Indonesian Culture: Wayang Kulit

Indonesia ia a country with many etnic with many culture of each. One of them is a traditional theatre calles wayang kulit (shadow Puppet). The word wayang is come from Javanese "bayang" mean shadow. Wayang kulit is performance with a traditional orchestra called Gamelan, and there is a singer called Sinden/ or Pesinden.

Wayang kulit is consist of hundred of puppet with diferent character. The story is adapted from India story, Ramayana and Mahabarata, by change and modified some aspect like place, music, become Javanese. Wayang Kulit is popular held to celebrate some occasion like wedding celebration, "ruwatan" to avoid a bad luck. wayang is performing one night, from 10 PM to 5 AM. So, on Javanese is popular with "wayang Kulit Semalam Suntuk", mean one night performance of shadow Puppet.



Wayang is come to Indonesia by Indian thats bring Hinduism. This come before the Christian era, and was slowly adopted as the local belief system. Sanskrit (sansekerta) became the literary and court language of Java and later of Bali. The Hindus changed the Wayang (as did the Muslims, later) to spread their religion, mostly by stories from the Mahabharata or the Ramayana.



There is a family of characters in Javanese wayang called Punakawan; sometimes referred to as "clown-servants" because they usually are associated with the story's hero and also provide humorous and philosophical interludes. Semar is the father of Gareng (oldest son), Petruk, and Bagong (youngest son). Semar is know as a Dewa (angel). This character is added later to addapted with local culture, possibly to introduce mystical aspects of Islam into the Hindu-Javanese stories.

If you want to see this performance, there are many hotel and place in Indonesia that performance this, like many hotel in Yogyakarta, Keraton Yogyakarta, Taman Mini Indonesia Indah in Jakarta, Gedung Kesenian Jakarta.