In the villages of Java life is monotonously regular. On the equator the sun rises and sets at nearly the same times every day of the year, and dawn and dusk last only a few minutes. By early evening the sky is pitch black. Few of the homes are electrified, and most light is the kind that moves. Swinging gas lamps and darting beams from passing motor scooters send shadows wandering across palms, through gangways, and over rice fields. It’s spooky enough at dinnertime, but late at night radios are turned on full blast for the wayang puppet plays and the sounds of gongs and wooden drums and the voices of ancient gods and heroes bounce off the bamboo walls of every house.
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In east and central Java shadow puppet plays, or wayang kulit, are the most popular entertainment and the puppeteers are the top celebrities. When they come to a village for a show, they often drive in late model Mercedeses. Their popularity is hard-earned. A good puppeteer knows dozens of traditional plays and is an expert musician, erudite scholar, and outrageous comic. In performance, he is expected to entertain a crowd for eight hours straight, from late night until dawn, taking the parts of over 100 different characters, all with distinctive voices and mannerisms. The puppeteer also conducts the musical accompaniment. He’s like a person who knows all the Shakespeare plays by heart and performs them solo while conducting an orchestra behind his back.
Indonesia is an archipelago with 200 million people, and Java is its most populous island. Yet things Javanese are hard to come by in the U.S., even in multiethnic Chicago. That was not always so. During the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, the Dutch government, then Java’s colonial overseer, transplanted an entire Javanese village and 130 villagers to the Midway. “The Java Village was one of the smash hits of the fair,” says Dr. Bennett Bronson, a curator at the Field Museum. “There were puppet plays and gamelan music, and a very popular group of Javanese women dancers, who people found extremely refined and attractive.” The Field Museum inherited the remnants of the Java Village after the fair, including a full complement of gamelan instruments, now considered one of the finest gamelans in the world. Bronson believes that the love affair with Javanese culture that began then was cut short by American isolationism.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Lloyd DeGrane.
