In the morning, we broke into smaller groups to study specific instruments. One half of the group worked on gender wayang, which is played with a mallet in each hand and traditionally accompanies shadow plays. The other half worked on gamelan selonding, an older and very sacred form of gamelan with iron-keyed instruments and no gong or drum. I found both of them very challenging — I spent the entire wayang lesson just trying to figure out how to hold the mallet properly — but the teachers practiced with me until I started to get the hang of it and seemed very excited when I finally did.
Gamelan selonding.
Gender wayang.
The priest of the Pura Dalam, the village’s temple dedicated to Shiva, came to have lunch and speak with us about the origin of Siwaratri and the practices of prayer in Balinese Hinduism. He also expressed his thanks to Çudamani and Swarthmore for bringing a wayang performance to the village, since it can be difficult for a village to host them regularly. He said he hoped having the performance would encourage more of the people of the village to go to the temples. Both he and Pak Dewa expressed concerns that Balinese people are ignoring or abandoning their traditions in the pursuit of money with the commercialization of the island.
Later that evening, we returned to Sanggar Çudamani where Pak Wija, the dalang (puppetmaster), and his entourage of wayang musicians joined us for dinner. It was a hot, stormy evening, and we heard thunder for a long time before the rain finally broke and cooled things down a little. However, there was still lightning in the sky when we went to the bale banjar (village meeting space) to watch the wayang kulit. Pak Wija and the musicians were set up behind a cotton screen with a burning coconut oil lamp on a raised stage at one end of the banjar and the audience, a good number of people from the village including many children, sat on the other side to watch the shadows. Mr. Kam very kindly kept us updated on what was going on via a tv screen hooked up to his computer where he typed summaries of each scene and even managed to communicate some of the jokes. Over the approximately three hours of performance, Pak Wija demonstrated his range of intricate puppets, varied character voices, and complicated wordplay. Amazingly, the performance was mostly improvised, with the puppetmaster planning out only the outlines of the story and message he wants to tell beforehand and the musicians not knowing at all what the story will be. Nonetheless, the music was seamless and the jokes were definitely landing with the Balinese audience. (There was apparently a fair amount of raunchy humor that particularly delighted the little boys making up the front row.) The effect of the flickering puppets paired with Pak Wija’s voice singing, talking, scatting, or making animal sounds, with the thunderous orchestra coming in unexpectedly, was extremely impressive.
Pak Wija and his musicians behind the screen.
Scenes from the wayang kulit.
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