A warm Balinese welcome
to the Second Annual Payangan Festival of World Music, Dance,
and Theater, June 29-July 6, Payagan, Bali.
The Payangan Festival, known in Indonesian as "Pesta Payangan,"
was launched in 2002 in a modest one-day format by participants
in the Center for World Music's annual workshop in Bali.
This year's festival, a joint venture of the Center and the local
Camat's office (a kind of county supervisor) has been greatly
expanded. As shown below, the first six days will present evening
performances of old traditional music by gamelan groups from six
Payangan banjars (important neighborhood divisions), together
with six rare kinds of ancient gamelans from villages in East
Bali. The last two days of the festival will be devoted to the
larger world of music, dance and theater, with performances of
Javanese shadow play, Sundanese music and dance, and performing
arts from Africa, India, the Middle East and medieval Europe,
among others.
Food, textile demonstrations, displays of local handicrafts,
and folk dancing by the public and participants will round out
the festive atmosphere of what is planned to be an annual event.
Touring gamelan groups from abroad are welcome to take advantage
of the festival venue to help exemplify the spread of Indonesian
performing arts abroad.
Festival Program
June 29
Opening ceremony: Gong Gede from Sulahan village, with baris
gede and rejang dances. The Payangan selunding, gambang, and the
first of the six gong lelambatan will play.
June 30-July 4
A week of evening performances: Gong Lelambatan groups from six
Payangan banjars, invited rare gamelans from Kamasan (7-tone Semar
Pegulingan), Tangkas (luang), Tenganan (selunding), and elsewhere.
Javanese shadow play with dalang Oemartopo and full wayang gamelan
from Wonogiri, Java on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights, with
division following the three pathet modalities. Tri-lingual (Kawi,
Indonesian, and English).
July 5-6
World music and dance performances by Summer
Workshop particpants representing Africa, India, the Middle
East, and Europe.
Symposia and discussions on traditional arts in the 21st Century.
Inter-island ikat display and demonstration of geringsing double
ikat weaving from Tenganan. Displays of typical handicrafts from
Payangan area. Meli's Warung (Indonesian food), Murni's desserts,
Kristine's Coffee and Tea. Poco-poco line dance lessons for everyone.
The evenings end with a general dance party mixing local residents
and visitors. A local DJ plays the music of Jopie Latul.
Festival Dedication
Colin McPhee and Guru Lunyuh
The 2002 festival was dedicated to Colin McPhee, the Canadian
composer and ethnomusicologist who wrote the definitive "Music
in Bali" from materials collected in the 1930s. The afternoon
session featured gamelans associated with McPhee: (1) the famous
gamelan semar pegulingan, now resident in Teges village, which
McPhee kept in his house in Sayan village and which is pictured
in many of his writings, (2) the gamelan angklung with the ancient
tuned bamboo rattles (angklung), which he started in the 1930s
for a group of children in Sayan and which is still active more
than seventy-five years later, and a gamelan selunding group from
Tenganan village, which had fascinated McPhee as one of the oldest
styles of gamelan in Bali. The Teges group also played an hour
of brilliant compositions by I Lotring, a Balinese composer whose
music was much admired by McPhee.
The 2003 festiva will be dedicated to the Guru Lunyuh, Colin
McPhee's old informant, who walked the ten miles from Payangan
to Sayan twice a week to provide many old Balinese gamelan compositions
now known to scholars around the world through McPhee's transcriptions
in "Music in Bali."
Background
to Payangan Festival
for Workshop Participants
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