Music - Dance

It is really a pride that the Art Market of Gabusan, which is located on kilometer 9,7 on Yogyakarta – Parangtritis Street, with its specific building capable to receive 600 craft makers. It is not existing in other regencies and even in other countries in Indonesia.

However, behind the pride there is a worry that the Gabusan will have same destiny like LIK (Small Industry Area), which was build in New Order. But, the officers of Bantul Regency has thought and watched it since a long time before it was built. The solution is the Art Market of Gabusan is not used to invite tourists, who picnic to Parangtritis beach merely. On the paper view, it will be great for Bantul, if half from two millions Parangtritis beach tourists per year visit Gabusan. It must make the international level market becomes more live.

Seemingly, the government of Bantul Regency doesn’t dream to depend on the tourists’ visit. The people of Bantul Regency, as many times, appealed by the Regent of Bantul (at that time the regent was Drs HM Idham Samawi) must have a feeling that the Art Market of Gabusan is belonging to them.

Thus, there are week programs to enliven the Art Market of Gabusan. The attractive traditional art of Jathilan or Crazy Horse is performed there. The performance of Gagak Rimang group, which was performed on last Sunday, December 12, was out of prediction. It because the crazy horse rider who was possessed was more than 2 persons.

For the photographer or cameraman, it became attractive report. But, out of prediction, a man wearing black dress walked to close the photographer of Bantulbiz.com, who was taking photo. Calmly, the 27 years old man warned and suggested the reporter of Bantulbiz.com to keep the camera in the bag. How could it so? The young man answered calmly: “This time is really incredible. The spirits possessing the jathilan players are from the palace.” No doubt, the camera was put in the bag immediately (The reporter may be scared if he will be possessed).

Before the activity began, mbah Sudiprawiro, 89 years old, looked like reading spells near the crazy horse while sometimes put incense on the coal, which created white-thick smoke.“What did it mean, mbah?” the reporter of Bantulbiz.com curiously asked after the rite ceremony finished. “I beg permission from the spirits in here to make the performance goes well.

I also beg helps, if there will be ‘smart’ person (have an ability to invite spirit), who will do bad action and disturb this jathilan performance.

Wayang Kulit

Wayang Kulit or Shadow puppet from leather material is performing arth which contain many subtances of Javanese culture and values. Wayang kulit stories contains lesson on virtues that can guide them to behave properly in society.

Historically, the performance consisted of shadows cast on a cotton screen cast an oil lamp. Today, the source of light in Java is most often a halogen electric light. Some modern forms of wayang such as Wayang Sandosa created in the Art Academy at Surakarta (STSI) has employed spotlights, colored lights and other innovations.

The handwork involved in making a wayang kulit figure that is suitable for a performance takes several weeks, with the artists working together in groups. They start from master models (typically on paper) which are traced out onto kulit (skin or parchment), providing the figures with an outline and with indications of any holes that will need to be cut (such as for the mouth or eyes). The figures are then smoothed, usually with a glass bottle, and primed. The structure is inspected and eventually the details are worked through. A further smoothing follows before individual painting, which is undertaken by yet another craftsman. Finally, the movable parts (upper arms, lower arms with hands and the associated sticks for manipulation) mounted on the body, which has a central staff by which it is held. A crew makes up to ten figures at a time, typically completing that number over the course of a week.

The painting of less expensive puppets is handled expediently with a spray technique, using templates, and with a different person handling each color. Less expensive puppets, often sold to children during performances, are sometimes made on cardboard instead of leather.
The peformance of a wayang puppet shadow play is always accompanied by gamelan music. The puppets are made from piece of polished and gilded hide of cows.

The person who plays this puppet called Dalang. Dalang perform to be narrator, singer and also director.

Wayang today is both the most ancient and most popular form of puppet theatre in the world. Hundreds of people will stay up all night long to watch the superstar performers, dalang, who command extravagant fees and are international celebrities. Some of the most famous dalang in recent history are Ki Nartosabdho, Ki Anom Suroto, Ki Asep Sunarya, Ki Sugino, and Ki Manteb Sudarsono

Wayang Orang

Wayang wong or wayang orang is wayang performed and represented by human. The stories are the same like the stories of Wayang Kulit , but the dalang function as narator and stage director

Sendratari Ramayana / Ramayana Ballet

Sendratari Ramayana (Ramayana Ballet), although there are many other Ramayana ballet in many other places, performance that showed in Yogyakarta is the distinct one since itis performed on the open air theatre. This open air stage located at the west side of Prambanan Temple

Presented by more than 250 artists at its original place: Ramayana Open Air Theater & Trimurti TheaterPrambanan Temple complex - Yogyakarta - Indonesia

Ramayana is the Java's finest example of storytelling in stone in which the epic is egrved on the wall of Siwa Temple in the complex of Prambanan sanctuaries. Prambanan's version of teh Ramayana differs somewhat from the original Indian epic, reflecting the adaptation to javanese sensibilities over the centuries.

More recently, the Ramayana has been adopted for teh performing arts. Since the 1960s, hundreds of dancers have brought the ancient reliefs panels to life at Prambanan's ope- air theater, located just west of the temple complex. Essentially, a traditional dance drama minus the lengthy dialogue, the Ramayana Ballet or "Sendratari" - an acronym composed of teh indonesian words of art, drama and dance - is rocking good theater, with enough heroics, tragedy, romance and mayhem to satisfy the most jaded modern spectators, all presented under a tropical moon with the magnificient floodlit Roro Jonggrang Temple as a backdrop.

The entire Ramayana epic consists of four episodes, each night one episode, presented from 07.30 to 09.30 p.m. in four clear nights on and around the full moon, each month from May through October. The full story is held at Trimurti Theater every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday; presented by more than 50 professional dancers

Karawitan

Karawitan is traditional collaboration between Javanese music called Gamelan and male or female singer. At many traditional ceremonies karawitan usually played to entertaint the guest

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Karawitan is a general term for music and singing associated with the gamelan of Java.
The word dervies from the Javanese word of Sanskrit origin, rawit, which refers to the smooth, elegant sense idealised in Javanese music. Another word from this root, pangrawit, means a person with that sense, and is used as an honorific when discussing esteemed gamelan musicians. 

Kethoprak

Ketoprak is another traditional theatre perform in Javanese language. The main feature is the dialogue between the player character preceded by Javanese song.

Ketoprak (also spelled Kethoprak) is a form of popular theatre accompanied by Gamelan music, from Java, Indonesia.

It is generally believed that it originated in south central Java as a rural folk form, involving singing and possibly dancing and clowning, during harvest time.

The name is said to be onomatopoeic – from the rhythmic prak, prak pounding sounds of wood against wood as rice is pounded in wooden troughs by harvesters. The form underwent radical change around 1925, developing into a full-blown theatrical genre, in which a variety of story types (Javanese legend and history, Roman toga dramas, Biblical sagas and the like) were performed by costumed actors on stage, with improvised dialogue in Javanese.

Ketoprak enjoyed enormous popularity from the start, so much so that the Dutch colonial authorities sent spies to observe performances, suspicious that it contained nationalist and Communist hidden political messages. Initially accompanied by European musical instruments, Gamelan became the customary musical accompaniment in the 1930’s, borrowing many musical items and conventions from the Wayang Kulit (shadow puppet) repertoire, but retaining the prak, prak wood-against-wood sound to introduce musical pieces and accentuate movement.

Over the years, Ketoprak has been known as the ‘drama of the little people’, with more accessible language and a greater accentuation on romantic themes than the more austere and classical Wayang Kulit of Central Java. Most plays are pseudo-historical, with little or no actual grounding in historical events, but with lavish attention to imagined customs and traditions of the historical imagination. In the 1990s, Ketoprak underwent a further evolution as it entered into the domain of television and Video Compact Disks.

Ketoprak became Ketoprak Humor (Humourous Ketoprak), with much of the flowery Javanese replaced by lingua franca Indonesian, and a great emphasis on clowning and tomfoolery. Many Ketoprak actors (particularly clowns) are contemporary Indonesian cultural icons, appearing in television ads and imitated by Indonesians around the archipelago. 

Gamelan