The Power of Drums: Jaipong Bajidoran Between Karawang and Subang
Recordings by Luigi Monteanni
Photos and videos by Gigi Priadji
Note: I’m happy to revive Aural Archipelago once again from its COVID-era slumber to welcome a guest post by my friend Luigi Monteanni. Luigi is an Italian ethnomusicologist who swept into Bandung right as I moved to Jogja a few years ago; literally moving into my old house, Luigi was soon mingling with all of the artists and musical worlds that had made the city for me, and was soon putting me to shame as he effortlessly picked up Indonesian and Sundanese, studied tarompet, and made a deep dive into scenes whose surface I had just barely scratched. In all my time in West Java, I never got to attend a proper bajidoran show, so I was happy to live vicariously through Luigi as he explored that world for us. Luigi teamed up with Gigi Priadji, Bandung’s foremost musical documentarian, to present us with an audio-visual treat that should transport you to the sweaty, distortion-filled nights of northwest coastal Java. Enjoy!
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Location: Subang/Karawang, West Java
Sound: Bajidoran
Bajidoran, often referred to as jaipong bajidoran, is one of a number of music and dance performances often referred to in Indonesian as tradisi modern, or modern forms of tradition. Highly representative of the Parahyangan/Priangan area and Sundanese party culture at its core, the style focuses on dance, drum patterns and a very humorous and erotic atmosphere. Whoever has had the pleasure to attend a bajidoran show – and specially one outside the uncomfortably institutional cultural events of big cities like Bandung – can confirm that the style is alive, lively and enthralling. It manages to bring together different strata of the population, sometimes in very large crowds, to dance together to one of the biggest, grooviest and loudest musical ensembles in West Java.
Bajidoran is very much loved among and supported by the Sundanese people. This not only has to do with a genuine need for partying without the usual restraints, compromises and inhibitions that normally would characterize everyday life, but it also involves different levels of socialization and fruition through which construction and experience of social order/disorder, sexuality, gender and even a bit of mysticism eventually show up.
THE MUSIC, THE ENSEMBLE AND THE STYLE
Musically, the style results from a mix of ketuk tilu drumming, kliningan or jaipongan singing and gamelan salendro. Many of the musicians I interviewed also explained the genesis of bajidoran music as the progressive integration of various styles: ketuk tilu, pencak silat, jaipong (which itself is a mix of ketuk tilu and pencak silat) and kliningan. On the other hand, many of my interlocutors – including many bajidoran, dangdut and jaipong players, both young and old – sometimes made the claim that bajidoran actually preceded jaipong.
In order to solve this apparent paradox, Ismet Ruchimat - one of the founders of the supergroup Samba Sunda and “bamboo music” guru at ISBI Bandung - explained to me that the history of bajidoran can be interpreted on two levels: first we have one of musical development – which is defined by changes in the formation of the progressively growing ensemble and on the musical differences between the previously discussed styles.
Secondly, we have one of the socialization and social construction of the event as a component of Sundanese culture. From this perspective, bajidoran is not (only) a musical style but more an attitude and a component of social life, in which the ways of organizing and participating in the event would define the event itself as bajidoran. In this sense, the element of nyawer and the role of the bajidor are taken as the defining components of the style and so are essential to the style's existence. Almost for the same reason, the fact that bajidoran makes use of jaipong dances explains the use of the term jaipong bajidoran.
A bajidoran ensemble is usually composed of something like thirty members: the crew is divided into musicians, technicians (who may or may not also be part of the musical ensemble) and dancers/penari. The musical ensemble is composed of a variable number of instruments: usually two medium saron or saron barung, a large saron or saron demung, bonang (a selection of small kettle gongs), selentrem, goong, up to four kecrek (a stack of iron plates hit with a wooden hammer; often obtained from random pieces of iron or more usually from motorbike brakes), two kendang, kentrung (a set of additional kulanter played with a stick), rebab (a bowed string instrument), gambang (a xylophone-like wooden instrument), the MC and a sinden (juruh kawih) or main female singer.
It is interesting to note how the kendang “talking drum” - whose lower drumhead on the main drum (kendang indung) can be adjusted to regulate the pressure of the player's left heel on the percussion’s skin - is known to be able to imitate language to cue certain movements. In such a manner, in a codified and non representative way, young Sundanese slowly learn from an early age to interpret the rhythmic cues as suggested movements. In fact, particular movements seem to suggest convenient comparisons with the corresponding drum patterns. The kendang can also express what is called “tepak kocak”: sequences and patterns capable of being translated and understood as proper jokes and sentences. According to some musicians, some of these sequences also communicate sexual innuendos and even pornographic content.
Finally, much as in jaipongan, the clash between the salendro gamelan scale and madenda singing generates the so-called “adumanis”: a “sweet conflict” that creates a sense of “tastyness” (enak/raos) derived by the perception of the two scales colliding. This tension combines with an iconic element of bajidoran found in the high pitched hits of the kendang: players customize cheap microphones by replacing the inner compressor, obtaining a high frequency “kranky” clipping sound. What’s more, pesinden and MC both have short distance and feedback lo-fi delays coming from the send/return channels of the mixer, a technical element common to many other musical genres in Java.
All these factors unite with the signature huge, powerful but clipping/fried soundsystem to make bajidoran really hard to record.At the same time, this means that its unique and hypnotizing sound and magic disappear when the same songs are recorded in a studio.
The genre’s name allegedly comes from Ba-ji-dor, a Sundanese acronym (called kirata) which can be rendered as the union of the words BArisan JIwa DURhaka (row of rebels) or BAJIngan DORaka (sinful bad guys), indicating the on-the-loose and often chaotic attitude of the participants, or bajidor. These bajidor take part in the show by dancing and paying for the ongoing spectacle by tipping (nyawer/sawer) both the female dancers (penari) and the on-stage ensemble. The tips are given in order to perform a mincid: a free-form dance taking place at the overture of every song. During the mincid - also called pencugan - the dancer and one of the two kendang (barrel-shaped drum) players both influence each other through improvising complex interlocking rhythms and moves.
Bajidoran is one of many musical performances that are organized to celebrate hajatan - Muslim Sundanese life-cycle milestone celebrations such as circumcisions or weddings - or for more institutional occasions (institutions’ birthdays or festivals for Indonesia's independence day). Nevertheless, bajidoran is a thoroughly modern genre heavily influenced by contemporary and transnational pop styles. I have, for example, come to acknowledge that Namin Group's (maybe the most well-known bajidoran group today) low and rhythmic gong may come from the idea of imitating the tone of an electric bass guitar.
THE SONG’S STRUCTURE AND THE MINCID
The show usually starts with a pembukaan, a long opening song during which the penari and sinden remain off-stage. During this very long piece the gamelan salendro ensemble, along with additional percussion, exhibits virtuoso explosions of beats alternating with the charismatic onomatopoeic beat-boxing of the MC. During this more classical piece usually we are able to see suling (bamboo flute) being played, a rare sight during the show.
During this opening, the group prepares the audience for the show and tries to get its immediate attention, as the audience is seen not only as people to honour but also as potential sources of income. After the opening, the proper show takes place. Penari and sinden join the stage and the event starts. The repertoire is composed of songs in the Sundanese tradition common to many other musical styles – and specifically folk compositions such as Wangsit Siliwangi or Bangbung hideung which are largely believed to represent the real core of Sundanese music. Lately, the ensembles and groups also started to feature dangdut hits, pop Sunda and Sunda rock songs according to the latest preferences of the audience.
Every song is composed of a fixed structure, opening with a pangkat or intro, followed by the pangjadi or bridge from one song to another. The first groove, during which the pesinden starts to sing, is called bubukaan and features the mincid. Any man or woman can pay the ensemble by giving money to the MC and the penari (or even by throwing them on the kendang ) to receive permission to perform the improvisational bajidoran dance. The bajidor ties the scarf to himself in various ways or places it around his neck, paying respect to the audience and ensemble by greeting them with his hands joined; he then starts dancing. The movements are mostly inspired by pencak silat moves, Indonesia’s most iconic martial art, but can also feature free movements of the hands, shoulders, limbs, face, eyes and pelvis. In the meantime, the song can continue while the kendang player performs improvised patterns that respond or guide the dancer.
This phase is very delicate and fascinating, an opportunity to watch unpredictable and acrobatic dance performances or humorous pantomimic sets of movements which loosely remind one of Japanese kabuki or bunraku: the performer would complete small parts of the entire dance dividing them with a stylized final move expressing the move’s or joke's climactic tension. The dancer can equally close the mincid segments by performing a complex and particularly choreographic pencak silat move as well as by using their pelvis and rear to add an equally erotic and comic nuance to their performance.
In both cases, the audience responds at the end of each section with generous applause. It is very difficult, during the mincid, to understand if it's the kendang influencing the movement of the dancer or the dancer influencing the improvisation of the kendang. The reason behind this is that a good dancer would know the moves, songs and percussion patterns so well as to give the perception that he is controlling the drums and so leading the improvisation. Seeing a very experienced dancer really gives the idea that an entire ensemble is waiting to receive instructions by his body and facial expressions, almost like a conductor working through dance.
When the dancer has finished, he can pass the scarf back to the MC or directly to another person among the audience. In this last case the person should not refuse to dance even if he or she is not willing to. This would in fact mean being rude to the organizers and hosts, to the ensemble and last but not least to the form of socialization that the event creates. This last component has much to do with the concept of kaul or “putting oneself on display to honour another”. Kaul as an idea is strongly connected to elements of comedic embarrassment, humbleness and positive submission to the wishes of another in order to honour them. In this auto-ironic environment, to be teased and roasted is equivalent to being accepted. Alternatively, a dancer on stage can take this role and exhibit herself in complex moves and combinations before a member of the audience starts the next pencugan.
After this first phase, the “naekeun” or groove follows. The tempo accelerates and doubles until the audience, completely still up to that moment, abruptly rushes the stage to dance and tip the dancers two thousand rupiah at a time. The dancers, having moved to the front in order to collect the money, shake their hands together with the paying audience. This action, which is a form of respect and support, at the same time allows men to peek into the dancers' neckline, which are usually very generous, and to have bodily contact with the penari.
At a certain point, the dancer would interrupt the handshake in order for the bajidor to tip her again. At this point, while the first line of penari is busy collecting the tips, the rest of them dances in the back. After this phase, whose duration may depend on the number of bajidoran, there is the ngereunkeun or the finish, and the song is wrapped up. The people return to their seats, eager for it all to be repeated again.
TRIPING AND OTHER INTERESTING ELEMENTS
One other interesting point to discuss is the element of triping, the Indonesian/Sundanese adaptation of the English word “tripping.” Triping is a relatively new dance style that seems to have been invented and developed from bajidoran shows as a choreographic interpretation of the euphoric state induced by the drug ecstasy. As an explanation regarding the interrelation between bajidoran and tripping, it has been said that the latter is an inextricable component of the rhythm of house music. While today I surely don't know the percentage of people actually using ecstasy (in Indonesia XTC or IndEcs) at bajidoran parties, I am quite positive that it would only be a tiny minority of participants, as the majority genuinely prefer to get drunk. Regardless, it is an interesting confirmation of the extent to which the phenomenon of bajidoran (as jaipong had before it) is progressively developing as a mixture of traditional music and pop dance genres.
The structure of bajidoran shows is very strict: I have seen group members showing anger and disapproval after some dancers moved to the front to collect tips before it was time. In between songs, the MC greets the audience and single people such as the organizers, institutional authorities or famous people, inviting them to actively participate. He also goes around in the last phase of the song collecting tips from the dancers. A bajidoran show can cost a lot of money, with the organizers having to pay the group (Namin Group, the most famous bajidoran group in history, gets upwards of 5 million rupiah per show), in addition to the stage and the permits to organize the event. Despite the high price tag, the genre is so beloved that people may also search for families of marrying couples or children to be circumcised to pay to organize one. At the same time, bajidoran musicians often manage to make a living out of their art, an occupation that can be quite lucrative – musicians from Namin Group may earn up to 10 million rupiah per month at up to twenty monthly gigs. On the audience’s side, the most devoted bajidor can spend up to a million in tips in just one night.
Even if bajidoran musicians have the capacity and the physical shape to play very long compositions for hours, releasing waterfalls of patterns, gamelan melodies and polyrhythmics without stopping for more than a couple minutes ( shows can run anywhere from two to five hours long, with compositions lasting fifteen minutes on average), musicians can switch with members off-stage and play in turns.
Something interesting to note is the internal pedagogical and learning system of every group, and thus the transmission between senior and new members. Similar to many other musical styles of the archipelago, young boys and girls who want to join the group – often descendants, relatives and friends of the active members – attend rehearsals and concerts helping older musicians on stage or playing easier parts and instruments until they reach mastery. Today many people can also attend gamelan, dance and kendang courses at mainstream art and culture institutes and universities (ISBI Bandung has for the past decade been the center of much anthropological research concerning jaipong, bajidoran and Priangan dance and music in genearl). In the same way, people learn to dance through watching the movements of more experienced people and gaining experience by experimenting at shows.
CONTEXT:
I've been to quite a lot of bajidoran shows, and in total they give the sensation of being simultaneously different and exactly the same. The variations, of course, depend mostly on environmental factors such as the community that organizes it, the group or groups that are playing, if it is performed in villages for a wedding or in a university for no particular occasion, and of course the amount of policemen and drunk people (a lot of policemen assert how a bajidoran show can be crazier and more dangerous than any metal show in West Java). Many events feature a performance in the afternoon and one at night, the first being more “by the books” and the second way wilder and out of control. Bajidoran is mainly a middle and lower class form of adat (custom) and is not unknown to feature sketchy scenarios full of gangsters and drunken fights. Nevertheless, people are in general very welcoming, warm and open to outsiders, and they show the ever-strong desire to get you to dance and participate.
If I had to choose to describe one performance I have witnessed, I would describe the first time that I saw Namin Group performing in Karawang, as the recordings that are featured here come from that night and that I believe that gig to be highly iconic and representative. Of course, I must anticipate that, in regards to the style, there is a constant fight of legitimization and identitary appropriation between Subang and Karawang. Even if I believe the two locations to have the same importance, I have never attended a bajidoran in Subang, so I must stick to this other city.
I met Mang Nonk, Namin Group's MC, at a bajidoran show in Cibiru, Bandung. I and a couple friends (including Gigi Priadji of Trah Documenter - the pics here were shot by him that night) went to a bajidoran day show. As I was going around chatting with musicians from different groups, talking about how I developed my passion towards jaipong and bajidoran through YouTube videos of Namin Group, he approached and told me that if I wanted I could attend a show the following week, directly in the nexus of the style.
I accepted, and seven days later I was on a very slow economy bus with no air conditioning direct to Karawang, much to the great concern of my teachers at ISBI (Karawang is also known for being one of the biggest centers of human trafficking in Indonesia). After three hours I arrived and that night I joined Mang Nonk and his brother to attend a first bajidoran show in Bekasi, followed by a second in Karawang. The groups were nice and professional but nothing special. At the second performance, confessing to Mang Nonk that back in Italy I do stupid babbling MCing with my band, they even wanted me to perform a bit of MCing.
The next day, we arrived at a wedding for a Namin Group afternoon performance. Starting from one o’clock and lasting until five, It was a kind of duel with another group: Goyang Group from Subang; in this case, ensembles would alternate performing a song each. I noticed with great surprise that people were selling beers, cheap whiskey and arak in the open daylight which, being something that I had never seen done that openly, immediately gave me a suspicious and ominous feeling.
The first set of performances were good, if not really extreme or energetic, and none of the musicians or dancers wore any costumes or special outfits. A good amount of people were already drunk and invited me to drink and dance with them as well as repeatedly encouraging me to tip the dancers.
After the event finished we just waited there, relaxing before the night performance started. Around seven, musicians and dancers started to prepare themselves with make-up and costumes. The concert started at eight sharp and this time the music was “hardcore traditional DnB” at its best: the dancers on stage performed virtuoso goyang moves while the kendang, kentrung and kecrek players performed impressive and quickly alternating sections of polyrhythmics and double-tempos on a huge powerful soundsystem with ridiculously high volumes. That night I also saw quite a lot of good bajidor dancers, guys who knew all the moves and were able to control the drums.
At the same time the level of drunkenness was rapidly crossing a line. Even if I had to record I had to dance with people that did not take no as an answer anymore and that would talk to me for hours despite the fact that I was wearing headphones and checking my recorder and microphones every minute. In order not to record crowds of drunk people asking me why I did not want to dance, I danced trying to keep an eye on my gear, left alone on a chair. Towards the end, the drunkest guy tried to force me various times to tip coins to the penari. After the umpteenth refusal, since this action is believed to be kind of rude, he threatened me with a very clearly hostile expression. At that moment Mang Nonk (a man around 40 years old), intervened and viciously drove the guy away, in an unfriendly atmosphere that I have never seen in Indonesia. After that episode, Mang Nonk turned to me and asked, “Do you have enough recording material?”, “Yes,” I answered. “Then it's better to go home now,” he replied, unsettled.
One final interesting element to note was the presence of waria, or crossdressers/transgender people (from the union of the words WAnita/woman and pRIA/man). Against my expectations, while not always treated totally equally by other audience members, I found that they were in general highly accepted. Their presence had been forecasted when, in the afternoon, Mang Nonk had asked me if I had ever seen a waria. After I replied in the positive, I asked why he was interested, and he answered “tonight there will be quite a lot”. That night there were at least three amongst the crowd, and men were dancing with them in a humorous, malicious way: touching their bottoms and fake breasts. All of these are only impressions but it seemed to me that people would relocate unsatisfied sexual desire towards the penari on the bodies of the waria while at the same time legitimating this potentially offensive behavior under the ironic distance of a joke. Maybe I am over-imaginative.
Speaking of this kind of environment, we have to think about a few subcontextual implications that could help us consider bajidoran performances on another level. Even if it's true that people like the event for its genuine profane nature, at the same time people are aware of how, even if just for a night, this kind of performance changes the community rules and manages to create a space in which gangsters and policemen can dance together and be friends.
Bajidoran is situated among the family of ketuk tilu dances, in which the folk figure of the ronggeng or dancer/singer is of particular interest, standing as the originary character that eventually developed into the modern penari/sinden. The character of the ronggeng, in the original performance of ronggeng gunung, is taken from the myth of Siti Samboja, a woman forced to disguise herself as a performer in order to escape death by a pirate who had already killed her husband. In these myths, the ronggeng worked as a medium between humans and gods, men and divine/fertile power. The ronggeng would be a physical transposition of Niy Pohaci or Dewi Sri (the goddess of rice) gaining the double status of prostitute/sex worker and demigod able to channel power and make it available to humans and men in particula. Strange as it might seem, in the past it wasn't unusual for a wife to ask her husband to have sex with a ronggeng in order to gain power for fertile offspring and a fruitful harvest.
From this point of view, Kathy Foley also asserts how many female-centered contemporary music, dance and theater forms often find their roots in goddess-centered rites. Moreover, as I previously mentioned, the figure of those dancers externalizes and represents feelings and dimensions of Muslim society that usually remain untold; taboos which usually clash with the prevailing etiquette.
As proof, we can notice how many of the prostitutes in dangdut and jaipong clubs are also singers, and at the same time how female performers often cause in the male audience intense sexual desire – at almost all bajidoran shows, beside the amount of sexual innuendos in the show per se, friends and members of the audience would always ask me which dancer I liked the most or telling me that the dancers drove them crazy.
On the men's side, dancing is a proof of power and masculinity that is of course woven with pressure to prove that you're not too shy (malu) to dance. On a different level, drums, along with penari, are believed, as we have partly seen, to attract and to exercise power on the bajidor and his body that is both sexual and energetic. In this way, the relationship between penari and bajidor is such that the latter should abstain from satisfying his sexual urges and desires towards the dancers and singers, while simultaneously they are given an excuse to give in to this instinct by suggesting that the unbearable power and energy coming from the kendang made them do it. It’s a win-win situation.
This whole discourse is obviously more complex than the accounts of many participants and audience members who really just want to party and spend all their money in the rave-like ambience of this contemporary tradition. But in its own way, bajidoran manages, astoundingly, to tell the story of an important aspect of Sundanese society, and it does so by employing its most effective means: drums, power, dancers, singers and goddesses.
Acknowledgements:
I would like to thank Palmer for asking me to write this article on my favourite music genre in the archipelago. It really means a lot to me. Thanks too to my friend Gigi for providing his astounding videos and photos. I would also like to thank Henry Spiller, maybe author of one of the best book on Sundanese dances and music, “Erotic Triangles”, which was, along with the interviews, the main source of information for this article (that my small personal experience could only confirm). Thanks to Luca Mucci (Piezo) for mastering the audio files that were featured in this article. Last but not least thanks to Ismet Ruchimat, Namin Group, Mang Nonk and kommunitas Alakatung, Chandra Dudu, Andika Melas and Ramadhan T.I. for their accounts, explanations and information regarding the style and Paolo Rossi for making me discover it.