Banyuwangi residents turn tables on story mocking their traditions

By Antariksawan Jusuf

JAKARTA (JP): A female dancer, donning a reddish sarong with a typical golden Balinese batik pattern, opens the traditional opera. Other dancers, clad in multiple layers of clothing, remind the audience of Drama Gong opera dancers of Bali. The accompanying musical instruments are part of a Balinese gamelan orchestra which plays a Balinese tune. The characters of the opera speak in an upper-Javanese dialect. In between acts, they sing popular songs in Using, the language of the Banyuwangi who live in the easternmost part of Java. Is this a multiregional folk art performance?

Welcome to the world of Banyuwangi traditional opera called Damarwulan. The name was derived from a fictitious character that played an important role in the story of the opera. In the original story, written by a man from Surakarta in the 1700s, Damarwulan managed to end the supremacy of Menak Jinggo, the mighty king of Banyuwangi, which was then called the Blambangan kingdom, by beheading him. The accomplice of the murder was Menak Jinggo's wife who helped provide Damarwulan with Menak Jinggo's powerful arm, The Yellow Bludgeon. The story has it that Menak Jinggo was immortal unless he was killed with his own bludgeon.

During a recent performance at the East Java pavilion in Taman Mini Indonesia Indah (TMII), the opera portrayed the story of Wong Agung Wilis, a hero of Blambangan. The performance of the troupe was presented by Banyuwangi's tourism department in cooperation with the region's Ministry of National Education.

Damarwulan has been one of the most popular aspects of folk art in Banyuwangi besides the Gandrung erotic dance, angklung (bamboo instrument), barong mask dance and the patrol or hadrah kuntulan. Since it came into existence in the 1920s, it has been a subject of controversy. It was to blame for causing the disappearance of a similar folk art performance called Ande-ande Lumut.

Written from a viewpoint of a non-Blambangan resident, its storyline cast the Blambangan kingdom as a renegade region which lost the battle against the more powerful Majapahit kingdom. Menak Jinggo was also depicted as having a humiliating physical appearance of a dog-like face, fangs and a limp.

Although most people believe that the Balinese influence dated back to the early 1700s during the occupation of the Balinese kingdom of Mengwi in Blambangan, Damarwulan was purely a product of creativity of adaptation, according to historian and Banyuwangi expert Hasan Ali.

Ali said a proponent of Damarwulan was the late Darji, the grandfather of B.S Nurdian, one of the outstanding song composers of the contemporary Banyuwangi songs. Darji, a leader of an Ande- ande Lumut traditional troupe, was also a cattle trader who often visited Bali, which was a source of abundant half-wild cows. "This is how Damarwulan got the Balinese influence," said Ali, who has been the chairman of the Blambangan Art Council for 20 years.

Damarwulan opera took its dramatic change in the depiction of king Menak Jinggo in mid-1970 when the Banyuwangi realized that the Damarwulan story was an insult to them. "It was such an irony that the Banyuwangi people loved the insulting story," Ali said.

So Menak Jinggo has now turned into the handsome, powerful and undefeated king of Blambangan. And he vanished before Damarwulan, who stole Menak Jinggo's bludgeon, could kill him.

"The story of Damarwulan is a fictitious romance picking up several real characters such as Bhra Wirabhumi and Ronggolawe. But most of the characters are fictional, like Damarwulan, Kencono Wungu and Aryo Logender. These names are not mentioned whatsoever in history," Ali said.

"It is a fictional piece and we counterattack with more fiction," said Ali.