Brahman aunties at Geria Tampakgangsul, 22nd January 2015:
preparing for the start of
the Manah Toya Hening procession to the holy spring.
|
It is amazing what passes for a ceremony
in New Age Bali, especially if one considers the high levels of
loveliness and grace that all real Balinese ceremonies exhibit.
New Age Bali ceremonies invariably involve hundreds of candles and a
sexy person in a white sheet, wafting around, and a floral arrangement
on the floor/beach. Often people are wailing and, if the event is at
night, Hawaiian culture-show-type fire-dances are standard.
One recent protest ceremony stands out from all the other
New Age Bali ceremonies, as it involved ‘Superman Is Dead’, Bali’s
hippest band.
I first became aware of Superman Is Dead ten years ago,
when I saw their poster at ‘Rocket’, my pirate DVD and bondage
outfitters in South Sanur, now a Vegan restaurant.
I thought the name brilliant, and even posted a photo of their poster in this column at the time.
Over the years their handsome, wildly popular lead drummer
— I Gede Ary Astina (Jerinx) — has lent his name to various causes. The
latest is the noble TOLAK REKLAMASI cause, which has seen tens of
thousands of mostly young Balinese rally — for almost two years now —
against environmental vandalism in the name of estate development, i.e.
the filling in of half of beautiful Benoa Bay.
This climaxed last week with a mega-event at the bay’s
edge, which involved Superman is Dead — Rolling-Stone-like on a
floating stage —and a sinewy mate male dancer in a white sheet walking
into the water in a nice Isadora Duncan/Virginia Woolf way.
Balinese in classical dance costumes flung flowers at
Dewa Baruna, God of the Oceans, co-opted for the occasion, as she-males
on pontoons in digga-digga-do-do jungle costumes twirled flaming
batons. It was what the Indians call Caca-phoney, but with greased
loins.
Meanwhile, in downtown Sanur and Denpasar, I witnessed
the real deal — in the form of two ceremonies and three processions of
such exquisite beauty that I was gasping for breath.
Now read on:
25th January 2015: Cremation of Ida Pedanda Gede
Ngurah Karang, the family patriarch at Geria Tampak Gangsul, the
glam-bram brahman house in Denpasar
Thirty years ago, at Geria Tampakgangsul, I watched as
society beauty Dayu Tuttie Kompiang shed tears while praying in her
family house temple as she said goodbye to her ancestors. It was part
of the ceremonies leading up to her marriage to the son of the Raja
Gianyar.
Well today she is back, big-time, some
husbands later, with her Jakarta friends, and the Sanur rent-a-crowd as
are thousands of her very extended brahman family, exquisitely dressed.
Dayu Tuttie and her family have been planning this
mega-event for over a month, since her father died mid-December after a
long illness.
Her mother, Pedanda Istri Karang, former tourism pioneer,
has been a picture of grace during the weeks of ceremonies leading up
to today’s climax. For decades a legendary society beauty, her
transformation into a high priestess has been remarkable, and she has
become a great addition to ceremonial Bali - always with Tuttie at her
side.
Ratu Pedanda Istri Agung, widow of the deceased flanked by two of her many grandchildren at the cremation ceremonies.
|
Today she is like Lady Diana Cooper in The Miracle — stoic and beautiful, as courtyards of organized chaos swirl around her.
I arrive early with 68 members of Denpasar Baladika vigilante gang, who will today be conveying the funeral bier from the palace to the graveyard.
Outside, the palace forecourt is rather like the red
carpet at the academy awards, but with a stately gamelan, battalions of
armed forces (the deceased was a war hero), and a giant white bull, a
gift from the Prince of Ubud.
Inside is like the royal enclosure at Ascot, with people on their knees eating chicken curry.
At noon the Indonesian flag-draped coffin is conveyed out
by Baladika and, after a brief military ceremony, carried up the ramp
to the funeral bier (bade) by the deceased’s sons and grandsons.
And then the parade is off, pell-mell, down the main drag. Two beleganjur
gamelan — positively ballistic is their theatrical clanging — and
hundreds of beauties in classical gold and white Balinese dress. A pair
of pedanda are riding the bade, dispensing rice and
waving the gold-beaked, stuffed bird of paradise (product placement).
The governor of Bali, the mayor of Badung (Denpasar) Regency, the
princes of all realms are present. It is one of the greatest cremation
spectacles I have ever seen — and the mood is euphoric.
Military send-off for Ida Pedanda Gede Ngurah Karang at Setra Badung cremation ground, 25th January 2015
(Photo by Luciana Fererro).
|
At the cremation ground an honour guard
delivers a salvo of shots, witnessed by a grandstand of 25 high priests
and priestesses.
The bull sarcophagus and coffin are burned and the family
settles into coffee and cakes, and rice meals, while they await the
late afternoon ashes-scattering ceremonies at Sanur Beach.
It is a fabulous farewell for one of Bali’s great cultural tourism pioneers.
 |
 |
(Photos by Luciana Fererro)
|
27 January 2015: SHOCK AND AWE IN NORTH SANUR:
35 years ago, when working for the Sunday Bali Post
with Rio Helmi and Sarita Newson, I first covered the legendary Baris
Gede dance at Pura Dalem Kedewataan in the Brahman stronghold of North
Sanur. I took some great black-and-white snaps which ended up in my Stranger in Paradise 1979-1981,
a book available at a bookstore near you. At that time I remember
thinking how similar were the costumes and dances to the 1930s photos
of the same ceremony by Walter Spies and Beryl de Zoots in their great
book Dance and Drama in Bali, so I was intrigued to go back now and see if it had changed.
My 1980 photograph of the Baris Gede Banjar Blong, Sanur
|
I arrived at 3.30 pm to find the
magnificent temple — heritage red-brick gates and shrines, and grass
courts still intact — stacked to the rafters with offerings, and
decorated to within an inch of its life.
Were all the ebony-hued North Sanur ladies not dripping gold jewellery, it would have been overkill.
The overall impression was of extreme grandeur and beauty
in a classic Majapahit temple setting. As I arrived in the inner court,
high priest's offering trays were being conveyed through the gate
that the temple shares with the vast Brahman compound to its west. The
Jero Gede Brahman families of North Sanur are the royal custodians of
the temple. They own the splendidly traditional Santrian hotels,
Starbucks Sanur, and The Village restaurant. They have lately pulled
away from the competition in the GlamBram stakes. Their house
ceremonies are bigger and more opulent than Ben Hur; Geria
Tampakgangsul, Denpasar's answer to Victoria's Secret, is an offshoot
(see last Thursday's video).
I quickly spied my buddy and fellow photographer Luciana
Fererro, who had tipped me off about the ceremony, in a gaggle of
appallingly-dressed bule photographers, just as a phalanx of immaculately dressed and groomed palace aunties glided past.
Baris Gede Banjar Blong, Sanur, January 2015 photograph of same troupe.
|
I recognized a few of the families
making prayers, but North Sanur is quite famously aloof and I felt a
tad alien. But I did manage to capture the gorgeous
calm-before-the-storm atmosphere. No-one I asked was quite sure of the
order of proceedings (what time are we to process to the beach to the
east? etc), including Luciana — who had been here, pressing Lurex, for
half an hour already. Then I heard the clangour of an approaching
procession, so I sped to the temple's main gate to find, filing past,
the Hotel Bali Beach's rangda, Ratu Ayu (who resides in Pura
Manik Sari, the spookiest temple in Sanur, beside the hotel's pizzeria),
plus a bevy of votive statues borne aloft and parasol-ed, accompanied
by a troupe of pretty baris juniors, carrying gilt bows and arrows, plus a corps de ballet of rejang dewa
ballerinas. They were all heading west, into the setting sun, to the
old Jero Gede brahman house which I had not visited since the family
high priest's padiksaan ordination three years ago (see video on Wijayapilem2/you tube. Link: http://youtu.be/6OxCl49Ys_s)
 |
The bearer carrying Ratu
Ayu's black velvet umbrella was over six feet tall, and big and black
and so dashingly good-looking that my lens cap popped in pursuit.
Arriving at the Brahman palace's outer reception court
people got very excited. The Pura Dalem temple gods were somehow
already there in front of a magnificent gate, with the senior baris dancers in their voluminous marigold crowns, forming a welcoming committee for the arriving gods. The house gamelan played a soulful tabuh agung
in the adjacent garage. I followed the procession into the palace —
through court after magnificent Balinese classical court of seated
Brahmans in temple dress — till we finally reached the palace’s house
temple, with its fabulous limestone gedong shrine.
The house temple was packed with gods and their
attendants. In one high pavilion I caught a glimpse of the family head,
Ida Bagus Ngurah, with his brothers, all unravelling a big roll of
white kasa cloth. I spied the ballerinas praying at the gedong shrine as I chased a gajahmina elephant-fish statue (arca) around a corner. There I suddenly found myself at the tail end of yet another procession of glittering deities, gamelan and handsome North Sanur bearers speeding out.
Swept up in the joyous jet stream, I was dragged through a
few gates, and popped out into the palace's front court again where
the seniors' Baris Gede performance was in full swing. My procession
joined the arca of deities and rangda and a barong which had appeared from no-where.
I congratulated Ida Bagus Ngurah on the magnificence and
classical beauty of his palace and asked who the architect was. “Just
the family”, he replied.
 |
I stood with the bearers
and the god's standards as the palace priest offered a mat of offerings
to the gathered deities, and someone bit the head off a chicken. I
barely caught my breath before the now sizeable party was off again, to
North Sanur beach via KFC and Dunkin Donut. I spied the wife of the
supervisor of my Lembongan project garden (awol for a year now) — it
seems she has taken refuge in the beard of the Bali Beach barong. She beamed as I took her photo and sent it to my supervisor with the message, "Spotted with a barong”.
The procession to the beach was quite surreal — not unlike a scene from the Ava Gardner vehicle On the Beach,
set in a post-nuclear apocalyptic Melbourne. Six lanes of by-pass were
held up for at least ten minutes as we all processed past. I walked
with Ida Bagus Ngurah, who was conveying the long train of kasa
cloth. We talked about the lack of interest in these magnificent
ceremonies shown by the new mass tourists. “What to do?”, was his
comment: why cast pearls before swine?. At the beach the deities lined
up at the western end of a corral formed by bearers and banners. At the
edges, tourists in skimpy beachwear nibbled. A gangrenous dog in a
yellow BAWA gift collar sat centre-stage.
 |
After ten minutes of soft ceremony I heard the unmistakeable bleganjur beat of an approaching barong — it was the mighty black crow-feather barong
of Singgi, my old home, and I was thrilled to video its arrival.
Offerings were made, and the gods and bearers walked to the beach in a
stream of crisscrossing lines before heading off, pell-mell, back to
the temple. (About an hour had passed since I first arrived at the
temple, and my feet were raw, my DALEM KEPAON shirt soaking wet, my
skirt cloth (saput) askew, and my face burning from setting sun.
Ten seconds down the road a brace of priestesses flew into
trance — the silhouette of their wiggling wobbling forms like Paris
catwalk models as we all processed west.
Arriving at the temple — half the procession already in
trance — all hell broke loose. Yet another mat of welcoming offerings
was wafted off, among much flailing and kris-dancing — and
more black chicklets decapitated. I could barely move or think, pressed
between rangda manes and tranced-out bearers struggling to escape the
strong arms of their guards. The gods filed into the temple's inner
court where the Baris Panah juniors were dancing, with extraordinary
grace, forming a cloud of golden wonderment, (see interview with lead
dancer in video later today). A very ancient priestess, in mild trance,
danced in front of the performing and barks, making offerings of sajeng (rice wine or brem) to the ground spirits as she danced.
I sped to the nearest vendor for a Pocari. I spent about ten minutes adjusting my saput
— my arms seemed to have gone numb — and then saw that the temple gates
were closing as the star attraction — the Baris Gede Tombak dance —
was about to begin on the grass in the outer court.
1980 photograph of trance ritual at the Baris Gede ceremonies at Pura Dalem Kedewatan, North Sanur
|
I filmed the first part of the dance from high up on the stairs, in the middle of a band of tall pecalang
vigilantes in black safari jackets with braid and medals rampant, to
recharge my batteries, then moved through the pit of photographers
(Jill Gocher in Noosa beachwear) and parked myself at the feet of the gamelan
drummers. This was a bit of a mistake: five minutes later the dancers,
who had worked themselves into quite frenzy, suddenly charged the gamelan.
For a good minute I had peacock feathers and spearheads jabbing at my
face. I kept filming. In fact, the force of the advance knocked the
stuffing out of me, briefly, and I rocked back, momentarily exposing my
lack of undergarment. A huge cry went up from the front row of
photographers opposite. Weak men fainted. And then the real show was on
again. I was asked to move out of danger, but I couldn't: in a
half-lotus I get pins and needles and my legs don't work. I started up
an animated chat about the baris in the old days with a neighbouring priest, and I was let stay.
The rest of the dance was magnificent; with the
warrior-dancers finally all in wild trance — a riot of spraying
marigolds and flashing spears — until a furious final melee before they
fled into the inner sanctum.
The sun set, peace was restored.
 |
 |
|
