... as Endo does his best to preserve the art

... as Endo does his best to preserve the art

BANDUNG (JP): One good source of information about wayang
cepak is Endo Suanda, a Bandung resident who helped assemble
documentation for the Chedi exhibit. For the past two decades,
Endo has been dancing back and forth over the line which tends to
separate artist and scholar.

"I grew up in the village of Majalengka, about 60 miles from
Cirebon," he says. "None of my relatives were artists. But my
great-granduncle had a gamelan and a complete set of Cirebon-
style shadow puppets that he used to rent out, so I gradually
became intrigued with these traditions."

"My first experiences as a performer were as drummer in a
puppet show musical group when I was a teenager. Eventually, I
studied dance at the Konservatori Tari arts academy here -- the
school that's now called Sekolah Tinggi Seni Indonesia
(Indonesian Institute of Arts). I became especially fascinated
with the mask dances from Cirebon and went back to Cirebon to
immerse myself more completely in those performances. After I
graduated from college, I went to Yogyakarta for an undergraduate
program. But then I came to see that the only way to really
understand these traditional arts is to experience them at the
village level. So I dropped out of the academic program.

"I joined a Cirebon troupe that danced and played music
regularly in villages. I followed them everywhere for a while,
then formed my own Cirebon-style group that performed in Jakarta,
Yogyakarta and elsewhere. Eventually, I hooked up with an
experimental theater group in Bali, then went back to school. I
applied to Wesleyan University in Connecticut for an
ethnomusicology program and won a scholarship. After getting my
Masters degree there, I taught at Cornell for a year, then toured
Europe with the La Mama theater experimental group from New York
and finally came back to Indonesia to take a position teaching
ethnomusicology at the Universitas Sumatera Utara in Medan. After
three years there, I decided to work toward a doctorate in the
field at the University of Washington. I'm finishing up my
dissertation now."

Endo says that wayang holds particular fascination for him
because it also includes so many other cultural elements -- music
and puppetry that may touch on such subjects as religious
beliefs, local agricultural practices and politics on both the
local and international levels.

"On the one hand, scholars consider wayang in its purest form
to be one of the highly refined court arts. But to me, it's
definitely a village-based tradition. For example, many of the
functions that wayang cepak serves in the Cirebon area have
nothing at all to do with court life. In the old days, many
dalangs (puppeteers) were hired to perform at ceremonies like
marriages and circumcisions. Now, though, the reason for
arranging a performance is more likely to serve some broader
traditional religious function connected with day-to-day life in
a village. For instance, a committee of local people might
arrange a show as part of an exorcism."

"Believe it or not, there are 33 different circumstances which
call for an exorcism of some sort, to clear the air of evil
spirits and influences. If a person is born an only child, that
situation eventually needs to be taken care of. If you're born as
one in a pair of boys or one in a pair of girls -- or even if
you're half of a pair of boy and girl -- or if a child is born in
a breech birth or born entangled in the umbilical cord, a sort of
exorcism is required, just to be on the safe side. Staging a
wayang show is a good way to handle this, to intercede with the
spirits who might be hanging around."

"If there's a newborn child in the village, it might well be
carried to the stage during a performance for a kind of blessing.
The dalang might even be asked to suggest a name for the child.
The stage, you see, is viewed as a place holding great power
during a performance. But after the puppet troupe leaves at the
end of an all-night show, the area is regarded as especially
empty, with all spirits having temporarily fled from the scene.

"There are also shows held in conjunction with the beginning
of planting or the approach of the rice harvest or serious
illness in the village. Shows are often held in local graveyards,
too. There are even certain shows performed at road
intersections, which are seen as important places spiritually in
Cirebon, just as they are in Bali. The problem is that as belief
in these things diminishes, there are fewer and fewer jobs for
the dalangs who arrange the shows. And for weddings,
circumcisions and holidays, people these days often prefer to see
other kinds of shows -- dangdut music, for example. In fact, they
might even just rent a large-screen video set-up instead because
it costs less and the logistics are simpler."

Endo says that there a still a couple of wayang troupes that
stay very busy, maybe giving as many as 200 performances a year.
There are perhaps five or six dalangs that still play 100 shows
annually and maybe another ten who do 40 shows a year. But out of
this total, there might be only twenty or thirty full-scale
wayang cepak performances every year. Some dalangs -- Mansyur and
Basyari from Gesik, Sudin from Selangit and Anom Rusdi and his
brother Tomo from Indramayu -- use Cirebon-style shadow puppets.

One of the most popular of the older dalangs carrying on the
wayang cepak tradition is Ali Wijaya from Losari. He's now 74
years old and has lost all his teeth -- but he's still very
strong and does maybe two shows a month. Kamarudin, also from
Losari, gets lots of work too. In Cirebon, the dalangs most in
demand are probably Marta, Ahmadi and Warsad. If you really want
to understand more about this tradition, you should try to visit
Warsad in his own village. His two young sons are now carving
puppets, too.

Sad to say, Warsad is about the only carver who's still
creating really good wayang cepak puppets on a continuing basis.
Other carvers aren't as productive. They have to wait for special
orders to come in. In the meantime, they earn their livings by
farming or driving becak (pedicab).

-- Paul W. Blair