Jaipongan dance
Jaipongan dance
Jaipongan, also known as Jaipong, is a popular traditional dance of
Sundanese people, West Java, Indonesia. The dance was created by Gugum
Gumbira, based on traditional Sundanese Ketuk Tilu music and Pencak
Silat movements.
Jaipongan, also known as jaipong, is a musical performance genre of the
Sundanese people in the Sundanese language of West Java, Indonesia.
Jaipongan includes revived indigenous arts, like gamelan, but it also
did not ignore Western music completely despite the ban on rock and
roll. It used its sensuality and the sensuality found in a traditional
village music and dance, ketuk tilu. However, many believe it is
something purely Indonesian or Sundanese in origin and style. It is
developed predominately from rural folk forms and traditions as a purely
indigenous form. The rise of cassettes and films has led to the
popularity of the musical form of jaipongan. It has spread from its home
in West Java’s Sunda, to greater Java and Indonesia. It can be seen as
many regional varieties of gong-chime performance found through much of
Indonesia. As also an urban dance form, it is based primarily on the
village forms of ketuk tilu and on the Indonesian martial arts, pencak
silat. The musical genre is largely influenced from ketuk tilu with
traces of the masked theater dance, topeng banjet and the wayang golek
puppet theater. Ketuk tilu is its biggest influence, as a traditional
Sudanese musical entertainment form.
Gong-chime performance is characterized by such features as: use of an
ensemble dominated by idiophones, metallophones and knobbed gongs. It is
a stratified polyphony, with lower-pitch instruments playing parts of
lesser density and all parts are structured colotomically around
time-cycles. This can be found in traditional Indonesian gamelan. There
is improvisation on certain instruments. The modes used are grouped into
two broad types: slendro and pelog.
Ketuk tilu was a musical genre based off ritual and celebration in the
villages of the Sundanese people, meaning three kettle gongs. It was
known for complex drumming coordinated with equally dynamic solo female
dancers. The music was performed for planting and harvesting rituals and
later celebrated village life, circumcision and marriage, expressed
fertility, and displayed sensuality, eroticism and even sometimes
“socially accepted prostitution.” Ketuk tilu was very popular in the
Sundanese villages, but the urban Sundanese considered it unrefined and
inappropriate because the music involved males and females dancing
together suggestively, or mixed dancing between men and ronggeng, or
prostitutes. Ronggeng probably has existed in Java since ancient time,
the bas reliefs in Karmawibhanga section on Borobudur displays the scene
of travelling entertainment troupe with musicians and female dancers.
Jaipong is less strictly associated with ceremonial functions, but
performances are common in the Rayagung festival month, and with
circumcisions and marriages. The performances now have the character of
secular social functions, attended by young and old, primarily for
entertainment and socializing. Public performance is now extremely
frequent especially in clubs or street performances.
The cassette industry and its boom in Indonesia helped popularize
jaipongan greatly and promoted regional styles rather than hurt them.
Many learned the dance through cassette rather than the performance. The
mass media have made jaipong ubiquitous. It has created competition in
the styles of the drummers among ensembles. It has also helped to bring
about many dance schools, altering dance and its label on females in
West Java.
The song repertoire of jaipongan is varied, and that is why it is better
understood as an intertwined performance style of music and dance. Many
songs are associated with ketuk tilu or other wide reaching regional
varieties, not traditional gamelan. It consists of songs of more recent
origin often composed for jaipongan. Song topics vary, encompassing
amatory, moralistic, bawdy, topical and spiritual subjects, often
emphasizing grass roots culture.