Gamelan Composers' Forum

Yesterday (14 April 2013) I a attended the Gamelan Composers' Forum at the spacious G2 lecture room of SOAS in London. The event was organised by Aris Daryono, a London-based musician and composer from Indonesia who plays with the Southbank Gamelan Players, with sponsorship from both SOAS and the Indonesian Embassy. The ambassador and his staff were present during the first half of the day and provided food for participants.

Five composers were represented in the event by five compositions, and after each piece. Composers introduced their works and after each piece was played there was ample time for moderated discussion.

The event opened with Robert Campion's Studies for Solo Gender Barung (2007), a very fine etude which explored the possibilities of the instrument. The composer explained that he wanted to write a piece that was comfortable for the hands, idiomatic for the instrument and developing techniques for both players and also composers wishing to write for the instrument. He has written half a dozen etudes for gender, which he says is the instrument in the gamelan most suited for solo playing. One is so hard that he has not mastered it himself and has never performed it in public.

Japanese composer Makoto Nomura from Japan was present via a Skype link and his piece No Notes VI, written on 14 March 2013 on board a train from Kyoto to Tokyo and dedicated to Aris, was played live by four gamelan players in London. (See picture above.) This piece for gamelan instruments and voice had only time signatures, no notes or words. The musicians talked about how it challenged them to think metrically while improvising.

Rasa 2 was a new composition by Aris Daryono which developed ideas that Aris had deployed in an earlier collaboration with Charles Matthews for live gamelan and computer. The peice was scored for flute, oboe, clarinet and cello and 2 gender players (who played in both slendro and pelog). The Western instrumentalists were asked to tune their instruments to the gamelan, so B flat was shaped to become a 6 on the gamelan scale (fairly close), while there was some distance between C and 1. The oboe and clarinet players played into kenong pots to create resonance and an off stage effect. (The clarinet ended up sounding something like an oboe on some notes.) The clarinetist reported that the piece changed his conception of being at home. Home was for him in this piece the moments when his notes accorded to gamelan pitches. The cellist added that it felt satisfying to come together after dissonance. She said furthermore that she didn't feel a clash between Western vs. non-Western instruments. Instead there was a feeling of commonality and shared interest in new music and composition.

After the lunch break, the event resumed with two further pieces.  Jonas Bisquert, a composer originally from Spain but now living in Holland, directed a performance of his piece Su Ilanto (His Weeping, in Spanish), which was inspired by the crying of his newborn baby and was originally written for a Spanish percussion ensemble. The piece used thimbles on fingers striking kenong to replace cymbals, included Spanish style clapping, pair of dueling bonang players who invade each others space substituted for the alternating cellos of Basque music, and had an evolving texture like Javanese gamelan and many theatrical gestures.

The event wound up with a performance of Philip Corner's Dua Uni (2=1) a conceptual piece in his gamelan series. Corner is an American retired professor, a co-founder of the New York ensemble Gamelan Son of Lion who has been living in Italy since 1992. The piece consisted of one high and very loud and sharply played note followed by a low and long and very soft note played ad infinitum. The piece could be played by any single instrument or arrangement of instruments, and was scored on this occasion by Corner in what he called a baroque arrangement for two ensembles of players - 4 gamelan musicians (each of whom played a gong/kempul and an instrument of the saron family) and cello, English horn, flute and clarinet. The gamelan player played first, then the Western instruments building into a tutti and then rejoined by the gamelan instruments. Though very simple in design, it was very effective and challenging in performance.

Corner reported that the piece was a distillation of an idea that had long fascinated him in gamelan - the colotomic structure where low instruments play slowly and high instruments play quick elaborating parts over this. He said that this is found in many music cultures in the world. He hadn't realised that his piece was gamelan inspired until after it had been performed. Only then did he include it in his gamelan series. (His more overt inspiration was the work of Olivier Messiaen and Messiaen's ideas about disjuncture.)

Nick Gray, a SOAS lecturer and composer who hosted the event, reported that there were plans for the event to be an annual gathering. All the gamelan pieces included in this year's event were Javanese, but Balinese Gamelan musicians and composers present said they hoped that the event would be opened up to Balinese, Sundanese etc gamelan composers as well.

Serat Damar Wulan

Serat Damar Wulan (MSS Jav 89) one of the most celebrated Javanese manuscripts, has now been fully digitised by the British Library, and is freely available for view at http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=MSS_Jav_89&index=0. It is one of a number of Southeast Asian manuscripts that have been digitised with funding from the Estate of Henry Ginsburg, former curator of Thai at the British Library. Others   are the Serat Selaras (MSS Jav 28), a few Burmese and Vietnamese mansuscripts, and a Malay Qur'an, probably from Kelantan or Patani.

The Damar Wulan manuscript is fully illustrated, with 153 colour illustrations, showing courtly life, pageantry, warfare and the everyday life of Javanese. Some of the images are en profile in the manner of wayang kulit, but there is also much realistic detail.

The manuscript was collected in Cirebon in 1815 by Lt.-Col. Raban, former Resident of Cirebon, but an English language inscription at the manuscript's end reports that it was already 200 years old when collected. This might be a bit exaggerated, but it is well-thumbed and shows many signs of repeated reading.


Serat Damar Wulan is well known to scholars already. Its illustrations were the subject of an article in BKI published in 1953 (available online at http://www.kitlv-journals.nl/index.php/btlv/article/view/2735/3496) and a number of its images, including the wonderful illustration of a topeng performance above, were published in 1991 in Annabel Teh Gallop and Bernard Arps, Golden Letters, and subsequently widely reproduced. (One of these images, showing a text being read, was included in Nancy Florida's monograph Writing the Past, Inscribing the Future).

The tale the manuscript tells, the story of Damar Wulan, has been described in the only English language edition of the story to date, a telling for children by Lim Yoe Djin, as 'the most popular legend of Indonesia'. It is a story that has been told and retold in many theatrical forms - wayang krucil, langendriya, kentrung etc. But so far very little work has been done on it by scholars. 

The scanning of the manuscript has been done at a very high level of resolution (90 MB per page!) which allows incredible capacity to zoom in. I am talking now with Annabel Teh Gallop about what to do with the manuscript now that it has been digitised? Should a scholarly edition be produced, with a transliteration of the Javanese original and possibly translation into English and/or Indonesia? Might something more innovative be produced out of it, in the style of a motion comic? 

It is tempting to build a big research project around this manuscript, one of the crown jewels of Javanese visual culture in my estimation. 

Jatiwangi Art Factory

Yesterday (2 January 2013) was my last day in Cirebon on this trip, and I used the opportunity to visit Jatiwangi Art Factory (JAF) and arts collective and centre located in the village of Jatisura, just north of the small town of Jatiwangi in Majalengka. I had heard much about the centre, both via the internet and an English friend, Teresa Birks, who presented a selection of video art originating in JAF at the first Indonesia Kontemporer festival at SOAS in 2011.Along with me for the trip was Purjadi, who was curious about the organisation and wanted to spend some time with me before I left.

Since its founding in 2005, JAF has developed an increasingly important international footprint and prides itself on its local engagement. It is located in the middle of a gerabah industrial area, where roof tiles, earthenware vessels and the like are manufactured, and many of its projects have a direct relation to this. In 2012, it hosted three festivals – a festival of musik gerabah, a village video art festival and an artist-in-residence festival. It also has its own radio station, which broadcasts from 7am to 12 midnight and can be heard as far away as Sumedang, Brebes and Indramayu, a playgroup for children ages 3 to 6 years, a gallery, a number of musical ensembles in residence, an instrument building experimental lab where a number of makers are experimenting with making instruments from gerabah and stones, and regularly hosts visiting artists and writers, who lodge in the houses of neighbours. It had its own  tv station until recently, which broadcast at the kecamatan level, but this is now closed due to equipment malfunction.

JAF’s village video art festival had ended only a few days before my arrival and I was able to see some of the videos that premiered there and also an installation exhibition that opened on 30 December, the last day of the festival. The festival was intended to bring locally prominent figures and actors into dialogue with artists. So a video made by the Pak Camat (District Head) showed various stamps being applied on paper. A video by a police officer showed a rather desultory attempt to put out a fire in a Jatiwangi shop house, followed by vox populi comments about what the police mean to you. There was also a video about the controversial new electronic ID card (KTP) system, which showed a variety of these cards, and then the office where they were being office with JAF’s director taking a snooze. The commentary for this video posted on the wall (which took the form of a pseudo official document) noted that the issuing of these ID cards was a chance for people to congregate which could fructify as relations. I asked what this meant to one of the JAF staff members who was taking us around and he said that young men and women met while registering and then started dating.

The exhibition/installation was on the theme of home – and involved the construction of a number of ‘rooms’ in the gallery. A kitchen, for example, was constructed by putting a video monitor on top of a refrigerator. A living room was signed at by a carpet, a couple of rattan chairs and a case with small containers.

Purjadi and I also had a chance to talk to one of the instrument makers, a middle aged man originally from Sumedang, who studied ethnomusicology in Medan and gamelan making in Solo for two years and also worked as an assistant for Philip Yampolsky in the Music of Indonesia Smithsonian project. He was busy working on a number of earthenware percussion instruments. Some of his instruments were currently on display in Jakarta, others had been purchased by museums. Purjadi had purchased his own gamelan in Solo and so they had much to talk about regarding gamelan making.  

We were generously treated to a light lunch, which we ate standing up during a brief tour of the facilities – peeking in at the radio station, an instrument making area, a music studio, the gallery, various domestic spaces etc. I spoke about the need to reach out to the community of traditional artists. Some mention was made of a little wayang kulit project that a Mexican artist in residence had done in years past, which apparently involved some research but no direct involvement of traditional puppet artists. Before parting I was encouraged to spend more time at JAF. I said I would think about this seriously.

Afterwards I spoke to Purjadi briefly about his impressions. He said that he was struck by a number of things. First, he recognised that JAF had a wide reaching web of international connections. (The next musik gerabah festival, for example, will be held in Brazil and co-sponsored by JAF.) He saw this as a way to promote locally-made products to international markets. Second, he was struck that many of their projects seemed to lack a clear direction or purpose. As a traditional artist, he has something clear to offer, a wayang performance which will last for a certain number of hours and contain elements which will be anticipated by sponsors. But what possible function might a newly designed instrument made of earthenware have? What is its use value? Such questions are hard to answer, indeed, and go to the heart of what splits modern and traditional arts.

New Year's Eve with Sutajaya in Pekandangan

Last night to celebrate the new year I gave my first all-night performance of wayang golek cepak, performing the lakon Sutajaya at the Bale Desa of Pekandangan, Indramayu accompanied by the full gamelan of my teacher Dalang Calim from Pegagan Kidul (Kec. Kepetakan, Kab. Cirebon). I had performed the first part of this same lakon in August 2012, which concerns Pekandangan's most famous hero, and it seems that there were folk in Pekandangan who were not satisfied and wished to see the lakon performed to its completion.

I think I gave a very strong performance all in all - Calim pulled me over after the show and said with a smile that it was ngetop (the top, the best) - but many things did not go to plan. The principal organisers of the show, as in August, were Ade, husband of the topeng dancer Aerly and co-director of Pekandangan's Sanggar Topeng Mimi Rasinah, and the village headman (kuwu), who remains as intent as he was last August of making Pekandangan into a desa parawisata.  Ade, who had did such a fine job organising the performance in the school yard in August with very minimal means, was distracted in December by organising a tour to Bulgaria to perform at a Christmas fair. When that gig fell through due to Garuda dropping out as the sponsor for the plane tickets, he became despondent and it seems did not really apply himself fully to organising my own performance. This meant, among other things, a smaller audience than the August performance with fewer VIPs in attendance, provision of a smaller stage than was needed, late arrival of the evening meal and cigarettes for the musicians, no fireworks at midnight, poor coordination with Radio Kidang Kencana (which had offered to broadcast the show live, and in the end pulled out) and perhaps most importantly for the folk in Pekandangan a smaller amount in donations than expected, which meant that Pak Kuwu had to front much of the money for the show out of his own personal funds. There had been plans to bareng my show with a wayang golek cepak performance by a dalang from the eastern half of Kabupaten Cirebon, to give spectators the opportunity of seeing two versions of the same lakon. But this proved impossible due to lack of funds. I do not blame Ade for the lack of coordination - he  really is an excellent and enthusiastic arts manager with huge reserves of energy, and I would have done a worse job if I were in his shoes.

There were many memorable moments in this show for me. I enjoyed going once more to visit the principal tapakan of Sutajaya, the kandang associated with Ki Jebug Angrum which is an important shrine, to request the permission and blessings of the ancestors. I was very touched that the 85-year-old dalang Gonda, the most senior dalang wayang kulit in Indramayu, attended the whole show from beginning to end. Gonda has not performed wayang kulit since 1965 but is highly respected among artists in the region for his knowledge, collection of antique manuscripts and puppets and age and authority. I got a chance to talk to him before and after the show- he remains sharp as a nail, and was very pleased by the show I gave, complementing me that  I am fully competent (wis dadi) as a puppeteer. I also enjoyed receiving a souvenir t-shirt from Pekandangan from a rack of t-shirts sold at the bale desa which reads 'SUTAJAYA LEGEND, PEKANDANGAN-INDRAMAYU' with a picture of the village shrine in the middle. For Ade and others in the audience, the most memorable moment was when two village elders got into a big fight about my interpretation of the story. In my telling (as in also the sandiwara version by Candra Kirana, Pusaka Setan Kober) Sutajaya is accused by Sultan Matangaji of stealing the kraton's keris Naga Runting and exiled as a result. As Sutajaya is a local culture hero, the accusation of him being a maling or thief was taken as an affront by one eldery spectator and threats were exchanged with another. This disruption shows how seriously people in Pekandangan took the event.

Aesthetically, there were many moments that were pure joy for me, others where I stumbled a bit and perhaps even a few moments which dragged. Overall though, the show was over in a flash, and though I did not hold back in singing, storytelling and movement, I was not very tired after it was over.

Before the show I was introduced to a group of teenage hanger-oners to the Sanggar Topeng Mimi Rasinah who describe themselves as wamen - short for wanita mendi bae or 'wherever women'. In the opening scenes, I had the clown servant Lamsijan talk to Sutajaya about how he had enjoyed his time in  Pekandangan and a relation he had struck up with one such wamen - this of course got a big laugh from the audience. I was also told by Aerli's mother that boys are locally addressed as nang not cung, and so I had Ki Jebug Angrum call his son nang. The night market was going on during the performance, and so when Suta and Lamsijan go to buy the keris Sekober I was able to make reference to this and have Lamsijan point in the direction where the actual market was going on.

The two trick puppets I used during the first battle (a standard halangan scene in wayang golek) - a drunken buta with a bottle of alcohol in one hand that vomits water and a punk buta named Coker (short for Cowok Keren) who can emit smoke from his mouth and sings the comic song Udud Dulu by Enthus Susmono - went off well. I set this battle in Unjung Krangkeng and had at the end the principal buta named si Lorod takluk to the power of Keris Sekober. This taklukan explains to Suta about the magic power of the keris and later clears the forest (notor alas) for Sutajaya and later helps him in many other endeavours not dramatized in the lakon I performed. I felt it was a good use of this scene- which otherwise would have been very formulaic. A spectator afterwards commented however that I could have also had the buta turn out to be a jelmaan of Ki Guna Wangsa, a way to trial his resolve. (Guna Wangsa later in the lakon assists Suta in his moments of need.)

A pleasant moment for me was in the dancing of Dipati Anom at his first appearance at the Siti Inggil of Kraton Kasepuhan. It is very hard to dance puppets without a full gamelan accompaniment, and so in my rehearsals with Calim I spent very little time working on dancing. In performance, the dance came fully alive, with many variations and a great sense of play. I had a similar feeling later in the lakon upon the first entrance of Prabu Klana Juru Demung-- who dances in the style of the topeng mask Klana. Calim, who was sitting at my side throughout the performance, preparing and passing puppets to me, beamed with pride at both moments.

I had a major special effect in the Gedong Jinem scene, where two metal keris were connected to batteries and sparked as they fought each other. This was accompanied by a special lighting effect and the spooky sounds associated with sandiwara. Unfortunately the sound and light guy I employed to engineer this effect, and also a special effect involving flowers that grow mysteriously from pots, vanished for most of the rest of the show, meaning I didn't get special effects elsewhere in the lakon.

When Sutajaya is exiled by Sultan Matangaji, accused of stealing the keris, the pathos of the moment was greatly increased by the beautiful singing of the sinden Een. Unfortunately I forgot to sampiraken Suta's arm and have him hunched over to portray his sadness. And the love play between Sutajaya and the three women he marries in the lakon - the princess from Cirebon, the daughter of the sage Ki Ajar Sidik and the  discontent wife of Juru Demung - seemed to be much enjoyed by audience members. Pekandangan is known for its flirtatious women, and I played this element up.

There were other mishaps along the way of course. A buta entered once with his head backwards, to the hilarity of the audience. Lamsijan's head fell off when he lay down during once scene and an audience member had to pick it up and hand it back to me. I made mistakes on occasion with puppet voices and grammar. And I sometimes struggled to control the gamelan - Calim did not fully trust me to conduct the gamelan by myself and was giving covert and overt signals (with a cempala!) though I had tried to tell him subtly that I did not wish him to do this. I was able to give a minor dig at him however, criticising a watering can he had made for the show as looking like a teh poci kettle. Calim responded quickly on stage that he did not make it, it was Dalang Uk who did, and I wove that into my dialogue as well. Such good-natured ribbing is part of the normal banter of wayang.

I finished the show a minute or two after 3am. The village headman had said I could have up to 4am to perform but I had assured him that I would not need all this time. Calim was very clear that I should not go beyond 3am as this would be a violation of professional etiquette. I would perhaps have run the show til 3.15 am but the musicians were very clear to me, through numerous signs, that I needed to stop. This meant an ending that was perhaps less satisfactory than usual for me. I normally end shows with requests for forgiveness if any mistakes were made, general proclamations about the nature of wayang, moral messages, blessings to the audience, sometimes a joke or two etc. All this had to be truncated. Calim's most serious criticism of me after the show was that I did not end exactly on time. But I think this was only to be expected in my first all-night attempt in the form.

A film crew from ISIF recorded the show on handicam and also took photographs and have promised a DVD to me and Pekandangan's kuwu. I plan to upload the DVD to youtube if the result is satisfactory as there are no  full-length videos of wayang golek cepak currently available. I hope to continue my practical investigations into wayang golek cepak in months and years ahead. Thanks are due to Pak Kuwu Pekandangan, Ade, Aerly, Calim and all the supportive spectators and performers last night.

Cirebonese History and Culture Seminar at IAIN Syekh Nurjati Cirebon

Today, at the invitation of  Didin Nurul Rosyidin, I offered a seminar on Cirebonese history and culture to the history department of IAIN Syekh Nurjati Cirebon, the state institute for Islamic studies, before a meeting with Didin and his colleagues to discuss possible future research collaborations. The seminar was well attended, mostly by students, but there were as well a few members of the outside research community present, including Dr Bambang, a veterinarian and amateur historian, and Mustaqim, an independent heritage expert. I sweated profusely through the long introduction (with numerous communal prayers), my talk and the intense q&a session that followed, not because I felt under any pressure but because the room was not air conditioned. (We were all generously supplied though with a bottle of Aqua as well as a snack box and at the speaker's table there were imported oranges wrapped individually in plastic.)

My talk, which I titled Seni dan Budaya Cirebon dari Zaman ke Zaman, argued that Cirebon's history involved the invention of tradition through cultural production that became particularly intense starting in the 1960s. Cultural actors had long before inflated the importance of Cirebon under Sunan Gunung Jati, and a minor node in the Indian Ocean trading routes was reconfigured as the puser bumi, or centre of the world. During the last 45 years or so, Cirebon culture has become figured as a discreet object to be taught in schools, invoked at official occasions and monumentalized. 

The questions after probed details of my talk, and also expressed a curiosity about where I came from and what drew me and continues to draw me to Cirebon. Some present were interested in what the government should do for Cirebonese culture. How to reconcile the mysticism of Cirebonese chronicle literature with Western historiography? Where does wayang come from and is it possible to return to an ideal of wayang propagating moral messages that is not contaminated by humour? Lots of other areas are characterised by cultural mixture, so why would Cirebon alone use the trope of mixture for its ancient name (Caruban)? 

The most intense discussion came up around Sunyaragi, a ruin of a water palace on the outskirts of town. I quoted an English historical source that stated this was built as a place of recreation in the early nineteenth century. This was heavily contested by a number of participants, who were convinced that this was a more ancient site for pious meditation and the training of soldiers etc. I was prepared of course for such reactions, and spoke about how the meaning of Sunyaragi had been continually revised and its appearance changed over the decades, quoting the work of Sharon Siddique, a report from the Dinas Purbakala about how the archaeological service transformed the ruins into a Taman Arkeologi theme park, the building of the institution of the panggung terbuka and the change in its atmosphere from a place of quiet to a busy site next to the Jalan Bypass. Not everyone was satisfied though with my answers, and one participant made it clear that I should leave archaeology to the archaeologists....

The Tall Man from Sumedang in Cirebon

Today (25 December) I had my first real 'free' afternoon of my trip here. I had originally planned to go out to  East Cirebon with some friends to meet a dalang pantun and a dalang wayang golek cepak and taste some of the local delicacies (a typical combination of scholarship and culinary tourism for me and my friends here in Cirebon) but my wayang golek cepak teacher was insistent that we hold our practice during the day time rather than at night and I had to cancel the outing, leaving me with time on my hands.

So after my practice wrapped up and the afternoon downpour had dwindled to a drizzle  I wandered over to Pasar Pagi in search of some DVDs. The DVD store, it turned out, had moved to Pasar Balong, but to compensate for this I came across a carnival side show that was playing on the top floor of the Pasar Pagi market. Unfortunately I had no camera with me, so am unable to provide a photo.

But briefly the show was performed by three men (a fourth man, a juggler and acrobat, reportedly was sick and had to return to Bandung). The MC, described in promotions (http://aboutcirebon.com/component/gcalendar/event/6/v863g657erfah6813pgcspefs0) as a humorous MC with a thousand voices, gave an Islamic framing for the 'spectakuler' show, saying how the first man Adam was 35 meters in height in order to stand a chance against the gigantic wild beasts of his time. People have gradually shrunk over time, and now the typical height for Indonesian men is 160cm or so, while Westerners are 10cm taller on average. Sometimes though, a freak of nature is born.

Cue the entrance of 'Jaguar', a Tall Man from the foothills of Gunung Tampomas, billed as being 220cm in height, 'plus or minus'. The MC interviewed Mr Jaguar about his family life, diet, clothes and the like. His father and grandfather were both unusually tall, apparently, as is one of Jaguar's two children. (The MC joked that it was hard for Jaguar to have found a wife, as women must have feared their first night with him.) His black robe with red fringe needed 5 meters of black cloth and 1 meter of red cloth; steel-toed shoes have to be specially ordered; he eats two plates of rice 4 or 5 times a  day as he is now on a diet.

This was followed by some standard magic tricks by a young magician, some of them done in 'kolaborasi' with Jaguar, and some juggling by Jaguar. Jaguar's last trick was to juggle fire and put the fire out in his mouth. The magician also requested audience participation - a young boy blindfolded him and then balloons were placed under the boy's arms and between his legs which were popped with a knife wielded by the blindfolded magician. There were the normal jokes about the chance of losing the family jewels and the like. The child's mother and family laughed hilariously at this prank.

The show took about 30 minutes in all, and the audience who had all been sitting on the floor (we were assured that it has been mopped clean) filed off, many to the adjacent food court for dinner.

Visit to Swara Insani and Al-Mutawally

I am here in Cirebon with the primary intention of scoping out possible new collaborations with two higher education institutions, Institut Studi Islam Fahmina (ISIF or the Fahmina Institute for Islamic Studies) and the state college for Islamic studies, IAIN Syekh Nurjati. In addition to on-campus discussions and meetings, lecturers associated with both institutions have taken the opportunity to bring me out to institutions outside of the city to participate in a number of events of cultural interest.

Yesterday (23 December) I went by motorbike to the village of Mayung, where I met up with ISIF lecturer Opan Safari (one of my closest friends in Cirebon) and my former typist Santoso and visited the private FM radio station Swara Insani, where I was interviewed in Cirebon Javanese about my academic interests in Cirebon. I also used the opportunity to plug my upcoming wayang golek cepak performance in Pekandangan, Indramayu on New Year's Eve. The focus of Radio Insani, as the name suggests, is on Islamic education, and I also spoke about the close connection of Islam and traditional culture in Cirebon, and the importance of supporting local arts and culture.

After, we stopped by a multi-purpose educational centre run by the same foundation that owns the radio station. On Sundays, this is being used for a lukisan kaca course under the tutelage of my friend Opan. Opan said that a number of the students showed real talent. He was planning on doing the course in three phases. During the first two phases the students would receive sketches and execute these on glass, while in the third they would make their own sketches.

Today (24 December) I got picked up by my old friend Didin Nurul Rosidin at my hotel and taken out to the pesantren he runs, al-Mutawally, located in Kabupaten Kuningan, in the hills over Cirebon, not far from Pasar Cilimus. I first got to know Didin when he was doing an MA in Islamic studies at Leiden. I helped him unofficially with his MA research on Madrais, and he hosted the sandiwara actor-manager Wartaka when he was doing a residency at Leiden, working with me on sandiwara history and the play Pusaka Setan Kober. 

The pesantren in Kuningan has about 300 students, boy and girls, and was founded about 100 years ago by Didin's great grandfather or possibly great-great grandfather. It went under in the 1950s after the founder's death and then was revived by Didin's father in the early 1990s. Didin is a lecturer in Islamic history at IAIN, and heads up the Centre for Culture and History there, but also devotes much of his time to running the pesantren and making sure the students have both an excellent religious as well as secular education. I was asked to do a short talk in English to the students and spoke with them about santri lelana, a talk I gave to the IAIN student society in 1994 about the internet and the importance of networking and contributing to society. 

I was entertained in turn by drum playing by the boys (which greeted my arrival and escorted me out when I left the main reception hall), short dramatic skits in English by the girls, poetry readings by the boys accompanied by guitar and the singing of salawatan accompanied by hand drums and tambourines (see above). The lead singer in the salawatan group had a very pleasing voice. I learned that she also could sing with degung. Her father, who was wearing a biker leather jacket when he came to pick her up after the event (it was the last day of term and many students were going home), was obviously quite proud of her.

While the younger students might not have understood much of what I had to say, they were well behaved, and responded well to a summary that Didin offered at the end. Some of the questions asked by students were very intelligent. These included:

• How to deal with stage nerves when performing
• What it means to perform theatre in a style that was originally foreign
• How can one do theatre when men and women can't perform together
• Is it necessary to get a BA in Indonesia before studying abroad
• What can theatre and drama do for the conflict in Palestine
• What drew me to studying drama
• What is more important in education, skills or opportunities
• How did I get promoted to professor

In my talk and answers to their questions, I encouraged students to do voluntary work, apply themselves in what they do, maintain blogs (a number of them already do, and Didin has an excellent blog himself) and learn how to use email. 

On the drive back, Didin spoke about how he hoped to acquire a gamelan degung for the pesantren. He said that there are many stereotypes about pesantren and that performing arts not normally associated with Islam such as guitar and degung could help to create bridges and mutual understanding with the surrounding community. I encouraged him to continue in his efforts.