Traditional music
In the minds of the world, one instrument symbolizes Indonesian culture: the gamelan. This melodic percussion ensemble of xylophones, gongs and drums is typical of the country. It is said to have originated in temples in the 8th century. Each village has its own variant of gamelan. Gamelan is not played like a classical musical instrument: you need several people to play it, and a space big enough to set it up! In Indonesia, it's not uncommon to learn to play gamelan from an early age. And a musician needs to know all the components of the instrument and be able to change places regularly..
However, the use of gamelan varies from island to island. In Java, the gamelan is associated with princely ceremonies, while in Bali, depending on the type of gamelan, the instrument may be used for village festivals or religious rituals. Traditionally, the gamelan can be played for instrumental music or to accompany plays. Occasionally, singing is added to the mix, although it remains in the background of the musical interpretation.
Gamelan has also given rise to gambang kromong, a musical aesthetic at the crossroads of Chinese, Sundanese, Betawi (Jakarta culture) and Western sounds, which is played to accompany ceremonies marking important events in Indonesian life (weddings, births or other family celebrations). Concerts last several hours, even days! The repertoire ranges from the great classics to popular music.
Gamelan demonstrations and concerts are a common sight throughout Indonesia, as the instrument is such an integral part of daily life. The kraton, the sultan's palace, is home to some very old and well-preserved gamelans. The International Gamelan Festival in Yogyakarta, on the island of Java, has been held every summer for many years, providing an opportunity to discover even more gamelan variations. Some artists have left their mark on the country with their virtuoso playing, such as Made Subandi, considered Bali's greatest gamelan player.
Vocal music is known as sekar and comes in a number of styles, most of which are found in Bali and Java. In detail, sekar agung is a long, typical song, sera alit is shorter and evokes love stories, sekar rara is a lullaby for children and sekar madya is a ritual song.
In the Sundanese region (Sumatra, Borneo and West Java), the music is more expressive and the singing more poetic. The beauty of the landscape is evoked, the voice vibrates and used to move 19th-century aristocrats. This style of music is called tembang sunda or cianjuran.
In Borneo, the Indonesian community (grouped together in a territory called Kalimantan) is also familiar with kendau, a polymorphous song that varies according to the occasion: kendau alaq layug is sung by men during harvesting, kendau kancet is a song for dancing, and kendau sabai is sung by a choir.
Current music
Several more popular aesthetics, incorporating musical instruments other than those associated with gamelan, emerged during the 20th century. Such is the case of kroncong, considered to be an urban music born in the neighborhoods of Jakarta. Specialists consider this style to have Portuguese, African and Indian influences. Early pop, curiously reminiscent of tango, Hawaiian folklore and blues in some respects. The Krontjong Orchest Eurasia is one of the emblematic groups of this genre, recorded at the time on a 78 rpm record sold in the country. The lyrics evoke the Betawi culture, rooted in Jakarta.
Over the years, kroncong has emancipated itself from foreign sounds to become more authentic, so much so that in the 1960s, the first president of the Republic of Indonesia, named Sukarno, propelled kroncong to the rank of national music. You can still hear it in some Indonesian discos and village festivals. Singer Enny Kusrini's "Gado gado Jakarta" from the 1980s, for example, is considered to be kroncong music.
And while kroncong appealed to Sukarno's government, this was not the case for the music of the five Koeswoyo brothers, united under the name Koes Plus, who drew their inspiration from the Anglo-Saxon pop and rock of the 1960s. Sukarno even declared a ban on any imitation of Western music, with a particular focus on the Beatles' repertoire, which was totally outlawed. After breaking the rule, the members of Koes Plus spent several months in prison. It was the context of an imminent coup d'état that precipitated their release. Their song "Di Dalam Bui" recounts their prison experience and evokes their political point of view.
On many occasions, dangdut, the popular music associated with Muslim youth in the 1970s, has hit the headlines. These political protest songs, often inspired by Islamic values, are orchestrated to the rhythm of the kendang, percussion instruments played like the Indian tabla. Rhoma Irama, a true icon of the genre, is nicknamed the "King of dangdut".
Jazz also emerged slowly in Indonesia in the early 20th century. There are aesthetic similarities with the gambang kromong, composed of xylophones, gongs, two-stringed violas, bamboo flutes and other Western instruments. Jazz has gone from strength to strength, so much so that today the country boasts a large number of jazz clubs, with varying degrees of popularity. Artists such as Bubi Chen, a pianist born in East Java, were the first Indonesian jazz musicians to play on the international scene. Festivals were also born to facilitate the circulation of jazz artists, bring the international scene to Indonesia and enable Indonesian artists to spread their talents to a wide audience. These include the Java Jazz Festival, Jazz Gunung and the Asean Jazz Festival Batam.
It's also impossible to miss the country's rock scene: Indonesians are particularly fond of this music. In fact, the local rock scene has been booming for some years now, although it rarely crosses borders. This craze has a lot to do with the fact that for a long time, Indonesian youth were cut off from all Western-inspired music. It was in the 1990s that artists finally began to express themselves through pop-rock, punk-rock and metal. Some say that the arrival of international bands such as Iron Maiden, Deep Purple and Metallica for concerts initiated large fan communities. Tens of thousands of people soon flocked to the stadiums, and metal became a fixture in the country.
Indonesian bands that have made their mark include Black Star (experimental pop), NTRL (punk-rock) and Straight Answer (hardcore). More recently, an all-female trio from West Java has made its mark on the thrash metal scene. The three young female students, of Muslim faith, play under the name of Voice of Baceprot, and have already incurred the wrath of certain religious conservatisms and even received death threats. Instead, the trio's songs deal with religious tolerance, climate change and educational conditions in their country.
While gamelan is still widely practiced today, its traditional interpretation has also inspired a dense experimental scene, structured by the presence of synthesizers on stage, and reinforced by noise influences more likely to come from Japan.
Gamelan has also left its mark on what is known today as "fusion music" or "progressive music", as translated by the group Guruh Gipsy, who use gamelan in rock music.
Traditional dances
Like traditional music, traditional dance varies from one Indonesian island to another. The practice is often associated with ceremonies, cultural and religious rituals, or even the protocols of royal palaces.
While in the south of the country, the pakarena, a welcome dance performed by women holding a fan, takes precedence, in the north, the kabasaran, also performed as a welcome dance, was originally a war dance danced by men before battle. Not far away, the katrili is inspired by the quadrille introduced to the territory by Spanish settlers.
In Aceh, in northern Sumatra, saman, classified by Unesco as an intangible cultural heritage, is performed by men on their knees, executing a rhythm using their bodies as percussion. This almost acrobatic dance is highly expressive and impressive for the audience.
The Malays of Kalimantan also have a number of dances specific to their customs. Among them, the mandau, performed with knives and shields, leaves no one indifferent!
Historians compare Javanese and Balinese dances, as the two territories had similar cultures until Java became Muslim. Both long steeped in the Hindu religion, Java and Bali drew inspiration from the Indian divine epics of the Ramayana and Mahabharata to tell the various legends in their dances. In Java, dance is taught in the royal palaces: bedoyo ketawang and srimpi are the most popular. These dances are performed by young girls. In Bali, legong kraton is the traditional court dance par excellence. Young girls in identical costumes perform synchronized movements. It is still possible to attend legong kraton performances. The legong has its male equivalent, the baris, a traditional war dance.
Other dance styles, also combining drama and music, are widespread on the island: kebyar features a lot of gestures and facial mimicry, barong is a more common, scripted style, joged bumbung or joged kepyak is a seduction dance accompanied by bamboo gamelan.
Apart from kecak, which takes place at sunset with a chorus of men gathered in a circle around a fire and raising their arms to the sky, only the trance dance, performed during rituals and inspired by mythology, called sanghyang, does not rely on a gamelan musical line to be performed.
A number of dancers and choreographers have made a name for themselves in these various traditional aesthetics, such as I Ketut Marya, who has spread kebyar and created her own form, called kebyar duduk; and Sang Ayu Ketut Muklen, a well-known legong dancer in Bali, who has made a major contribution to the development of the practice.
Contemporary dance
For a long time, dance was considered royal, performed only in courts and reserved for a certain Indonesian elite. With the arrival of new dances in the 20th century, dance spread to the villages, enabling the transmission of various ritual choreographies. Today, dance instruction is widespread.
Dangdut, echoing the20th-century musical genre mentioned above, is considered a national dance, as is poco-poco. Both reflect the country's cultural modernization. The former is inspired by Indian films, while the latter is a mixed dance with its roots on the island of Sulawesi, danced in lines and columns.
On the island of Java, a dance event has been causing a sensation for several years now: a ballet retracing the history of the Ramayana is performed at Prambanan, Indonesia's largest Hindu religious center and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Theater
Intimately linked to dance, Indonesian theater is best known for the Javanese shadow theater known as wayang kulit. Hand-cut leather figures are coordinated on stage by a puppeteer called the dalang. Like Balinese and Javanese dances, the stories told are those of the Râmâyana and the Mahâbhârata, with the aim of spreading them to as many people as possible at a time when Java was still under Hindu influence. Most of the time, wayang kulit is accompanied by a gamelan orchestra. The orchestra follows the storytelling and singing of the dalang, who has his characters speak and tell the story. Hidden behind the curtain, the dalang is therefore unseen, and often highly respected for his aura, by the Indonesian public. In the 1970s, the artist Manteb Soedharsono made a name for himself as a dalang. Since 2008, wayang has been inscribed on the Unesco list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
Other forms of wayang have emerged across the country, including wayang golek (the puppets are no longer made of leather, but of rods), wayang orang (which is dance theater without puppets), wayang klitik (in which the puppets are much more elaborate) and wayang beber (the puppets are replaced by drawings on leather scrolls, presented to the audience). Shadow theater also spread to neighbouring countries such as Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Laos.
Even today, Indonesians attend wayang kulit shows in great numbers, and the habit is passed down from generation to generation. Many young children are introduced to the art by shadow theater companies such as Sri Wedari, based in Surakarta, and Bharata, based in Jakarta. Some universities even offer shadow theater or traditional theater as part of their degree courses.
In Bali and Java, masked theater is also making its mark alongside wayang. Indonesians call it topeng, combining song, dance and drama. It is inspired by local legends. Topeng is performed only by men, who take on different characters as the play progresses. The art of topeng lies not in its storytelling - except in the transmission of a few values - but above all in the embodiment of these various characters. Improvisation is the order of the day: the protagonists choose a story backstage, and people from outside the stage coordinate the various character entries. The gamelan is often present to set the rhythm. The gestures chosen by the actors are performed in harmony with the music! I Made Djimat, a Balinese artist born in 1947, is particularly virtuoso in his practice, learned in his native village of Batuan, the cradle of traditional culture in Bali.
This masked theater is performed as part of rituals and festivals. As well as being renowned for the finesse of its acting, it's the masks that often appeal to audiences and make this art form internationally renowned. These masks are made of wood, carved and painted with natural pigment, with slits at the bottom of the eyes and sometimes the mouth. Some also have open eyes. Full masks, with no holes in the mouth, embody characters who remain mute. These are often the king, violent characters or court elders.
Other forms of theater circulate in Indonesia:arja (comic opera danced at night in Java), barong (shamanic dance drama), calon arang (ceremonial drama featuring the Balinese witch Rangda), mak yong (royal sung theater from Sumatra) and gambuh (ancient Balinese dance theater).
