President Obama on Wayang

Barack Obama has had to delay his long-planned trip to Indonesia this month due to ongoing debates around his health legislation. He now plans on going in June with his family - with stops in Jakarta as well as Yogyakarta or Bali.

As a sort of consolation, and by way of apology to the Indonesian people, Indonesian journalist Putra Nababan was offered a one-to-one interview, which Obama suggested was the first ever interview of an American president by an Indonesian journalist in the White House.



Part of this interview concerned the standard issues (economic cooperation, Islam etc) but Obama also reflected nostalgically on his years in Indonesia. He pointed out that he has few opportunities to practice his Indonesian due to the small population of Indonesians in America (which also, he said, meant that there are not enough good Indonesian restaurants in the US).

He also was asked specifically about wayang and Indonesian comics.

OBAMA: I used to love the Mahabharata, I used to love Ramayana, I used to love wayang. And I still do. I am inspired by the stories of Hanoman.

We ask again: any chance for wayang being performed in the White House, Mr President?

'Dalang bule' in the news... again

An article about me appeared titled 'Dalang Bule Ki Matthew Cohen' (Albino Puppeteer Ki Matthew Cohen) appeared in Kabari, an Indonesian-language monthly that describes itself as an 'information bridge between Indonesia and Amerika' See www.KabariNews.com/?34269.

The information was collected by the reporter, Yayat Suratmo, via the www and email, and as I didn't see it before it went to press there are a number of factual inaccuracies.

The 'dalang bule' label which was bandied about in the Yogyakarta press seems to persist. It's not one that I like, for obvious reasons. A legend has it that the designaton of 'bule' for Caucasians was started by Ben Anderson when he was living in Jakarta in the 1960s. It was meant humorously at the time, but since has been used in a racist or racialist manner.

A google search reveals that the following puppeteers have been described as 'dalang bule':

- Gaura Mancacaritadipura (an Australian who became an Indonesian citizen some years ago, who lives in Jakarta and is active in Senawangi and a number of heritage organisations (see http://dwieky01.multiply.com/video/item/24)

- Larry Reed (a San Francisco-based puppeteer, puppet director and film maker with long experience performing as a Balinese dalang and best known for his massive wayang spectacles)

- Tamara Fielding (a New York-based puppeteer, born in West Java of Eurasian descent, who performs her own idiosyncratic version of wayang in community settings, cruise ships and the like)

There are also, of course, references to the various 'dalang bule' who control Indonesian politics - in various articles by conspiracy theorists.

British Gamelan Trail

Yesterday I examined a SOAS PhD thesis on Balinese gamelan theory by Kate Wakeling - who plays with the London gamelan Lila Cita, and has also studied Balinese dance for a number of years. A really well written piece of work, with much of substance, particularly in relation to new compositions and their theorization.

Kate's supervisor is Mark Hobart, a SOAS professor of media studies and a close colleague of mine. After the examination, I sat in on a meeting Mark held with my co-examiner Neil Sorrell, arts producer Hi Ching and Balinese dancer Ni Made Pujawati (Mark's wife). Hi Ching, Ni Made and Aris Daryono (a Javanese musician who plays with the Southbank Gamelan Players) are developing a project for heritage funding called the British Gamelan Trail. If the bid is successful, this will take Aris and Puja around the country (with a particular focus on the London area) talking to people about how gamelan has been embedded in communities. The idea is to develop a general history of gamelan in Britain, with a focus on 6 groups in particular. Documentation will be included in an exhbit on Balinese dance and storytelling planned for the Horniman Museum in 2011-2012.

At this meeting, Neil offered a synoptic overview of gamelan. Neil's own studies go back to 1971 - when he attended one of Bob Brown's summer sessions in Bali. He believes the first gamelan ensemble in residence was at Dartington in 1974- a set of instruments borrowed from Europe. The Durham Oriental Music Festival sparked the interest of the Indonesian embassy to purchase a set of instruments, which was played by the group to become known as the English Gamelan Orchestra (which later morphed into the Southbank Gamelan Plyaers). Neil was able to use the EGO's existence to convince York to purchase a set of instruments for £6000 in 1980. This was the first set of instruments purchased by a university. The Cambridge University gamelan, a gift from an Indonesian cabinet minister who had a child studying at Cambridge, followed a year or two later.

We also spoke about other ensembles - Cragg Vale, the Bow Gamelan and the like - which will likely fall outside the remit of the British Gamelan Trail project.

The project is a clever and fascinating one - hope it gets funded...

RNCM Gamelan Weekend

I spent last weekend (28-29 November) in Manchester, attending a wonderful weekend of gamelan-related events at the Royal Northern College of Music. The event launched the RNCNM's beautiful new gamelan, purchased along with a brand-new set of shadow puppets and a very fancy-looking puppet screen.

I caught an early gamelan-inspired work by Lou Harrison, Suite for violin, piano and small orchestra played by the RNCM chamber orchestra; the second half of Birth, Death and Marriage: A Journey through life in Javanese Music and Poetry - a concert by the Southbank Gamelan Players featuring Ni Made Pujawati in two dances; the end piece of a degung concert by the University of Manchester/Hallé Gamelan Degung; a wonderful and inventive concert of new music for gamelan by Gamelan Sekar Petak from the University of York mc-ed by Neil Sorrell; and performances of youth groups of a shadow puppet Ramayana and a gamelan-accompanied dance drama.

What a treat!

I also performed a 2 hour 15 minute version of Kresna Denawa, with the full forces of the Southbank Gamelan Players accompanying.

My friend and former Naga Mas colleague Simon van der Walt (one of three Naga Mas-ers who came down from Glasgow for the event) wrote in his blog that:

'the wayang performance in English by Matthew Isaac Cohen [...] was more than anything else what I had come to Manchester to see. I've seen wayang in Indonesia, but the language barrier is really quite steep, and it's a big part of what's going on; from high-flown court Javanese to crude street slang, its a form which traverses a great range of linguistic and performative registers. Matthew and the South Bank Players have done a number of wayang recently, and this is the first chance I've been able to see them. It seems to me they are doing a fantastic job of translating waying into a shorter form in a different language, making it understandable and enjoyable to UK audiences while retaining a great deal of honesty to the original. Matthew has a great sense of humour, which was on this occasion slighly lost on a noisy audience in a reverberant space. I look forward to seeing him perform again' (http://theplugboard.blogspot.com/2009/11/gamelan-weekend-at-rncm-saturday.html).

Didn't manage to get any pictures of the event though...

WWW stuff

I am missing the stimulation of being in Malaysia and Indonesia, with the range of traditional performance on offer, but have been enjoying attending a London puppet festival over the last week. I am reviewing some of the shows for Animations Online, an online puppet magazine I edit, and also attending a number of seminars.

I have also been checking out various web materials. For example, I read a fine New York Times article published in 2002 on Jlitheng Suparman and Slament Gundhono's experimental wayang work, titled Political turmoil gives new life to Indonesian shadow play : Out of the shadows, a new art. I also saw some nice material from Jlitheng on youtube, including a clip of a sexy dangdut singer puppet and another one showing the same dangdut singer plus a Rhoma Irama type singer-guitar player from the puppet side of the screen (HEBOH DANGDUT GLOBAL WARMING WAYANG KAMPUNG).



A colleague from Australia pointed me to a really fine clip of Wayang Ceng Blok - a popular Balinese wayang company - with a long non-verbal sequence showing various animals at play. Check it out here.

Another friend from New York also told me about a robotic Balinese gamelan in New York,called Gamelatron, which has an interesting website featuring some performance vids and a brief television segment on them. Check out their website at http://gamelatron.com/

Blog review of Kresna Denawa in Cambridge

Blogger Oli O'Shea reviewed my performance of Kresna Denawa with the Cambridge gamelan at http://olioshea.wordpress.com/category/music.

'I enjoyed the shadows much more now I understood the conventions and was more patient. It made me think about perspective and how knowing how something works changes how we feel about it. .... Patience was required to get into this performance but it was rewarding upon giving it a chance ....'

Kresna Denawa at Cambridge University

On 23 October, I gave a a 2 hour 45 minute rendition of Kresna Denawa, a traditional lakon (play episode) with the Cambridge Gamelan and a few guest artists from London's Southbank Gamelan Players at Cambridge University's West Road Concert Hall. Hannah, my daughter, made a cameo, performing a little wayang kancil number (Kancil dan Buaya) that she had learned in Yogyakarta earlier in the year, using puppets made by Ledjar Subroto. The performance was part of Cambridge University's Festival of Ideas, and I performed at the invitation of the gamelan's director, Rob Campion.

I used a basically Solo style for the show, including sulukan, sabetan, and Solo's punakawan (Semar, Gareng, Petruk, Bagong) although the version of the lakon I used is from the Gegesik dalang Bahani (the Solo version is known as Bedahipun Dwarawati, or The Conquest of Dwarawati), and my voices, narrations, patterns of dialogue, tanceban etc remain at the core gaya Gegesik. My interpretation of Narayana, in particular, was done in emulation of the late Basari.

The performance was well attended, and while I chose an intentionally 'light' lakon (with an emphasis on battle scenes, rather than philosophical content; a small number of characters; simple story structure), a couple who had seen me perform in the past said it was far better than past shows - and that they loved the battle scenes in particular.

My drum player John Pawson was unfortunately mugged 6 days before the show, suffering a serious head injury, resulting in Simon Steptoe coming as a last minute substitute. I did not get a chance to run the full lakon with him, and this meant we experienced some problems in communication.

But I was happy overall with the performance, and look forward to getting another opportunity to perform the lakon with the SBGP in Manchester next month. And I was happy to receive a bottle of wine at the show's end!