Jakartass Home thoughts from abroad. Alien thoughts from home.

As soon as I post a commentary on something it seems to crop up in the news, and in my street.

As I started to type this, a Betawi cortege paused for breath outside Jakartass Towers and then wended their way onwards through the neighbourhood, with a tambourine, a selection of gongs to provide the underlying beat for an amplified one-string fiddle. and a couple of ondel-ondel to scare the kids.

The Culture and Tourism Ministry has proposed "official recognition from UNESCO for two items from our intangible cultural heritage, Balinese traditional dances and noken from Papua."

The government also wants UNESCO "to acknowledge the best practices of Indonesia Miniature Park, or TMII, in preserving our cultural heritage."

According to Unesco, intangible cultural heritage includes “traditions or living expressions inherited from our ancestors and passed on to our descendants, such as oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals, festive events, knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe or the knowledge and skills to produce traditional crafts.”

Noken is a traditional Papuan bag which is made manually of plant fiber or nylon strings. Every tribe in West Papua has his own motifs and plaiting styles.

Yep, nylon is certainly fits the criteria of Indonesian "intangible cultural heritage."

Reading the official Ministry page, it seems that the announcement was more jingoism than actually caring for the multi-cutrural traditions which make Indonesia so endlessly fascinating.

Jero Wacik, the Minister, is quoted as saying, "We want the world to acknowledge our three cultural products. This will mean so much for us. By doing this, we hope that there will be no such case as other country admitting our culture to be theirs."

So, yah, boo and sucks to Malaysia!

I wonder too about the other nominations. Balinese dances as still performed in temples at various ceremonies have a role to play in community life, but when, as in Ubud particularly, they are adapted to suit the short attention spans of tourists, then they are not particularly traditional.

Not that I am averse to craftsmen and performers adapting to imported influences. My current music listening pleasure is a white label of a CD to be launched in June. Gamelan of Central Java XV. Returning Minimalism – In Nem (not yet listed on this page.), was recorded at the studio of the arts college, Institut Seni Indonesia (ISI) in Surakarta, also known as Solo.

What makes this recording interesting is that it's based on Terry Riley's In C, a seminal minimalist work which I had on a vinyl LP some 40 years ago. Apart from the expected Java gamelan, the Surakarta Ensemble features a bowed violin-type instrument called the rebab, an Arabic instrument, what sounds like a zither, but is called a siter, as well as kendang, Sundanese drums played with the hands.

Ribab

Siter

Kendang

As for TMII, it's a museum which, as of August last year when I was uodating Culture Shock! Jakarta, still considered Timor Leste to be part of Indonesia. Yes, it's worth a visit, but if you're Caucasian, unless you enjoy being the most interesting spectacle on view, avoid it at the weekenda or on public holidays.