Javanese in Suriname strive to preserve origins

Javanese in Suriname strive to preserve origins

By Santo Koesoebjono

PARAMARIBO (JP): The sound of the gamelan music was alluring
on a sultry evening in Marinburg in a rural area some 20km east
of Suriname's capital.

There was a full moon. Scores of descendants of Javanese
indentured laborers had come to attend a wayang kulit (shadow
puppet) performance.

The festivity was part of the tradition called bersih desa
(cleaning the village) held after the fasting month. The majority
of the audience were the elderly, whose emotional attachment to
their culture of origin is stronger than that of their children
and grandchildren.

The performance took place in the illuminated open hall in the
home of a Javanese family. People sat on floor mats or chairs,
facing the grouped leather puppets neatly arranged on banana
trunks. They watched the show from behind the dalang (puppet
master) and gamelan (musical instruments) players.

On the other side of the screen a number of women played cards
for money. Others watched television. Children played under the
street lamp outside. The hostess putting on this traditional
event offered all the guests a meal comprising a plate of rice
with three different dishes, dessert and soft drinks. In the
meantime, the gamelan continued playing and the pesinden (female
singers) singing and smoking before the wayang performance
started at ten o'clock.

The puppet master was dressed in traditional Javanese costume.
The other six male gamelan players wore a combination of Javanese
and western dress and the singers the usual Javanese kebaya
dress.

During the entire performance that lasted until three o'clock
in the morning, the puppet master told the story in high
Javanese. The dalang must be one of the very few people who speak
high Javanese as most Javanese in Suriname speak the middle and
lower level varieties.

A friend in his 30s said that he did not understand what the
dalang was saying.

"In the past the wayang performance lasted for almost twenty
four hours," explained the organizer "but it would be too
strenuous nowadays".

The Javanese tradition as practiced in Suriname, a country
four times the size of West Java located in northeast South
America has developed along its own lines.

These traditions were passed down by the first generation
Javanese that migrated to Suriname between 1890 and 1939. The
stories and knowledge of shadow puppetry and gamelan as well as
other expressions of tradition such as jaran kepang ("horse
dancing") and tayuban (courtship dance), are passed from one
generation to another.

Because the cultural heritage passed through tradition,
various aspects have become blurred and missing from the original
and new interpretations have arisen in the course of time. The
interpretations of traditions and the use of words vary by
community, reflecting differences in ancestral places of origin
and the formal practice of Islam.

Anthropologist Dew notes in his book The Difficult Flowering
of Suriname that the practice of traditions such as slametan
(thanksgiving), tayuban and other ceremonies has divided the
reformist and traditionalist Javanese Muslims. A third generation
descendant says that the reformists tend to practice Javanese
mysticism (kejawen) that has become part of the practice of
Islam.

Lack of equipment and skills to make leather puppets have
forced the artists to look for alternatives. There is no artist
specialized in carving leather puppets, according to painter-
sculptor Soeki Irodikromo who studied batik techniques at ASRI in
Jogyakarta in 1979/80.

The 80 year-old set of leather puppets used at this
performance is therefore very much treasured. This set, like the
gamelan musical instruments, is often rented by communities
conducting a wayang show. Also the puppet master and the singer
travel all over the country for shows. To organize such an
evening means hiring performers and renting materials from
different communities and it requires good logistics.

This shows the person's love of their cultural heritage and
the strong bond among the Javanese.

The younger generation shows little interest in learning to
play gamelan or perform traditional Javanese dances. This
endangers the sustainability and further development of Javanese
culture in Suriname.

The education system and lifestyle of the younger generation
alienate them from their Javanese tradition, culture and
language. They speak the official language (Dutch) at school and
at work. They may speak some Javanese at home and the Sranantongo
dialect with friends or at the market and shops.

"My children had to learn Dutch when they entered school. As
small kids they spoke Sranantongo. Must we then burden them with
learning Javanese, too?" a parent asked.

According to Soeki the association of Javanese immigrants
(VHJI) regularly organizes courses in gamelan, dances and the
Javanese martial art pencak-silat in Sena Budaya community center
in Paramaribo to stimulate the interest of youths in Javanese
culture.

Looking at the growing number of youngsters of Javanese and
non-Javanese descent participating in these lessons, Soeki feels
quite optimistic. The center is equipped with a set of gamelan
donated by the Indonesian government and has been used for the
activities for some time.

Moekti Moertini, an employee at the Indonesian Embassy said
she was also optimistic about the activities. During her first
year in Paramaribo she has regularly organized courses on dances,
including contemporary Javanese dances. Some 20 women aged
between 10 and 25 years coming from different ethnic groups
participated in the ten-week course.

Recently a one-month course held during holidays received
wide publicity in the media. "A crash course in Javanese dance
created by Bagong," Moertini said proudly.

Scarcity of dalang and experts in Javanese culture hampers the
Indonesian Embassy from organizing gamelan courses. Due to
limited resources these cultural activities can only reach people
living in Paramaribo and its surroundings.

The present Javanese people are descendants of young men and
women mostly originating from Central and East Java, lured and
deceived into working in plantations in far away Suriname by the
Dutch colonial administrators. They were promised riches by the
end of the five-year contract when they would return to their
villages. These promises turned out to be false.

By the end of the contract they were not rich, they felt
ashamed to go home without money and, moreover, there were no
ships to take them back home. So they were forced to stay. The
large majority of the migrants remained, got married and formed
the Javanese diaspora.

"My grandfather met my grandmother on the ship or at the
plantation," is a remark frequently made by the younger
generation. Those who can afford it have visited Indonesia to see
their ancestors' places of origin. The present economic and
political situation in Suriname as well as in Indonesia may
reduce the number of these visits.

The desire to see their ancestors' place of origin is very
strong although most people do not know where that place might
be. These ancestors had neither pictures nor home addresses and
their children were not alert enough to ask about their origins.

Someone has even raised a question whether it is possible to
have a grandparent whose skin was dark and had curly hair. This
person did not take into account that not all contract laborers
came from Java.

At present the Javanese form the third largest ethnic group in
Suriname after Creoles and Hindus of Indian origin, and represent
some 20 percent of the total population of around 400,000. In
contrast to the Hindus, who also arrived there as indentured
laborers, the history of the Javanese in Suriname is still poorly
documented.

The struggle to maintain and develop the Javanese culture and
language can also be illustrated by the presence of three radio
stations that use the language. They advertise forthcoming
Javanese cultural performances in the country, requests for music
and obituaries. They also broadcast western pop music translated
into Javanese.

Cassettes with most recent Javanese pop are very much in
demand in shops and at the Sunday market in northern Paramaribo
where most vendors are of Javanese origin. People sing and hum
the songs of the popular singer Didi Kempot who has visited
Suriname three times.

"You know, the language he uses and the words he chooses are
touching. He is part of us", said a Javanese employee of an
international organization.

Next to music, consumer goods are also imported from
Indonesia, such as garments, furniture and recently Kijang cars.
"The balance of trade is in favor of Indonesia," said a diplomat
at the Indonesian embassy.

The Javanese in Suriname show a strong desire to know about
Javanese ethics, philosophy of life and thoughts. Negara Express
magazine of the broadcasting company Garuda publishes in each
issue a lesson in Javanese next to other informative articles
such as a Javanese bedtime story kancil (mouse deer) and
Javanese days (pasaran).

Since 1980 the Indonesian Embassy has been providing a course
in Bahasa Indonesia for beginners and advanced students in
Paramaribo and in a township with a high concentration of
Javanese some 20 kilometers south of the capital city.

Nowadays most teachers are alumni of these courses. These
laudable efforts apart, descendants of the Javanese are very much
interested in learning about their origins in terms of tradition,
culture and language. Whether they do this in search of their
roots or merely out of curiosity is debatable.

Referring to the first generation Javanese, anthropologist Dew
notes that perhaps more than the formal practice of Islam, the
reconstitution of many of the traditional folk institutions known
in Java provided bonds that held the Javanese community together
vis-a-vis the other ethnic groups.

The writer is an economist-demographer based in the
Netherlands. He visited Suriname as consultant to a government
organization.