NEW TRADITIONS
Traditions
do not necessarily endure just because they are traditional. The court forms we
considered last lecture have no popular appeal, and survive only because of
their current status as high art or classical performance and their appeal to
national overseas tourists. New traditions in Southeast Asia are often part of political
agendas to maintain social order within the framework. New Traditions are
often transformations of existing traditions, under the influence of the
perceived need to construct of both local and national identities.
Nowadays,
embodied performances play a crucial role in representing
national identity: it makes real national communities which Benedict
Anderson has referred to as 'imagined communities' (1983): but in performance,
we have embodied communities. National identity is something which needs to be
represented internally. Most Southeast Asian states are plural: ie they are made up of
ethnically and religiously diverse populations. From the point of view of the
State, performance has a role in creating a sense of cultural cohesion. Embodied
performance is also used to represent 'culture' in different ways: to tourists
visiting the region from outside, or travelling within it, and as a means of
diplomacy, with troupes being sent overseas to represent the nation state. So
national development, local and national identities, all bear on performance.
This lecture will consider how cultural politics, heritagization, and
development are shaping performance, and what kind of new traditions are coming
into being. But new traditions can also arise from individual creativity, as
I'll show, as performers initiate changes, transforming old traditions or
inventing new ones to earn a living and/or to keep people interested.
New
traditions are produced by governmental manipulation of folk tradition which
transformations popular culture into to Official culture, or causes the
Unlike
shadow plays, mask dances, and court performance which combine entertainment
with religion and education, tayuban is not considered as educational but
immoral. Tayuban is a village tradition from Java which is being altered from a
professional village genre to an official welcome dance performed by unpaid
schoolgirls, or a staged duet, the way to "develop social dancing".
In traditional contexts, tayuban is social dancing, in which hired dancers perform for celebrations of different kinds, such as weddings, circumcisions, and, in the region where I do my research, at village thanksgiving feasts which have a ritual aspect. There are often two tayubans: one for fun, and one given for the local spirit or dhanyang. The villagers say that without the tayuban, this spirit would not protect them, and the result would be madness and general lack of social well-being.
This
kind of performance had been repressed by the state for being wasteful, and also
a source of potential disorder: eg youthful high spirits can lead to disruption,
and also undermine the respect for elders which is very important in Java.
Some say that the repression is the result of Islam: drinking, and
dancing with women is condemned by Islam, but my research suggest that this is
not the case. In the early 1990s, tayuban was being revised as a form which is
acceptable as official culture, and choreographed by professionally trained
dancers, who earn a small honorarium: Bachelors of Dance earned between Rp 2,500
(in the palace) to Rp 12,000 in concerts for tourists or private occasions; only
one tourist venue at the temple of Prambanan paid as much as Rp 15,000 (£1.50).
[1 kg rice Rp 3000; during research in 1999 the exchange rate was c. 10,000 to the
Pound].
An
example of government intervention in tayuban is its transformation from social
dancing to staged choreography. Such a choreography was performed in the
Indonesian Academy of Arts in Yogyakarta in 1994.
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Presentating
a traditional form in a different context can create changes. Another example
comes from Bali. Here, the dance opera, Arja which was developed early this
century but lapsed in popularity in the 1960s, is currently enjoying a revival.
Arja stories tell of royal intrigues, which, similiarly to shadow plays, are
explained to the audience by comical servant clowns. This scene from a temple
performance of The Blessed Bequested Blade (Keris Pusaka Sakti) was filmed in 1992. The king and the queen
(both played by women) have a row, make up, and
their servants cash in.
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This
same performance had also been broadcast on Balinese televison, but more formal
than the live performance, and Balinese people said that it would provide a good
example to Balinese children of what their culture should be like
(Hughes-Freeland 1997 and 1998).
Generally
speaking, successful innovations happen despite rather than because of
Government policy, and originate from the inventiveness of performers. This
happens in the domain of popular commercial culture.
Although
village traditions may seem to be traditions which exist outside of time, the
performance elements express creative innovations which make these into new
tradition or popular Hybrid -- Mixed -- Traditions. Hybridisation is not new,
but traditions have been kept alive and new ones have developed through
hybridisation of different cultural resources, in a process of what Arjun
Appadurai has called 'indigenization'.The process is one of local appropriation
of traditions and practices originating elsewhere. Mixing leads in some contexts
to appropriation: an outside influence is processed and made into a local
traditional style. This process is very common in music making, whether in
classical styles or 'fusion'.
But
fusion can produce unexpected new versions, as this example demonstrates. In
1989, the chart-topping hit in Indonesia was 'Isabella' by the Malay band,
Search, about a Franco-Malay love affair. Indonesian language is
very similar to Malay, so popular culture produced in one state can be consumed
in the other. The second thing to notice is that the song is about a doomed love
affair between a Malay man and a French women, Isabella.
Music is another area where hybridisation is more then norm than the exception, particularly in popular music.
In Central Java, a tayuban troupe leader liked this song and produced a Javanese version. In 1994, I attended a cokekan -- an event like a tayuban, but without female dancers: women sing with a small gamelan band, and some of the male guests do some social dancing on the side. At this event I requested 'Isabella'.
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Returning to Java in 1999, I
discovered that the innovations of Sragen musicians had been taken much further,
and a new craze was sweeping Java. This was 'Campur Sari' which means 'mixed
elements'. The elements refer to traditional gamelan instruments (drums, gongs,
and other percussion instruments) and modern instruments, such as electronic
keyboards, small guitars, and other percussion instruments (such as maracas,
tambourines) from various musical traditions. Manthou's, a musician from
Wonosari, in the province of Yogyakarta, developed this new eclectic style
around 1995 and it has since become ubiquitous, at live performances at
weddings, circumcisions, and state celebrations, and also on television and
radio. Manthou's is able to charge as much for one night's performance as a
shadow puppeteer. Other troupes charge less, and are providing a new form of
competition to shadow plays as the most standard form of entertainment in Java.
This
'mixing' of elements is also being used in musical accompaniments to folk
traditions, such as horse-dancing. There are even reports of different kinds of
dance-drama being combined, such as horse dancing jathilan
and tayuban.
Following
the overthrow of President Suharto and his 'New Order' in May 1998 and the
ensuing political changes, one might in the long term expect a new range of
aesthetics to appear in Indonesia. The extreme hybridisation evident in Campur
Sari may be taken as an aesthetic counterpart to the political transitions under
way in Indonesia.
A second kind of mixing is internal. Performance styles within a region may include more than one national cultural characteristic. An exception among performance graduates in Indonesia is a well-known dancer and comedian, Didik Ninik Towok. Trained in Javanese court dance and other regional traditions, Didik is one of the few successful professional performers in Indonesia. He is multiply marginal: half-Chinese, Protestant, and in performance, a cross dresser. He can earn Rp 5 million (£500) for one dance in Bali or Jakarta (cf Rp 15,000 max for others), but he'll also do street theatre for charity. He works hard work, and has a business like approach, reinvesting his profits into various ventures. He attributes his success to combining art with entertainment. His dances distil elements from the lengthy traditional choreographies from different parts of Indonesia, resulting in witty dances lasting between 3 and 10 minutes. Walang Kekek draws on Sundanese jaipongan dance and Balinese masked dance.
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Didik
is an exception. Despite training and professionalisation, the Indonesia data
suggests that part-time performers like ledheks have a more realistic approach.
However, tayuban has become less popular since 1994. Now Hotel managers, tourist
brokers and officials, and dancers are all turning to the many kinds of local
folk performance. Bachelors of dance are now being trained in genres such as the
horse dance, jathilan. This is a village tradition closely associated with
animist cults, which consists of a formal choreography followed by free dancing
under the influence of possessing spirits. The dance dramatises the relationship
between the spirit master (pawang) and the spirits, and is full of suspense and
danger.
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But
part-time troupe managers are not allowing themselves to be tied by tradition. So it seems that for all
government attempts at manipulation of performance, ultimately it is what the
performers want to do, and their success in finding an audience which is
ultimately what matters: instead of a structural top-down effect, we find a
grass roots dynamic, which in some cases may conform with cultural policy, but
does not necessarily do so.
A
final example is Indonesian dangdut music. This harks back to Indian
popular music such as we hear in films, but in Southeast Asia, dangdut has
Islamic associations. The popular singer Rhoma Irama used dangdut to convey
messages about Islam in his film King of Dangdut.
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