Introduction to the Music of Gambang Kromong
Gambang Kromong is the regional music of Jakarta. But this Jakarta is virtually invisible, one that most people have forgotten to exist. Its performers and audience are ordinary people, and the Jakarta they live in is no more sophisticated or cosmopolitan than other cities and towns elsewhere in Indonesia. Unlike the audience for national popular music genres, gambang kromong’s audience can be defined quite specifically in ethnic, economic, and geographic terms. And, as it happens, the music itself reflects with unusual clarity the development of this audience. While the popular music produced in Jakarta’s studios embodies the ideal of a uniform culture shared throughout the country, gambang kromong expresses one region’s cultural history in all its particularity.
The performers and audience for gambang kromong today live at the edges of Jakarta and in the towns and semi-rural areas beyond (Bekasi and Tangerang). They belong to two groups: the so-called Peranakan Chinese*, whose ancestry is mixed Chinese and Pribumi (native), and the Betawi (Batavian).
While the two groups differ in at least one crucial respect –in general, the Peranakan are Christian or Buddhist / Taoist, and the Betawi are Muslim– they are nevertheless very much akin. They live in the same or adjacent neighborhoods; they both speak the Betawi dialect of Indonesian; and for the most part they live at the same relatively low economic level, working as small farmers, fishermen, peddlers, factory hands, laborers, and so on.
Especially in Tangerang, the shared conditions and circumstances of the Betawi and Peranakan are led to a degree of mutual acceptance and integration that is unusual in the rest of Indonesia, where there is often friction between Chinese and Pribumi. For instance, in Tangerang, the hosts of Peranakan wedding celebrations expect Pribumi guests and are careful to accommodate them in the matter of pork dishes: sometimes they separate food tables, one with pork and one without; often they hold the celebration over two days and nights and refrain from serving pork on the first.
Sources:
Philip Yampolsky Music from the Outskirts of Jakarta: Gambang Kromong
Alwi Shihab Betawi Queen of the East
To whomever interested in Gambang Kromong, visit http://anaknagaberanaknaga.com to get more information. You can buy the DVD “Anak Naga Beranak Naga” (Dragons Beget Dragons) by contacting this email.