Sundanese culture slowly disappears from home

BANDUNG (JP): Listening to well-known Sundanese artist Nano S. play at flute recitals is becoming increasingly rare for local people as he mostly performs in Japan and other countries.

Nano is only one of many Sundanese artists who rarely perform in their hometown of Bandung, the center of Sundanese culture.

Cultural observer Ajip Rosidi expressed concern for the state of Sundanese art and culture nowadays, saying that the artists are indifferent to the gloomy outlook for the culture itself.

"Some artists and even the West Java administration only regard the arts as a commodity. They are too preoccupied with selling Sundanese art to foreign tourists and collecting dollars, despite the stagnant process of cultural transformation," he said in fluent Sundanese.

Ajip, who now lives in Japan, said he had thought more seriously of the inheritance of Sundanese culture since he began heading a Sundanese encyclopedia project. The book, which contains 3,451 entries, was published last year and became the first ethnic encyclopedia in Indonesia.

While preparing this encyclopedia he realized that a large amount of Sundanese art and culture was no longer in existence. For example, babaran -- a mask dance that was performed by street dancers in Cirebon so that they could earn a living during a famine caused by a prolonged drought -- has been extinct since 1970.

A bureaucrat in the Cirebon administration banned the dance, believing that it lowered the nation's dignity.

Today we can only find former babaran dancers, such as the elderly Rasinah. The regeneration of these traditional dancers has come to a standstill. The same goes for other kinds of Sundanese artforms.

In the present community, Sundanese has been destroyed by modern culture. This is demonstrated at wedding parties or circumcision-related ceremonies where people opt for dangdut music group instead of shadow-puppet or wooden puppet performances.

Lack of books

Ajip also criticized the current scarcity of books written in Sundanese. In 1931, he said, the total Sundanese population in West Java was still below 10 million people but some 4,000 copies of books were published in the local language every year. Today, however, the West Java population has reached 22 million but less than 1,000 copies of books are published in Sundanese annually.

"Every year only a maximum of 10 titles are published, which has caused difficulty in awarding the Rancage Prize to a suitable author," said Ajip, who is also chairperson of the Rancage Cultural Foundation, an organization seeking to preserve the Sundanese culture. The prize is awarded annually to the best Sundanese writer.

A lack of Sundanese literature -- which is the most effective means to communicate a culture -- is significantly responsible for the decreasing interest in reading among the people, particularly the young.

"In the past, the literacy level was low but the ratio of people who could read Sundanese letters was large. Today, some 80 percent of Sundanese are literate, while those able to read Sundanese has decreased substantially," Ajip noted.

Ganjar Kurnia, chairman of the Center for Studies and Promotion of West Javanese Culture (P3KJB), shares the same concern.

"It's true that we are facing a bad situation. Many young Sundanese have abandoned their indigenous culture. They have become unfamiliar with their own traditions. This really is a sad phenomenon," Ganjar said.

The center's research has revealed that most Sundanese families in major cities in West Java no longer raise their children according to the original culture.

These children, for example, are not even taught how to speak Sundanese. "It's harmful to our cultural regeneration. Who will preserve our culture?" Ganjar said.

The center's research also showed that 30 percent of some 300 Sundanese artforms were extinct because they were not passed on to the younger generation.

"Apart from languages, traditional arts can ethnologically distinguish the Sundanese from the Javanese, for example," he said.

Conference

In an effort to preserve the culture, Rancage Foundation is now holding an international conference on Sundanese culture under the theme of Passing on Sundanese Culture Amid Globalization from Aug. 22 to Aug. 25 here.

Sixty-six papers on Sundanese culture and art are being presented in the conference, which is being attended by observers from the Netherlands, Germany, Japan, the United States and Australia.

Ajip did not pin much hope on the conference in terms of the promotion and preservation of Sundanese culture.

"We only want to make the Sundanese realize that their culture is on the verge of extinction," he said, adding that the fund for the conference was raised through sales of the Sundanese Encyclopedia, priced at Rp 5 million (US$593) a copy, to sponsors.

Ganjar, a lecturer of Bandung-based state Padjadjaran University, hoped that the conference would come up with suggestions for the West Java administration to promote Sundanese culture. He said the administration has done little in fostering Sundanese culture.

"We urgently need a cultural strategy. I hope the ideas introduced by observers at the conference will eventually be introduced to the community as the spearhead in the preservation of traditional culture," he said. (Yuli Tri Suwarni)