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indonesia corners 
Jember Festival Carnival, an Extravaganza from Easternmost Java

In the easternmost Java, in the small city of Jember, an annual event called the Jember Festival Carnival (JFC) has attracted thousands of spectators from around the country and becomes one of the world-class carnivals during the last five years or so. Jember, located around a thousand kilometers eastward Jakarta, is an agricultural regency with numerous tobacco plantations at the lowland and coffee plantations in the surrounding mountainous areas. It can be reached by road or railway at around two hundred kilometers southeastward of Surabaya, or at a closer distance but with a bit extra efforts from Bali by crossing the strait separating the two islands.

This low economical growth area suddenly becomes famous because of an initiative and determination of Dynand Fariz, a motivated son of a local peasant who decided to convert himself from a lecturer to become a fashion designer.

Back in his little hometown, which once he was ashamed of, he founded a fashion house and short after launched what is now known as the famous JFC. He asked his 30 employees to wear simple costumes and almost no makeup marching around the Jember square. His passion on fashion and his love to the hometown, make his dream materialized and slowly grew bigger to the size we know today. Last Sunday, July 24, the city held the tenth JFC with an eye catching theme, the “Eyes on Triumphs”. Hundreds of photographers as well as national and foreign media covered the event witnessed by thousands of spectators sitting in tribunes, not mention a large amount of crowd viewing along the 3.6 km runway carnival.

The JFC Live Performing Arts Marching Band and hundreds extravaganza carnival participants with costumes, accessories and unique makeup, music illustrations and choreography were beautifully presented in 10 parades colorizing the styles of Punk, India, Athens, Bali, Butterfly and others.

It is amazing to see a person with barely nobody support can dramatically change the spirit of people and the "sleeping" city he lives in. Some other regions follow imitating the  success of JFC, such as Solo which holds a similar event, the Batik Carnival.

Congratulations for those brave people who manage to realize their obsessions, which the country may take benefits!
Posted by r.sudibjo at 4:14 AM No comments: Labels: Batik Carnival, Dynand Fariz, Eyes of Triumps, fashion house, Jember Festival Carnival, world-class carnivals


Krakatoa, the Super-Volcano 


Javan Rhino, Another Endangered Species in Extinction 

Posted by r.sudibjo at 3:23 AM No comments: 

Wayang, the Ancient Way of Disseminating Knowledge and Wisdom

Long before Thomas A. Edison invented cinema, in Indonesia especially Java, people had watched a sort of primitive cinema, shadow puppet called wayang, displaying stories aiming to  enlighten the spectators with moral teaching, heroism and wisdom. Like cinema, the wayang mainly consists of a screen and one or two lamps functioning as projector put in front of the curtain on which the shadows of the puppets are projected. But unlike in cinema, the spectators sitting behind the curtain watching the shadow from behind.

The wayang performance depends on the player, known as dalang, who sits in front of the screen  displaying a series of leather puppets with different scenes of dialogues, duel, war,  and actions related to the story being told orally, accompanied by gamelan music as a background.

Obviously the dalang should have a talent being able to speak in many voices and intonations to represent different figures and characters. When the dalang breaks telling the story the pesindens, usually good looking ladies, will sing themed songs. The lyrics of the songs are still related to central theme of the performance.

Wayang was known to be played far in the past, at night lighted only by palm oil lamps or just by moonlight in the first centuries of our era when Hindu was flourished. This traditional show was continued to the early Islamic era but slightly modified to include some Islamic religious teaching. The wayang show persists up to our modern era but not as intense as in the past.

The most popular stories performed in the wayang are Ramayana and Mahabrata, the Indian folklores which have been transformed  and adjusted here and there to reflect the local conditions especially in Java and Bali.

The technique of play has evolved for centuries and now comes to a standardized model, though invention in the techniques and addition of stories can be done by creative dalangs. They even insert various happenings found in the modern society, either criticize the government for being negligent to support low-income families or congratulate any government policy leading  to prosperous and just society. Just recently, a Japanese humanist Ryoh Matsumoto played wayang scene entitled Beast and the Beauty in Solo, Central  Java. He said that the last 40 years of his life was dedicated for wayang world.  Many of his researches on wayang in form of knowledge and stories have published in Japan.

He performs wayang in Japanese language and creates 7 new figures, including the giants and fairies.  Collecting more than 1500 kinds of leather puppets, he knows well and keeps in mind the names of more than 600 wayang figures.

In some other countries wayang attracts more youngsters because of  its deep philosophy  guiding people for having better moral and characters. In Netherlands,  the Delft Museum keeps all kinds of wayang complete with various fragments of stories from Mahabrata and Ramayana. With the aim to let the youngsters know more about wayang, certain workshops are always held at Leiden.

Due to the uniqueness of the leather puppets with its elements such as dalang,  thousands of shadow puppets with different characters and set of  traditional gamelan as well as in the dissemination of the ancient philosophies and wisdoms told in the wayang story, UNESCO has recognized wayang as masterpiece of oral and intangible heritage of humanity in November 2003.
Posted by r.sudibjo at 12:12 AM No comments: Labels: cultural heritage, dalang, Java, knowledge, leather puppet, Mahabrata, pesinden, Ramayana, UNESCO, wisdom


Cultural Heritage Title for Indonesian Angklung

Indonesia soil and climate make the bamboo trees easy to grow. Everywhere we can see bamboo trees grown in almost unused land and at the edge of every garden in the villages. People make benefit from those trees for various uses  such as its sprout for foodstuff,  its tubes for the  house structure and wall materials as well as for furniture. Last but not least … material for musical instrument. Angklung is such a music instrument which made of two bamboo tubes attached to a bamboo frame. However, it is not like other kinds of music instruments it jingles only one specific tone.  The number of persons required to play angklung music are therefore minimum 12, to make sure that each musical tone is played. But for better performance, orchestra players are usually more than 40.

A good technique is required to shake up the instrument to get better musical sounds. We can shake it up a little bit long or short of moments, a little bit strong or weak and all of those different shakes might result in various colorful sounds.

UNESCO pays special attention to this traditional bamboo music instrument under the consideration that for an orchestra is able to play a good melody requires coordination and good cooperation among the players. In November 2010, UNESCO has an honor to award angklung as the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity because of its related philosophical value such as cooperation, respect and harmony. The bamboo music instrument has been well-known here since the Hindu kingdoms around 1000 years ago. When Islamic religion was spread in this archipelago around 500 years ago, angklung was used as a signal of five-time praying. During the era of Demak Kingdom in Central Java around 16th century, people spread Islamic religion by means of badeng music art, where angklung was the main instrument.

Since then the local tradition to play angklung music sustains mainly in West Java. The local people living around Mount Halimun, Banten, and the traditional Baduy people who live in isolation have a tradition to celebrate the rice planting and harvesting seasons in which angklung is the main musical instrument.

It was Daeng Sutigna who popularized angklung in 1938, by combining this music instrument with piano, organ, guitars, drums and banjo. A momentous event happened in 1955 when the music players were invited to perform angklung music in front of the delegations of the Afro-Asian Conference in Bandung. More recently an event hosted by the Embassy of Indonesia as a part of Indonesia Festival in Washington DC on July 9, 2011 busting the popularity of the angklung music instrument.  A total of 5,200 people of various nationalities used angklung to play the popular song “We Are the World”.

Daeng Udjo was the maestro behind the event, who instructed and guided the novice players to deal properly with the instrument. Voice of America reported that the audiences in standing ovation cried rhythmically his name as the applause for the maestro. No wonder, the event was registered as a new record in the Guinness Book mainly because of the number and the national variety of the players involved.
Posted by r.sudibjo at 9:37 PM No comments: 

once upon a time in nusantara Jakarta Corners Jakarta Time Globe Visitor Jember Carnival