Suri Sumatra in Tarot Drome

Last night I was at the Old Vic Tunnels, an underground performance space beneath Waterloo Station, to see Tarot Drome, an immersive spectacle that draws together a number of old-fashioned popular cultural forms - tarot cards, bump and grind shows, freak shows, roller derbies, pro wrestling. The draw for me was Suri Sumatra (aka Heather Morris), a London-based neo-exotic dancer of mixed Scottish and Manadonese descent. I had never come into contact with her name before a trawl through the Southbank's website turned this show up. A Facebook connection put me on to the correct spelling of her stage name (she is credit on the Southbank site as "Sumi Sumatra") and I learned quickly that she studied anthropology at Durham University, lived in Scotland and Jakarta etc. etc.

Suri appeared in two parts of the show. In one part she was among a group of 11 or 12 characters portraying characters in the tarot deck in one of the tunnels. Suri was the Empress in Chinese-style head-dress and the multiple arms of Hindu deities and glanced seductively at visitors, and then touched them or had them touch put dirt on her legs, and fed them strawberries. She didn't speak, perhaps so as not to upset the illusion that she was an exotic visitor.

In the show's grand finale she re-emerges with the rest of the company as a roller derby skater-dancer, dancing around on a platform in a flowing gown and then in short shorts and a bra to the accompaniment of loud music.

Something interesting to talk about, maybe, but even after a couple of beers I left with a slightly uncomfortable feeling, not knowing whether this was a work of ethnic exploitation or a commentary about past practices.

Sutajaya Kemit

Last night (20 August) I gave my debut performance as a wayang golek cepak puppeteer in the school yard of SD Negeri I in Pekandangan, Indramayu. The performance was billed as a collaboration with the Sanggar Topeng Mimi Rasinah and indeed featured 3 topeng dances by Aerli (Rasinah's granddaughter and the sanggar's artistic leader) and the sanggar's gamelan and musicians. I also brought along my teacher Ki Dalang Calim and 3 of his musicians (to play kendang, saron and gong) and a bunch of other hanger-oners (Calim's wife, his brother the puppeteer Sukarta, 3 peralatan). It was a simple and rather modest event in many ways - no panggung, 3 few lights, carpets for the audience, minimal amounts of food - but attracted a small but impressive audience including Pak Camat (representing the Bupati), Aas (one of the founders of the famed sandiwara group Candra Kirana), Ki Dalang Rusdi (the most popular puppeteer in the Cirebon-Indramayu area) and others. The funding came from a variety of sources. One of the backers was Pekandangan's young Kuwu (Village Headman) who spent 8 years working in Korea and is intent on transforming Pekandangan into a cultural village (pictured above- in front of a bale which occupies an entire room in his house where some of the village's principal sacred objects are stored- including a tombak and bende). Pak Kuwu has been working with artists in the village and also developing the historical sites, principally the village's shrines. Very enthusiastic volunteer teenage helpers and unpaid gamelan musicians and a sinden (Aerli's own mother) were mobilized by the sanggar. 

I had been working since my arrival in Cirebon on the lakon Arya Kemuning, but when I met with Pak Kuwu last week was asked to perform instead the story of Sutajaya, Pekandangan's iconic cultural hero. As fate would have it, I knew the lakon well as I had worked on a translation of the sandiwara version of it (titled Pusaka Setan Kober) back in 1998-1999 in my postdoc days, and was able to get a good grasp of it in 3 rehearsals with Calim. The performance coincided with Pekandangan's weekly pasar malam and Pak Kuwu requested that we end by 11pm- in the end we started later than anticipated due in part to the many pre-performance speeches and I ended at 11.45 pm, which seemed to be fine with everyone. The full lakon of Sutajaya ends with a long battle against the rebel Prabu Klana Juru Demung but due to the limitations of time I shortened the story to end with Sutajaya's marriage to Sekar Kedaton. This shortened version of the lakon is known generically as Sutajaya Kemit (Sutajaya the Night Watchman). 

Perhaps the most interesting finding for me in my practical studies of wayang golek cepak has been the sorts of negotiations made with audiences and the expressive limits of the genre. There is great concern for factuality-- curtailing artistic license in ways unfamiliar to me from my wayang kulit studies. Nobody knows who Sutajaya's mother is, so Calim said I could not reference her in the opening dialogue between Ki Jebug Angrum and his son Sutajaya. Sutajaya's pusaka is known generally as Keris Setan Kober (largely, I learned from Aas, due to the influence of the Candra Kirana sandiwara recording from 1977). But the elders who met last week prior to my performance made it clear that I had to refer to the keris as Sekober, which they said was short for Syef (i.e. Saif) Kober, a human who was transformed into a keris. I of course honoured this request in performance. The village elders also insisted that I visit (nyekar) the tapakan of Ki Jebug Angrum before my performance to ask the spirits for permission. I went in the company of a village elder (a middle-aged man who ran a tv and air conditioning repair shop out of his house) and Mas Ade, the sanggar's business manager and Aerli's husband. The kuncen there burned incense, recited a long prayer in a combination of Arabic and Javanese asking for 'success' (which he said is what everyone needs and asks for) and also had me make my request permission and forgiveness if I make any mistakes. 

The performance itself came off about as well as might be expected. It took me a while to get used to working with the debogan which felt slightly higher than the ones I had practiced on, and also adjust to the presence of the microphone (which was ditanceb into the debogan). There were also a number of new figures introduced that I had not worked with in rehearsal (minor setan puppets, a couple of pangeran to fill out the scenes set in Kraton Kasepuhan). Dalang Calim was sitting at my side for most of the show, and (somewhat to my annoyance) decided to wrap out signals to the gamelan with a cempala. We had only rehearsed with a saron and I suppose he feared I didn't know how to cue the gamelan. It was good to have him there, however, as he prepared puppets for me and also reminded me on a couple of occasions of minor details. He was also essential at one critical moment - I was unable to slot the wooden keris Sutajaya purchases into his belt and I had to take the wayang off stage and have Calim put it in for me. I had experienced trouble with this bit in rehearsal too - and had not cracked the technique by the time the performance rolled around. I covered the awkwardness of this by a joke about how Sutajaya had never owned a keris before. Most of the gamelan was not experienced in playing wayang golek and had some trouble at least initially with the lagu prang and sulukan; there was also a false start, and Aerli was about to come on stage to do Panji before my first scene rather than immediately after it. The dialogue was generally well crafted though and the sulukan (with one exception) all went off very well. Afterwards, the driver 

complemented me on my singing and voice work ("you could do the voices, both high and low" he said).

There were a good number of children at the show, particularly during the earlier hours, perhaps because we borrowed the SD schoolyard for it. None of them had seen wayang golek before, and watched with great attention as the puppets were taken out of the box and set up in the simpingan (which is invisible to most of the audience as it is behind cloth). Aerli said that the presence of children was most important for her - as these experiences are formative of character and taste. Elders in the audience such as Aas and others who knew the story nodded with approval at familiar details and expressions-- such as the motif that previous kemit who guarded the kraton's treasure room "manjing sore, esuk mati; manjing esuk, sore mati" (enter in the evening and are dead by morning x2). (Seeing the audience directly was also something that took getting used to- though I've had a taste of this from my post-traditional wayang play "A Dalang in Search of Wayang".) Pak Kuwu had learned about Sutajaya principally through internet research and was very pleased I think to see the play acted out as a wayang golek show. Others seemed pleased as well. While Haji Rusdi left early and I didn't get a chance to speak to him and the offer of a performance the next night at Sudimampir did not materialise in the end, due to Ade and Aerli's intervention I was offered the chance of doing another show at the Kabupaten next year in my next visit, and/or at Pekandangan's annual unjungan ceremony which falls 10 days after lebaran. 

Dian Nada Big Band with Wulan Affandi

I spent the holiday of Idul Fitri in Kananga, a small and rather isolated village in Kuningan not far from Cirebon, at a siang-malam organ performance by Dian Nada Big Band from Kabupaten Cirebon. Organ, a scaled-down version of dangdut, has expanded in size in recent years. The organ (i.e. synthesizer) still dominates -- setting the tempo through a drum track, filling in musical parts, using exciting house techniques ("Everybody!") -- but Dian Nada's band included also two guitars, a sax, a bamboo flute player (who pulled out flutes of various sizes during the show), a kendang drummer and his assistant who played the cymbal, and occasionally a tambourine, played by the group's leader Sinarudiyan (aka Dian). The shows featured singing by Dian Nada's regular stock of 5 female singers (who appeared to be in their teens and 20s), a few songs by Dian himself, plus sets by Wulan Affandi, a "guest artist" invited by the tuan hajat especially for the show.

This was an intimate, rather low key family affair celebrating a wedding, with an audience of at most 150 people (and sometimes much less). In the afternoon, family members all danced on stage handing out stacks of 2000 rupiah bills to the singers. The newly married couple did a couples dance, holding hands, complete with spins etc. Videographers and photographers went up on the small stage and took pictures. The language  of the songs and much of the banter between the musicians and singers was in Cirebon Javanese, which the Sundanese audience could comprehend only partially. But this didn't seem to matter much. The food was unusually tasty for a hajatan, but wasn't offered in huge portions. (I was offered only one meal during the time I was there and got to snack on only one koci before they all disappeared.) People were very respectful of my presence, and didn't ask many questions even when I was on stage.

My host at this event was Wulan Affandi, a lecturer at ISIF-Cirebon who is just about to start an MA at Universitas Indonesia, and who heads her own group as well called Wulan Entertainment which offers both organ concerts and also full tarling shows with drama and lawakan acts. Wulan has been performing as a professional penyanyi organ from her early teens and is one of perhaps a few dozen singers in Cirebon and Indramayu who are known to audiences through their VCD and DVD albums (still referred to here as "kaset"). Wulan has her own record label MB Records and a small studio in her house that is run by her father. She releases normally one album a year, sometimes under MB Records but sometimes under larger labels. I had a chance to speak with Wulan at some length about the world of "tarling modern" (modernized tarling), a term she and other artists sometimes use to describe this fusion between tarling dangdut and organ.

Her "team," as she refers to her group, is managed by an intermediary, who contracts performers, rents equipment (sound, panggung etc). None of the performers are directly contracted by Wulan herself - though she does bring along a support team to all performances including a driver (who also is a radio presenter, works for MB Records, and runs a sanggar tari), a dresser, a woman who roams around the audience hawking Wulan's albums (priced at 5000  and 10,000 rupiah a piece) out of a plastic bag and a young man from Jakarta who has been with Wulan for the last year and a half.

In conversation, Wulan expressed her dissatisfaction with video piracy and overly formulaic video clips, and spoke about the difficulties in juggling her studies with running a tarling modern group. She is soft-spoken and very respectful with everyone off-stage, and confident and clearly enjoys herself when on stage.

I've been to organ shows in the past, of course, but always at a remove as a spectator. Wulan brought me on stage to engage in a short dialogue with her, and sit with the musicians and singers. What I enjoyed very much about the shows in Kananga was the chance to observe up close the world of the singer - stopping on the way to the show to buy from a kaki lima the latest albums of rival singers to learn recent hits on the car's small DVD player; the long process of putting on makeup and costumes; the enormous amount singers sweat on stage (Wulan apologised for smelling of sweat when her crew took her picture with me after her afternoon show); the intimate environment of the little on-stage green room/bullpen where the singers sit before and after they go on stage (drinking water, texting, consulting agendas, cooling down, re-applying makeup, gossiping).

Pentas Wayang Rumba

Last night (16-17 August) I performed in a combination of Javanese, Indonesian and English  "A Dalang in Search of Wayang", my post-traditional  solo wayang, for the first time at ISIF Cirebon in a student-organised event called Pentas Wayang Rumba. It was part of a triple-bill along with short wayang performances by my friends Doddie (Darmakusuma Nyalar, with a pop band, powerpoint projections and carboard wayang figures) and Purjadi (Agamaneng Manusa, with a scaled-down gamelan accompanying him). In between our performances there was time for commentary and discussion - much of it quite expert. The audience was fairly small (under 100) but elect - with representatives from many of Cirebon's major religious institutions.

Purjadi was initially reluctant to perform in this setting but left with all smiles - recognising that his performance was greatly appreciated and that he was introducing his version of wayang to a new audience. ISIF's rector, in a brief comment after Purjadi performed, said that he would like to offer Purjadi a lectureship at ISIF- only half joking. Purjadi argued that wayang is not endangered - it is only in urban contexts like the city of Cirebon where wayang lacks audiences- when he performed in the alun-alun of Kasepuhan once he could count spectators on the fingers of his hands. In the countryside, wayang is still in rude health. A text I received regarding my own performance said that I had succeeded in "menggugah presepsi teman2 muda tentang wayang."  Events like Pentas Wayang Rumba act as bridges between the rural and the urban, the local and the international. They are not frequent in Cirebon - but much more common elsewhere in Indonesia.

A short report can be read at http://www.nu.or.id/a,public-m,dinamic-s,detail-ids,44-id,39325-lang,id-c,nasional-t,Peringati+Kemerdekaan++Mahasiswa+Gelar+Wayangan-.phpx

Golek Taboos

My studies of wayang golek cepak with Ki Dhalang Calim in Pegagan Kidul continue. I have been trying to set up a performance for the week of 19 August at the end of my stay here in Cirebon.... so far without much luck. The process has, however, been interesting.

I went today with my friend the wayang kulit puppeteer Purjadi today to the village of Pekantingan where he is performing on Friday at an annual graveside unjungan rite to see if I could perform wayang golek instead of wayang kulit in the siang show preceding Purjadi's night-time show. We met with the kuwu, a sympathetic village headman whose small sitting room was decorated with Islamic texts and a modern lukisan kaca of Gatotkaca. He said that wayang golek was absolutely taboo in Pekantingan- and had been since he was a small boy. The story was that the stage collapsed at a show in Pekantingan many years ago and a vow was made never to sponsor golek again in the village. The kuwu said that golek summons the spirits of the ancestors and that any variance from the 'correct' story would cause their wrath. Sandiwara has the same stories as golek, but is not a true representation like golek and so does not have magical repercussions. He pointed out that the taboo against golek was not the only taboo in Pekantingan - it also had taboos against certain crops, for similar historical reasons.

Purjadi mentioned to the kuwu that other villages - including Kerandon - had similar taboos against golek. The kuwu said that Kerandon, the location of the ancient Cirebon Girang kingdom, was united with Pekantingan by shared ancient customs and connections to the sultanate - Pekantingan's Muludan celebration  for example falls on the 12th day of the month, the same day that Muludan is celebrated in the royal courts. Purjadi then gave a list of other reasons why golek is taboo. In santri villages, golek figures are said to be statues of people - forbidden according to orthodox Muslims - in contrast to wayang kulit which is just a picture of people. In the village of Cengkoak people said that they simply disliked golek for aesthetic reasons - "Even if someone donated a performance of golek, we would not accept it, let alone if we had to pay for it." The kuwu said that this was probably just an excuse - and that in Cengkoak like in Pekantingan there were likely ritual reasons for why golek is not performed there.

Golek's heyday is long past in Cirebon. While puppeteers in the past were commonly engaged to perform at hajatan, almost all performances today are in graveyards, and these are decreasing annually. The repertoire is shrinking too it seems. Figures are still named after Menak and Panji characters, but only stories set in Cirebon since the arrival of Islam are today performed. "Too distant," say audiences about Menak stories, according to Calim. Purjadi says that golek simply has not kept up with the times - its lagu prang are monotone, the characters are not known to audiences (unlike wayang kulit or Sundanese wayang golek, with its iconic figures), puppeteers are old and not good storytellers.

Call me old-fashioned - I like wayang golek cepak and its stories and would like to see the form maintained in Cirebon. But I see that it faces formidable challenges.

Sanggar Mimi Rasinah

I went today by car to Indramayu in the company of my friends Pak Katura and Mas Opan to visit the sanggar of the late Mimi Rasinah, a topeng "maestro" who was "discovered" by Endo Suanda and friends around 1995 and promoted nationally and internationally until her death in 2010 at at the age of 80. At the head of the sanggar is Rasinah's grand-daughter Aerli who Rasinah selected to be her heir and Aerli's husband who graduated from the dance department of STSI Bandung and is originally from Arjawinangun. The sanggar has been well supported by grants from both local and international sources and appears to be very active with daily topeng dance classes for children of various ages, a gamelan group that practices regularly and a number of carvers who are kept busy carving souvenir keychains with topeng and sobra (retailing at 5000/keychain- these were displayed near the entrance to the sanggar).

We attended the Sunday morning dance class under Aerli's direction which was accompanied today by live gamelan. Students (all girls) ranged in age from 3 to late teens and executed en masse two topeng dances without masks or costumes. There were about 25 or so students - almost of all whom were accompanied by their mothers who ringed the walls of the studio. The studio had a high bamboo roof, new floor tiles and a big mirror on one wall. Posters of performances by Aerli and Rasinah were prominently displayed. Also present were a group of 6 or 8 KKN students from UPI Bandung who were on their second to last day of the work experience scheme. They had been active in trying to establish Pekandangan as a desa budaya, working with both the sanggar and also berokan groups. Their major achievement was planting 100 mahogany trees in a nearby graveyard- which they told me was a symbol of natural beauty and also endurance. The students cam from different departments - none of them related to the arts. This was the first UPI group to do KKN in Pekandangan, and they are working on a blog to present their findings and accomplishments. A rep from the KKN group said a few words and both Opan and I were also asked to say something. The sanngar is looking to reproduce the costume that Rasinah wore in performances (now rare) and Pak Katura volunteered to assist in reproducing both the beautiful blue-and-white batik skirt and a slendang juwana.

The visit had a very reverent atmosphere - Opan and I both spoke with great respect for Rasinah, the children kissed our hands when they exited, the UPI students made slight bows to acknowledge us etc. Still, it is good to see that there is an interest in topeng - in contrast, when asked, none of the children or mothers admitted to have ever seen a wayang performance.

Berokan Season

It's berokan "season" now in Cirebon - when in villages around Gunungjati children and teenagers parade through the kampung collecting money. This is an extension of sort of obrog-obrogan - musical groups that parade through the kampung during the fasting month to wake up villagers for the pre-fast meal (saur) and then collect money on the day of Hari Raya. Some musical groups start parading in the late afternoon 2 or even 3 weeks before the fast ends - a practice that my friend the batik boss Pak Katura referred to (only half jokingly) as "illegal". The berokan groups follow this practice.

On the way to pick up my daughter who is studying batik this month with Pak Katura I passed 3 such berokan groups- two in the fishing village of Mertasinga just north of Gunungjati (I took a wrong turn there by mistake) and one in the village of Sarabau (pictured above). The Sarabau group had two rather spectacular berokan accompanied by a small orchestra of keyboard, gongs, ketuk and kecrek. A young boy, perhaps 8 years old, marched ahead of the group collecting money in a bucket. Most of the performers seemed to be between 10 and 20 years old. It created quite a lively atmosphere. I stopped to take a few quick pictures sitting on my motorcycle and donated all the change in my pocket to the group.