In 1961, Indonesian President Sukarno prohibited rock and roll and other western
genres of music, and challenged Indonesian musicians to revive the
indigenous arts. The name jaipongan came from people mimicking of the
sounds created by some of the drums in the ensemble. Audiences were
often heard shouting jaipong after specific sections of rhythmic music
were played. Jaipongan debuted in 1974 when Gugum Gumbira and his gamelan and dancers first performed in public.
The most widely available album of Jaipongan outside of Indonesia is Tonggeret by singer Idjah Hadidjah and Gugum Gumbira's Jugala orchestra, released in 1987, and re-released as West Java: Sundanese Jaipong and other Popular Music by Nonesuch/Elektra Records.
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 on 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.
Jaipong Music Instrument
Jaipongan takes much of its instrumentation from ketuk tilu
ensembles. The ketuk tilu group is composed of pot-gongs. Besides the
core three main kettle gongs (ketuk, tilu meaning three), the
instruments include a rebab, a small upright bowed instrument, also
known as a spike fiddle, other small gongs — a hanging gong and two iron
plates, and two or three barrel drums. The traditional singer is female
or a sinden, but also dances and invites men to dance with her
sensually, so it is assumed she is a prostitute or ronggeng. The
ensemble is small enough to be carried from village to village to places
where a saron or kempul may be added.
Ketuk tilu songs, following a free rhythmic introduction, are
structured sectionally, juxtaposing segments of short gong cycles (about
10 seconds) with those of longer gong-cycles (about 30 seconds) each
section having a characteristic sequence of dance steps associated with
it.
Gumbira took and retrofitted the dynamic and intense ketuk-tilu
music. The role of the singer was emphasized to concentrate just on the
vocals. He added to it traditional gamelan by expanding the drum section
of the ketuk tilu as more of an urban, unique gamelan orchestra from
two drums to six. He also sped up the music significantly, increasing
the dance role. He also modified the accompanying dance. The
modifications retained some of the original sensual moves of ketuk tilu,
joining to them a popular martial art called pencak silat. Gumbira
called it jaipong. Jaipongan cassettes really feature the singer with
their name and alluring cover photos. The singer is given greatest
prominence, no longer seen as a prostitute but professional and
respectful. This goes with the market demand for solo-superstars.
The idiophonic accompaniment of jaipongan may also include a few
saron or a gegung (an L-shaped row of gong chimes), and often a gambang (xylophone). Otherwise instruments are the same as in ketuk tilu.
The large hanging gong and smaller gongs used in jaipong, like ketuk
tilu and gong-chime performance, serve colotomic functions, punctuating
the time-cycles at regular fixed intervals. The several ketuk play a
standardized three-pitch figure, high, low, medium-low. The spike fiddle
often imitates the singer and solos when the singer is silent. All the
musicians, and especially the drummer, freely supplement the texture
with rhythmic cries and yells called senggak. The most important
roles become the singer and the drummer. The drummer is more aggressive
and assertive than in other Sudanese/Javanese ensembles, commanding
attention with a variable cadential figure before a large gong stroke.
Jaipongan drumming is more virtuosic and flamboyant, the drummer
performs lively improvisations throughout, building up tension that
culminates and is released at the gong stroke. A distinctive Sundanese
feature is the variation of the pitch of the main drum, whose head
tension is governed by the foot of the drummer. The singer is the
central figure carrying the melody and dancing at the same time. It is
this lively interplay between the drummer and the singer that was
carried from ketuk tilu, and is an identifying feature. The dance is
centered around the gong cycles, in which the tension is built up before
each large gong stroke where the dancers will gracefully jerk their
heads toward each other.
The male jaipongan dance style is less acrobatic and martial than
that found in ketuk tilu, simpler. Whereas the female dancer in
jaipongan is very active, more than the ronggeng in ketuk tilu. It is
very choreographed with a sophisticated polish different than the
coyness role played by the ronggeg for the male advances in ketuk tilu.
The sectional formal structure of ketuk tilu is one feature that has
not carried over to jaipongan. A jaipongan piece opens with a few gong
cycles, often in a different tempo than the rest of the piece, during
which the spike fiddle player improvises over the idiophone and drum
accompaniment. The vocalist then enters, usually singing four gong
cycles consecutively, then allowing the spike fiddler to improvise for
two of theses gongan. The piece alternates in this way until it ends
with a deceleration leading to the final gong.
The melodies are set to madenda, the Sundanese variant of the pelog
mode, or slendro, or a free combination of the two, or an alternating
combination. The melodies are usually in the pelog or madenda scales,
while the fixed pitch idiophonic accompaniment is strictly in slendro.
This combination contrasts with the gamelan tradition. The scales of
these modes, intonation and tonic are difficult and not consistent, for
more detail on this see:.[1]
Intonation may be further obscured by the characteristic vibrato. These
melodies in jaipongan can also be stereotypical; so much of the
expressiveness and uniqueness comes in the introduction, improvised or
pre-composed. It often establishes the modal pattern.
The verses are often organized into quatrains, each is one gong
cycle, and in rhyme scheme aabbcc, each line having about eight
syllables, as in most Sundanese folk and popular verse.
Jaipong Dance in Social Community
In 1961, the president of Indonesia, President Sukarno created a ban
on western music, mainly the genre of rock and roll, due to the fact
that western ideas, themes, values and morals began to infiltrate the
area. With the ban, Sukarno urged the public to “return to and revive
the musical traditions of the past”. Gugum Gumbira heard this and deiced
to create a genre of music that would revive the musical interests of
the past and added sexual undertones and a sense of elegance in order to
bring it into the future. In addition to being a musical reincarnation,
jaipongan also reincarnated martial arts and traditional dance. It
became so popular that the government decided that it needed to be
taught to be people of all generations.
When jaipongan was first introduced in 1974, there was a lack of
acceptable music in the area of West Java; Sunda more specifically. It
gained popularity instantly because it was a completely non-western form
of music that the government accepted and promoted. It had all of the
values of traditional Sundanese music to entice the older generations,
yet had enough energy, vibrancy, and sexuality to entice the younger
generations. Jaipongan was also based on the life of the lower class and
elevated their stories and struggles. It allowed the people to see
themselves in the music and feel as if they were a part of their
culture. Once it became popular, many other musicians began recreating
it.
When situations in Sunda became more political, the music shifted and
took on themes of moral, political, social, spiritual awareness. Once
the shift occurred, the government tried its best to end jaipongan. Due
to its popularity with the people, it was able to maintain its craze,
and even out lasted the ban on Western Music.
The sexual nature of the songs was taken from the idea of
prostitution, and was then elevated in order to make it a more elegant,
civilized part of art. This broke gender barriers because it changed the
way in which men and women interacted. Never before had men and women
danced or interacted together in promiscuous or sexually explicit or
suggestive ways in performance in Indonesia. Even though jaipongan was
created to stay away from musical themes of sex, love, drugs, and rock
and roll, it incorporated some of these themes in small increments. When
the government discovered the sexual nature of the songs and dances,
they looked to curb the popularity of jaipongan, but it had already
become the music of the people and their efforts were thwarted.
Jaipongan was a way for the Sundanese people to take back their
culture from the Western ideas and rid themselves of the colonial Dutch
influences. Jaipongan elevated the idea of village music or music of the
people. It focused on love, money, agriculture, and as the world became
filled with more turmoil, it became a vehicle for moral, political
spiritual, and social awareness.
Jaipongan became so popular that in 1976, two years after its
creation, it was recorded on cassettes on Gumbira’s record label Jugala.
With the cassette’s release international popularity rose and helped to
create a larger musical industry in Sunda and Indonesia at large. All
of which was and still is used to help preserve the culture and history
of the West Java and the Sundanese people.
The rapid popularity of Jaipongan along with the boom in cassette
tapes helped the genre to spread and become popular in Asia, Europe, and
America during the 1980s. In addition it created a tourism industry in
Sunda. People from all over the world came to learn about and experience
Jaipongan first hand. Music and dance schools were created in order to
preserve the art form and history of the Sundanese people. The
government felt that Jaipongan was such a cultural staple that it needed
to be taught to all citizens.
Jaipong Dance Today and The Future
In 2011, the international popularity of jaipongan has decreased, but
in Asia, it’s still extremely popular. It’s most popular in the areas
of Sunda, where it was created, as well as the surrounding villages and
cities.
Although it’s most popular in Asia, there are jaipongan dance troupes
and musical ensembles in Europe in addition to the United States (like
Harsanari of San-Francisco) and throughout other parts of the world.
In 2011, jaipongan is noted as a modern classical concert genre of
music, which is often sampled in other Asian music, and has multiple
subgenres. There is still is a large market for jaipongan CDs and mp3s.
