| Popis: |
Despite complaints by artists, intellectuals, and government bureaucrats throughout the Indonesian archipelago of the threats to traditional music and dance by the onslaught of globalization,' a remarkable range of indigenous performing arts continues to maintain viability in an environment of continuous social change. This viability is achieved through a variety of artistic strategies and maneuvers,2 some orchestrated by government agencies, others engineered by corporations, still others promoted by individuals and small groups working outside formal institutions. In this essay I will focus on one individual musician whose mastery of what he and others would readily identify as traditional music and whose openness to performative experiments has enabled him not only to participate in widely contrasting musical worlds but also to provide modern contexts for his traditional practice. The senses in which I use these terms modern and traditional will be clarified as we consider particular events and discourses below. Yet, from the outset I wish to stress that I intend my usage to coincide with the prevailing Indonesian uses of the Indonesianized equivalents of these terms (tradisional and moderen). Traditional/tradisional behaviors, beliefs, social structures, works of art, and other human-made objects are those that are widely construed as having originated locally, been passed down at least several generations, and remained meaningful within a locally shared sense of the world. The wellknown Indonesian culture scholar Umar Kayam sums up succinctly the defining aspects of tradition in Indonesian societies: First, it has a scope that is limited to the cultural environment that supports it. Second, it constitutes a reflection of a culture that develops very slowly, because the dynamic of the society that supports it is indeed that way. Third, it constitutes a part of a cosmos of life that is round/all-inclusive and cannot be divided up and put into compartments/boxes of specialization. Fourth, it is not the result of individual creativity, but is created anonymously, in keeping with the collective nature of the society that supports it. (Kayam 1981:60)3 |
