Sundanese culture slowly disappears from home

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)