Musical Worlds of Yogyakarta

5. Other Worlds and Sexualisation

5 Other worlds and sexualisation In contrast to detachment engagement transitions, the musical events in this chapter reveal ways in which gender and other social boundaries were negotiated in situations of intensified musical physicality (Cowan 1990; McIntosh 2010). More specifically, the other worlds and sexualisation forms of musical physicalisation that variously arose and merged in Yogyakarta’s kampung and commercial-venue events challenge conventional understandings of Javanese power. These physicalisations, I argue, shine light on the relationships between musical performance, gendered bodies and the social dynamics characteristic of downtown Yogyakarta in the early post-Soeharto years. kampung JATILAN and kridosono metal/electronic ‘Other worlds’ refers to the highly physicalised dance and/or related bodily movements that reflect an actor’s entrance into an alternative reality or state of being. While political campaigns in early post-Soeharto Yogyakarta sometimes included menacing other worlds-style hysteria, the more popular and widespread cases derived primarily from Javanese mysticism and western-influenced metal and electronic musics. This section seeks to demonstrate how these latter cases produced outlets of expression that helped to transcend performer /audience and gender-based social divisions, which in turn influenced and were influenced by the gendered habitus in daily life. Of the numerous indigenist and regionalist performance types that have long challenged stereotypes of conservatism in Java (Richter 2008a:180, note 6), in 2001 the jatilan trance dance was immensely popular.1 Jatilan is generally performed in a cordonedoff arena, within which the dancers enter into a trance, as reflected in performers’ trance-like or possessed movements and facial expressions. M. Wienarti (1968) has discussed jatilan and its animist 1 On the related jaranan trance dance popular in East Java, see Clara van Groenendael 2008. | Musical worlds in Yogyakarta 104 associations, as well as its historical function in rites of passage such as marriage. Margaret Kartomi (1973) has explored ‘folk trance art forms’ more broadly in terms of their pre-Hindu origins and contemporary entertainment functions. I found the performances noteworthy for the way in which the trance phases signalled the submergence of performers into an ‘other world’, and also because audiences consisted of women, men and children. The first jatilan I witnessed took place late at night in a village north of Yogyakarta, where two rows of four men in matching red costumes and make-up and holding a hobbyhorse lined up, and then began stepping delicately in formation as the music built up in tempo and volume. Within minutes some of the dancers’ eyes began to roll, and soon after that mayhem broke out with whip cracking, flame swallowing, and much frenzied running and hopping about, all to great shrieks and laughter among the 200-strong audience. I also watched a number of jatilan events in urban kampung . These took place in the middle of the day, generally around Independence Day, with audiences comprised largely of mothers with young children and young men with dyed hair and other signs of western punk and grunge affiliation. Also in contrast to the village jatilan, where the build-up to the trance was more gradual, in the urban cases all of the dancers simultaneously fell into a violent heap and, upon rising to their feet, began trance dancing together. Jatilan dancers in an urban kampung 5 Other worlds and sexualisation | 105 Kampung jatilan performances allowed onlookers to view familiar neighbours entering into an unfamiliar, other world of trance. Audiences remained physically immobile and separate from (though in thrilling proximity to) the performers, except for the occasional audience member who, entranced, entered the arena. In turn, performer actions on centre stage can be related to gender roles and relations. The shaman (dukun), always a male, along with the deep gong players wielded the transformative power needed to transport the dancers to the other world. The shaman’s movements were poised and deliberate, while those of the trance dancers were its unpredictable and unwieldy opposite. These roles in turn can be related to factors of gender, physicality, and power. The ‘feminised’ appearance and movements of the dancers can be seen to draw on ideas about the subordinate ‘irrational’ female, something Norma Sullivan (1994:170) points out in her discussion of communal rituals. By contrast, the poised and deliberate moves of the shaman may be seen as masculine and potent (Errington 1990:41-2). In contrast to the jatilan trance dances, many western scholars associate ‘underground’, ‘punk’, ‘black metal’ and related genres...