle of the orchestral sound. In these abstract pieces, the words are largely secondary to the music itself.

There are two scales in Javanese gamelan music, "slendro" (pentatonic) and "pelog" (heptatonic in full, but focussing on a pentatonic group). Tuning is not standard, rather each gamelan set will have a distinctive tuning. A complete gamelan consists of a pair of sets, one tuned in each of the scales and intended to be played together in many instances. Different gamelan sets have different sonorities, and are used for different pieces of music; many are very old, and used for only one specific piece. Musical forms are defined by the rhythmic cycles. These consist of major cycles subdivided by smaller cycles, each marked by the striking of successively smaller gongs. The melodic interplay takes place within this framework (technically called "colotomic structure"). There are also distinct melodic modes ("patet") within the division of scale.

'Jaipong' dance becomes latest victim of pornography law

The controversial pornography law has been blasted for targeting cultural heritage, after West Java Governor Ahmad Heryawan used it as a legal basis to forbid Jaipong dancers from wearing "sexy" costumes and executing "provocative" dance moves.

The West Java administration's ban has prompted severe criticism from artists and legislators who blast it as a move to curb the traditional arts and culture of local people.

Erotic no more: A dancer performs Jaipong, a Sundanese folk dance, during a traditional festival in Gunung Halimun, West Java, in this 2008.

Bandung-born singer and dancer Dewi Gita said she did not see the need for the administration to delve into the matter when there were so many other problems affecting the province, including floods, poverty and expensive education.

“You see, Jaipong has nearly vanished. It is our unique heritage and we should do our best to keep it alive. But instead of supporting the internationally recognized dance, the authorities encourage its extinction,” she said.

Dewi, who traveled the world performing Jaipong in the 1990s, said that in the pre-reform era, she could travel abroad five times a year to perform, and always won huge praise from overseas audiences. But now, she said, a once-a-year international performance was considered lucky.

“Jaipong has nothing to do with pornography, it's merely a cultural expression. The dance is actually derived from the traditional ketuk tilu dance, which is a way that girls attract boys in Sundanese traditional customs. No wonder, the girl must be provocative and sexy,” she said.

Noted Sundanese artist Gugum Gumbira created Jaipong to help indigenous dance and music compete with Western popular shows, after then president Sukarno in 1961 banned rock and roll and other Western music.

Although an urban dance, Jaipong is based primarily on village forms of ketuk tilu and on pencak silat, the Indonesian martial arts.

Legislator and Padjadjaran University professor Chandra Wila said that besides suppressing cultural expression, the ban violated the porn law. “Jaipong is a form of cultural expression, and the law should protect it. Why they do they want to ban it?

TARI KECAK





Kecak (pronounced: /'ke.tʃak/, roughly "KEH-chahk", alternate spellings: Ketjak and Ketjack), a form of Balinese music drama, originated in the 1930s and is performed primarily by men. Also known as the Ramayana Monkey Chant, the piece, performed by a circle of 100 or more performers wearing checked cloth around their waists, percussively chanting "cak" and throwing up their arms, depicts a battle from the Ramayana where the monkey-like Vanara helped Prince Rama fight the evil King Ravana. However, Kecak has roots in sanghyang, a trance-inducing exorcism dance.

Kecak was originally a trance ritual accompanied by male chorus. German painter and musician Walter Spies became deeply interested in the ritual while living in Bali in the 1930s and worked to recreate it into a drama, based on the Hindu Ramayana and including dance, intended to be presented to Western tourist audiences. This transformation is an example of what James Clifford describes as part of the "modern art-culture system"in which, "the West or the central power adopts, transforms, and consumes non-Western or peripheral cultural elements, while making 'art' which was once embedded in the culture as a while, into a separate entity."Spies worked with Wayan Limbak and Limbak popularized the dance by traveling throughout the world with Balinese performance groups. These travels have helped to make the Kecak famous throughout the world.

JAVANESSE

Jawa; Reception hall "pendopo"

Jawa: "kobongan" or "sentong tengah". "pendopo" and "kobongan" form the two symbolical foci of the Javanese house design

Javanese 'pendopo' well displays the status of the family. Its typical roof shape 'joglo' used to be related to the nobility of the aristocrats and specially reserved for them. Four main central posts 'soko guru', which support the pyramidal upper roof construction, is decorated with symbolical patterns so as to protect the owner of the house against evil spirits. The whole structure suggests that the 'pendopo' is the architectural cognate to the granary but has no grain storage and no elevated platform. Instead of supporting the grain storage, the function of which is moved to the 'kobongan', four posts of the 'pendopo' bear the elaborately constructed ceiling composed of the gradually overhanging layers of beams, which appreciate the solemnity of the domain associated with the male ancestors. Judging from the architectural representation depicted on the reliefs of the Candi, the 'joglo' roof is supposed to be developed and popularized in Java during the spread of Islam. But the similar roof shape is also familiar to the Sumbanese as a sign of the prestigious house style. Furthermore, in Sumba, the elevated platform, as we can find on the reliefs of the east Javanese Candi, is still utilized for the main residential area under its roof construction. The center part of the pyramidal roof is sometimes lifted exaggeratedly. This part is also supported by four sacred main posts, to which many rites are performed, and large wooden disks are equipped at the top of these posts in western part of Sumba though actually no grain is stored above them

SA'DAN TORAJA, SAVU, ROTI

Roti: the corpse is laid within the coffin which represents a boat sailing to the land of the dead and used to be buried beneath the floor of the house

SAVU

sa'dan toraja

Similarly among a number of ethnic groups of the Archipelago the space beneath the pile-dwelling is identified with the underworld, therefore the place for the burial. In this context the significance of the pile-dwelling is closely related to the granary.

The 'lowau' (sea, downstream) side of the Ceram house is symbolically connected with the male and the death, while the 'lodaya' (land, upstream) side with the female and the life. After the burial, people who carried the corpse sit down on the house of the dead and chew sirih-pinang. Each pinang is divided into halves. The one halves placed on the 'lowau' side is reserved for the dead and the remains after chewing are thrown beneath the floor because the domain under the floor, together with the 'lowau' side, is identified with the world of the dead.

More practical example is observed in the regions such as central Toraja, Savu, Roti, where the dead was actually buried under the house before the practice was forbidden by Dutch. The corpse is laid within the coffin which represents a boat sailing to the land of the dead located in the west, and used to be buried beneath the floor of the house in Roti. Babies under three months are buried under the house stairs and make auspicious offerings so that they may not be harmful to their mothers and brothers born after them but may become a source of good fortune. Thus the individual ghost is incorporated within the house as a guardians of the house and represented by three pronged lontar-leaf shapes called 'maik' hung under the rafters of the roof.

This is the reason why both the living and the dead reside together within one house because 'the ancestors had the power to ensure the continued fertility of the land and of human beings'

NIAS HOUSE

As the houses of Indonesia are mostly pile-dwellings, it seems easy to analise that three levels of the space division of the house construction such as substructure / mainstructure / superstructure might be correspond to the symbolic tripartition of the cosmos, namely underworld / humanworld / upperworld. Similarly this symbolic tripartition is sometimes interpreted as double dichotomy; cosmos divided into two parts of divine- and humanworld and divineworld again divided into upper- and underworld as pointed on the Nias house.

In relation to this upperworld / underworld dualism the sacred loft, where sacred objects, heirlooms, money and other important properties are stored, is also widely observed throughout this archipelago. The loft is usualy identified with the domain of gods and it is a taboo to approach there without following fixed order. Generally both who and when can enter there is strictly restricted in accordance with each culture. A special person, i.e. clun's chief, old man, household head, housewife, maiden, etc., can climb up to the place on the special occasion, i.e. harvest fest, funeral etc. after sacrificing a proper animal because the domain might be too sacred and dangerous for the ordinary people. In case there is no loft, the significance of the second floor is almost the same.

Thus wherever we might go in the archipelago, we are sure to find the inhabitants dwell supplementary in the residential area of the house, above which the most profane and untouchable space is occupied by supernatural existence. To compare with the case in Japan, where the space within the roof has symbolically no significance however massively the roof is constructed, the symbolism is focused on the uppermost part of the house in the archipelago. With all the external varieties of the house styles, where is this symbolical homogeneity derived from ?

Ngaju dayak

NGAJU DAYAK


Ngaju Dayak: House as Tree of Life and Primeval Mountains

The symbolical image of the sacred house among Ngaju Dayak is expressed as the pile-dwelling, the foundation of which is supported by the watersnake 'Naga', and the roof of which birds, usually the hornbill, rest on. On their cultural context the watersnake is identified with a female symbol 'Jata', or the underworld deity, while the hornbill with a male symbol 'Mahatala', or the upperworld deity. The same cosmological interpretation of the house is quite popular for the symbolical approach of the study of Indonesian houses. In Nias many animal figures depicted on the house members are also explained as 'a reflection of the cosmos, of upper- and underworld, bird - serpent, ATUMBUCHA ("right") - AECHULA ("left"), etc.'Actually four human heads are burried underneath the four corner posts in the substructure of one of the chief's house in South Nias. They are thought to be offerings to 'Lature Dano', the God of the underworld. On the other hand an unspecified number of heads hung near the ridgepole serve as offerings to 'Lowalani', the God of the upperworld.