NOT ALL DISASTERS ARE MADE BY NATURE

Tumbledown tragedies; some can be prevented

Richter Scale Day (26 April) honors the 1900 birth of Charles Richter. He’s the American seismologist who invented the scale which measures earthquakes.  

The biggest in Indonesia last year was the magnitude 7.5 Palu quake and tsunami in Central Sulawesi.  Engineers blamed poor construction and houses built on land prone to soil liquefaction for some of the 4,400 deaths.

It doesn’t always need a quake to smash and kill. Among the many urgent tasks facing the new national and provincial governments is to enforce building regulations.  Duncan Graham reports from Cirebon:

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Monday 16 April last year dawned like any other in the village of Gegesik outside the port city of Cirebon, 220 kilometers east of Jakarta.

Samini, 40, had sent her daughter Tri Hana Sita, 10, off to primary school.  Her eldest son Aridh Newton Rachman, 22, was working far away.

At the rear of the family’s house was a small studio built of pre-cast concrete blocks and constructed the year before.  Here Samini’s husband Suherman bin Basan, 48, a dahlang (puppet master) was leading a gamelan orchestra rehearsal with the couple’s second son, Aziz Isaac Fathur Rachman, 20, and eight local children.

Members of the Hidayat Jati group were getting ready for shows later in the month.

“It was about 10.30. I just went out to buy a gas bottle and a few other things,” said Samini. “I wasn’t more than 100 meters away, but I didn’t hear anything.  Then I saw people running to our house.”

An old nine-meter high barn alongside the studio had collapsed.  The windowless building had small openings to encourage walet (native swifts) to breed.  Their nests are harvested to make Chinese soup.

But the birds had deserted the empty building before it suddenly tumbled onto the studio. Seven died instantly, including Suherman and Aziz, their bodies brutally disfigured by the tumbling bricks. Two girls and a boy were injured but have since recovered.

In the West there’d be a coronial inquiry and charges laid against the barn owner for failing to keep the building sound.  The local government would also be held responsible for not ensuring regulations were followed.

The builders of the studio would also be summonsed.  The remaining walls, only eight centimeters thick, show a jerry-built construction using low-quality mortar easily crumbled by hand.  There’s no obvious reinforcement and the blocks are not in-line.

“There was no wind, no rain and no earthquake,” said Samini.  “Some said the foundations had not been properly dug, but the barn had been in place for more than ten years.”

In villages other explanations have to be found.  Inevitably they involve the supernatural – and it’s hard to remain skeptical.

A pink-flowering bush is a splash of color amid the grey rubble of smashed bricks and shattered asbestos sheets that was once the music studio.  It’s the only living thing in the debris and Samini says it wasn’t planted by her or anyone else.  It thrives on the spot where her husband died.

Then there’s the question of the swifts abandoning their home.  Did they sense earlier movements in the walls and roof?

Suherman and Umer’s lives were not insured.  Nor was the building.  Apart from big companies and the rich, few buy insurance in Indonesia.

As a dahlang Suherman was said to be gifted with paranormal powers.  Before his sudden death he told his wife he had a dream of her becoming wealthy.

Since the accident she’s received compensation from the government and the barn owner, though doesn’t want the sums published for fear of arousing envy among neighbors.  She’s also received support from a city almost 8,000 kilometers away.

Cirebon has a longtime link to Wellington, the quake-prone capital of NZ. In the 1970s the late ethnomusicologist Dr Allan Thomas, who had been studying in Cirebon, bought a ten-piece gamelan set and 140 wayang kulit shadow puppets that were threatened by fundamentalists seeking to stamp out local culture.

Some of the instruments were 400 years old and hadn’t been played for half a century.  In Wellington they were restored with the help of the Indonesian Embassy; they were called The First Smile and used for concerts

Dance teacher and musician Jennifer Shennan said her late husband often spoke of music going beyond business and politics, helping people from different cultures get to know and understand each other better through feeling.

So when the Kiwis heard of the Gegesik tragedy they held a concert and raised enough cash to help Samini develop a business.  The money has been used to build a warung (shop) on the front of her house where she plans to sell necessities.

She remains doubtful about the logical explanations for the building’s collapse and keeps asking why it happened, and why then. 

“Some people were jealous of my husband and his success and for reviving the wayang kulit,” she said.  “Maybe he was cursed by someone using black magic.”

Or maybe the curse should be put on the builders who cut costs and corners, and the bureaucrats who failed to police the regulations.

Late last year a major road in Surabaya suddenly collapsed.  Fortunately no deaths were reported.  Some blamed an earthquake or sinkhole, but Sutopo Purwo Nugroho of the National Board for Disaster Management said it was caused by construction errors, again highlighting the lack of controls in the building business.

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First published in The Jakarta Post 25 April 2019)

SOUNDS OF CIREBON IN A STRANGE LAND

Hearing The First Smile 

Gunungan  courtesy of John Casey

                                    

More than 40 years ago a group of Indonesian characters quit their homeland for ever. They didn’t travel lightly. On their 7,600 kilometer journey south they carried something rare and precious – the indigenous culture of Cirebon.

Why did they flee?  Perhaps they were escaping a society little interested in their presence, threatening even. Had they stayed in the north coast port, soulless brutes might have attacked during a wave of religious intolerance.

For not all wanted to maintain the celebrities’ ancient and impressive lineage, claiming supporters were idolatrous and should be purged. The tomb of Sunan Gunungjati, one of the 15^th century Walisongo (nine saints), is in the West Java city and reportedly threatened by extremists following the Saudi Arabian Wahhabi sect.

The travellers’ back story is threadbare. Before moving they probably lived in the 16th century Keraton Kasepuhan (Sultan’s palace),

Maybe they were asylum seekers sent by their guardians to a haven where the locals had a reputation for tolerance, though knowing little about the newcomers’ culture.  Would they be accepted or pushed aside and ignored?

Today we happily report that all fears proved groundless. According to their custodian Jennifer Shennan (left)  the Indonesians settled well and are often seen in public where they charm and mystify.

Her late husband Dr Allan Thomas was the rescuer.  He paid several sacks of rice to secure their freedom, packing them in stout timber boxes for their long flight.

When the lids were lifted the migrants, guarded by the plump sage Semar, emerged to the delight of the welcoming onlookers.  And so The First Smile Gamelan and accompanying puppets began their new life in New Zealand.

The ten-piece collection of instruments includes a rare gambang kayu a wooden xylophone using teak slats.  Most ensembles have only brass metallophones. 

“They won’t be going back,” said Shennan, a dance teacher and musician in Wellington. “We thought about it after Allan died in 2010. 

“But as the Indonesian Ambassador Jose Tavares says, the collection has been here so long it’s now a New Zealand gamelan.

“Before being offered to Allan they hadn’t been played for 50 years – perhaps longer because of religious prohibitions on wayang kulit performances. The instruments are certainly antique – maybe 400 years.

“Others have warned that if the gongs went back the brass might be cut up and melted down.”

That won’t happen in NZ where the instruments and puppets live in The Long Hall on a splendid clifftop overlooking Wellington harbor. Till recently they were used regularly for concerts but need repairs.  These will be funded by the Indonesian Embassy.

Ethnomusicologist Thomas encountered the gamelan in the 1970s while studying in Java.  At the time he wrote:

‘Gamelan music is a curious mixture of the obvious and the intricate.  It is a simple sound effect and rich sophisticated literature at the same time. The exhilaration of gamelan for a Westerner is in the simple fact of it being alive – not castrated for a concert’.

Shennan said her late husband often spoke of music going beyond business and politics, helping people from different cultures get to know and understand each other better through feeling.

“When we perform in NZ audiences are magnetized,” she said. “Even people who know nothing about Indonesia don’t just look and leave.  They get drawn in by the magic, and because they can wander around and see both sides of the screen.

“There’s nothing precious about the tradition.  I’ve never heard anyone say outsiders shouldn’t be involved.  On the contrary, Indonesians want to share.”

Picture courtesy John Casey

The collection of 140 puppets includes some weird figures, like the utterly vile Ketepeng Reges (left) , evil spirits which try to break the concentration of meditators, and Badjul Sengara, a giant with the face of a crocodile.

Then there’s Dewi Rekatawati, who looks like something between a mermaid and a grub.  She’s a wife of Bima, one of the five Pandava brothers who fought their cousins the Kauravas in the ancient Mahabharata classic.

Her son Gatotkaca has magical powers to fly.  His headdress loops forward and is attached to the cap, a signature mark of the Cirebon puppets.  Marking pauses in the theater are the showstopping gunungan the mountain-shaped symbols also known as the Tree of Life.

Earlier this year Dhalang (puppet master) Joko Susilo of Otago University curated an exhibition of the puppets in a near Wellington regional gallery called Shadow Play to showcase Indonesian art and music.

He said the wayang purwa (original puppets) were created to stage the Hindu epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, along with old Javanese tales and satires, and celebrations of local events like weddings and anniversaries.

In its new world the gamelan doesn’t always perform traditional works.  Thomas and his friend, the late Jack Body from the NZ School of Music, were also composers, Visual artist Gerard Crewdson, (below) who plays the kenong (a high-pitch cradled gong), has written Cantor’s Infinity.

This is based on the calculations of 19^th century German academic Georg Cantor who developed set theory in mathematical logic. Less complex is the farewell song Now is the Hour which has been adapted for the gamelan.

The players are multitalented and include Tai Cha teachers, a computer programmer and librarians. 

Because of its age and fragility The First Smile is usually heard in the Long Hall.   Most outside performances are now conducted on a more modern set donated by the late Ibu Tien Soeharto, wife of Indonesia’s second president.

It’s called Gamelan Padhang Moncar.  It’s led by artistic director Budi S Putra and its players include some musicians from The First Smile.

“Padhang is brightness or daylight in Javanese, while Moncar means growing or developing vigorously,” said manager Dr Megan Collins. “We are the first gamelan in the world to see the new day. (The International Date Line running down the 180 degree longitude passes alongside NZ).

“It can also be interpreted as harmony and growth reflecting the aspirations of the group, so we’re planning to play in Java and Bali next year”

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First published in The Jakarta Post 25 May 2016)