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Bali--no longer--unplugged: electronic technology, amplification, and the marginalization of presence
- Wesleyan University Press
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Bali-no longer-unplugged electronic technology, amplification, and the marginalization of presence When I returned to Bali in 1992, I was struck by how loudspeakers, tape recorders, radio, and television are rapidly transforming kinesthetic, kinetic , and spiritual realities. Performance of gambelan, dance drama, wayang, and ritual religious activity is mediated nowadays through electronics in one way or another. This affects not only realms of perception, spirit, and the idea ofartistic process, but also the equilibrium between traditional artistic/cultural communities and contemporary governmental and private instititutions. Esoteric aesthetic issues have become objectified and standardized. On page 21 (Aji nusup) I describe how direct transmission ofsubtle kinesthetic qualities is altered when tape recorders are introduced into the pedagogic process. Amplification systems alter the physical and spiritual relationship between performers, expressed through characterization, acoustics, and the relationship between voices, musical instruments, and dance. As many aspects of music are becoming objectified and re- if not de-contextualized, the agrarian, ecologically balanced culture from which they are derived is growing marginalized and quaintified-that is, depicted as quaint- and objectified for commercial reasons. As "modern Indonesia" seeks to distance itselffrom "the past," government and business simultaneously write a scenario for tourism in Bali that self-consciously asserts "traditional Balineseness " as a valuable but ambiguous commodity. Most dalangs use microphones and loudspeakers in wayang performances now, and it is interesting tl1at it has been so long in coming. In 1972, I attended an odalan temple festival at a pura desa 'community temple', one of many varieties of temples, which are large outdoor areas of inner and v 0 I c E s I N B A L I I 134 outer courtyards with stone, wood, and bamboo platforms and thatched roofs. I was attending a performance ofgambuh, a classic, by Balinese standards , and quiet dance drama without bronze-keyedgambelan accompaniment -the music, described earlier, characterized by long bamboo flutes playing in subtly shifting modes or tunings, witl1 an overall ethereal quality, accompanied by comparatively delicate percussion. But as thegambuh performance was beginning, the overwhelming sound heard was that ofsomeone singing kakawin poetry-a blaring noise, so it seemed to all around, coming from a loudspeaker somewhere-making it quite impossible to hear the gambelan or the actors. Some visiting dignitaries had come expressly for the purpose ofseeing and hearing thegambuh, even then an uncommon , special occasion. Disturbed by the intruding amplified chanting, one ofthe dignitaries circled the many temple courtyards before finding the loudspeaker, and then began to trace the path ofthe cable to find the source of the sound. It was a little old man in the jeroan pura, inner courtyard of the temple, intoning the kawi verses, as he had no doubt done countless times before, in that same place, but then only heard by a few nearby friends and passersby bringing their offerings. We learned that some kind ofpower play was being enacted and that whoever was in control ofthe microphone was not willing to delimit his newly acquired technology. The visiting dignitary could not convince the possessors of the amplifier to turn down the volume. Now, it turns out that intravillage rivalries had been going on since colonial times, in which performance forms were already being incorporated into the struggle for power and social order. The amp and speaker happened to be a new instrument ofpower and dominance in this dynamic between several kinship groups and political persuasions. As it turned out, the loudspeakers did stop soon after, for a performance of wayang wong, a different dance drama genre depicting Ramayana episodes, but the amplification resumed again later in the day. Perhaps those wanara, tl1e monkeys that make up the monkey general Anoman's army, had influence on the powers that be, in more sense than one. We may speak of the role of these electronic instruments as one of amplification , by which we mean the oscillations ofthe particles ofa sounding body are magnified, much as we believe we are seeing the cells ofa sample of skin or onion being magnified by a microscope. We may think of increasing amplitude as getting more of something, but the reality is quite different-we are, ofcourse, getting a different sound with a different contextual meaning. Marshall McLuhan's ideas concerning the medium being, in many ways, the massage, or message are relevant to the present discussion . (In traditional Balinese performance practice, the medium is also the message, and not just in the sense that a dalang can be a kind of spiritual...