Denpasar -- center of modern, traditional culture

Denpasar -- center of modern, traditional culture

By Degung Santikarma

DENPASAR, Bali (JP): I can still remember clearly the image we
had of Denpasar when we were kids. In those days -- before the
word "tourist" became part of our everyday vocabularies --
Denpasar was our ultimate dream destination.

It represented all that was strange and modern, foreign and
familiar, our history as well as our future. And I can still
remember, just like it was yesterday, the morning my uncle woke
us up to take us to witness the wonders of the city. Full of
excitement, we put on our best shirts -- the ones we usually
saved for ceremonies at the village temple -- and boarded the
beat-up old bus that was the city's first public transportation.

Eagerly we hung our heads out the windows, ogling the
spectacles that lined the streets. There were electric lamps that
shed a magical glow against the asphalted pavement. There was the
movie theater where Hollywood cowboys fired their pistols and
Bombay lovers sang their sad songs, and the building where the
bureaucrats churned out information and counted things we had
never realized needed to be counted.

There were three-wheeled bemos speeding towards the
university, where students gathered to discuss things we
understood well but did not yet have the words for: Freedom,
democracy, oppression and corruption.

In those days, Denpasar was famed as a center of both modern
commerce and traditional culture. It was where you could browse
the shops lining Jalan Gadjah Mada for goods from all the corners
of the world: Japanese motorbikes and radios; American jeans and
high-heeled shoes; Javanese tempeh and Chinese medicine.

It was where, if you were lucky, you could sneak past the
security to catch a glimpse of the legong dancers whirling in the
courtyard of the Bali Hotel, the island's first modern
accommodations.

It was where the Bali Museum guarded the treasures of the
past, and the governor's office issued five-year plans for the
future. And Denpasar was also a meeting place for other people
like us, people who had come to the city to be at the center of
things.

There were traders from far-flung villages, who set the
markets abuzz with the sounds of their bargaining and the ringing
of the bells from their horse-drawn dokar carts.

There was the Arab neighborhood, the Chinese neighborhood and
the Javanese neighborhood, where strange spices and languages
that sounded odd to our ears filled the air. Denpasar was where,
for the first time, we set eyes upon Westerners -- the
sophisticated travelers who prowled the back alleys searching for
authentic Balinese art and the hippies who wandered the nighttime
streets seeking authentic Eastern experience.

And Denpasar was where we first encountered young Balinese who
were trying to leave the old ways behind, by growing their hair
long and trading their sarongs to the hippies for Levi's jeans,
T-shirts and lessons in English slang.

These days, of course, the image of Denpasar is decidedly less
glamorous. The tourist guide book wisdom is that the smart
traveler should head from the airport straight for the cultured
hills of Ubud or the cosmopolitan shores of Kuta.

In fact, Denpasar, with its traffic, crime and commercialism,
is now seen less as the capital of Bali than as just another
crowded, unhygienic Third World city, a generic disaster whose
same sad story can be seen repeated all over the earth. Denpasar,
the guide books say, has been corrupted by the West to such an
extent that it is no longer even "authentically Balinese".

And it is not just the tourists who dismiss Denpasar, but many
Balinese as well. Recently, while visiting a village near Ubud, I
met a woman who complained about the burden of her traditional
obligations, which included making hundreds of ritual offerings
and contributing hundreds of thousands of rupiah each week for
family and community ceremonies.

"Here in Ubud we have to protect our culture to show the
foreign visitors the real Bali. But if I lived in Denpasar," she
said wistfully, "I wouldn't have to spend so much time and money
on ritual." It was as if, once you crossed the city limits,
culture no longer existed. It was almost as if, I thought, where
there were no tourists to witness ceremonies, you needn't bother
to hold them at all.

But in keeping with the spirit of reformasi (reform), Denpasar
is now to be remodeled. The newly elected mayor from the
Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), Anak Agung
Puspayoga, recently announced a plan to make Denpasar into a
"Cultural City".

To restore a sense of pride to the city's inhabitants and
renovate its tarnished image in the eyes of the wider world,
Denpasar is being encouraged to return to its Balinese roots.

By exhorting the populace to mount painting exhibitions,
practice their dance skills, dust off their gamelan instruments
that have fallen into disuse and re-renovate their homes,
forsaking the rumah kantor (office house) style, that, with its
sparkling ceramic and chrome cleanliness became popular under the
hygiene-obsessed New Order, for a little genuine Balinese thatch
and timber, Denpasar, it is hoped, will be able to once again
hold its own in the competitive modern market of cultural
tourism.

But what kind of "culture" will this Cultural City showcase?
For while the mayor's plan is being hailed as a reformist policy,
it is actually, in many ways, a reiteration of aims articulated
by the previous New Order regime, which used a concept of culture
to organize and control its citizens.

Under Soeharto's government, "culture" was seen as both the
source of Denpasar's problems and the cure for its ills. Local
bureaucrats warned about the city's "traffic jam culture," its
"flood culture," its "criminal culture" and its "corruption
culture".

They encouraged people to develop an "orderly parking
culture," a "cleanliness culture" and a "waiting-in-line
culture." Culture became a command, something to paste on
billboards urging people to "culturalize" themselves in the name
of order, development and submission.

Culture became a possession, like a fine piece of artwork one
could lose if one was not careful, or have stolen if one did not
guard it against the threat of outsiders. Used as a tool of
policy, "cultures" were singular and mutually exclusive, rather
than overlapping.

They were less about what people did everyday -- work,
socialize and sometimes fight -- than about the monuments they
sometimes produced: Temples, rituals, works of art or dance or
drama. And culture, of course, was what Bali could use to bait
the hook of "cultural tourism".

By performing traditional dances and traditional ceremonies,
by playing traditional music and painting traditional paintings,
the Balinese could convert their culture into foreign currency.

I can't help, though, when hearing of plans like this,
remembering the Denpasar of my childhood. To be sure, it wasn't
especially clean, nor was it especially orderly. But was it not a
city of culture? Was it not, in fact, a city of many cultures,
each with its own special shading, blending into a colorful
weave?

Back in the days before we knew the word "tourist," we were,
it seems, much less concerned with presenting ourselves as
"Balinese", with "culturalizing" ourselves into a particular
pattern. We knew who we were -- friends, family, neighbors -- but
our "identity" was not something we needed to polish and shine
and define and defend against others.

Even if we were not artists -- and most of us weren't -- we
still felt there were precious things that brought us pride in
our world.