June/July, 1998
No. 035/VI/98
cover story
After The Boom
What future is there for
Bali's modern theatre
scene?
Bali has its own history of
communal philosophising
and coffee-drinking
Renaissance
Twenty years of Bali's
Festival of the Arts
beyond
bali
Sumbawa's
Secrets
Photographs from
Kuang Amo
regular
features
Dangerous
Times
Orchestrating a
cremation in Ubud
Home Grown
A preview of
the Quicksilver Pro
Adventure
Getting over a fear
of diving
Health and Beauty
Foreign aid for
optic
health
Books
The Painted Alphabet
reviewed
Food
Two boutique hotels,
two top chefs
Fiction
'Our Moon'
by Mas Ruscitadewi
advertising index for
Bali Echo web site
 |
The opening of
the Warung Budaya ("Culture Cafe") at Denpasar’s Art Centre, and its
development as a regular gathering place for artists and intellectuals, reminds Cok
Sawitri and Arif B. Prasetyo of similar cafe traditions indigenous to Balinese village
society.
One balmy evening at the Warung Budaya, while attending a discussion about the
government’s new arts policy, I was reminded of a story. The story tells of two
drunkards who come to blows over the planet Venus. I Bambang, one of the drunkards, was
convinced that the light that appears nightly in the dusk sky emits from a lamp that hangs
over France. The French, he insisted, were responsible for putting the lamp up in the sky
and taking it down again each dawn. When the lamp was up in the sky, its light was visible
in all corners of the globe, including Bali, where I Bambang was born several score years
past, at the foot of Mount Agung! Ridiculous? Perhaps. But to question the word of a
drunkard is even more so.
It is easy to see why the story came to me at Warung Budaya. At the opening of the Warung, much had been made of the Parisian cafes. The Warung sees its establishment as an attempt to transplant such intellectual cafe-going traditions in Bali. As Bali becomes increasingly international and more and more Balinese travel overseas, say the founders of Warung Budaya, it is only fitting that Balinese adopt modern lifestyles, and this includes spending time eating, drinking and discussing cultural matters in a cafe. Clearly, then, people don’t just go to the Warung Budaya to eat and drink. The Warung Budaya is a crossroads of highly important information about the arts in Indonesia and overseas.
So what is new about the Warung Budaya? Its very name, especially the choice of the qualifier budaya (cultural) implies that prior to the establishment of the Warung Budaya, warung-going in Bali has not been a ‘cultural’ pursuit. But in fact traditions similar to Sartre et al’s fraternising in French cafes have deep cultural roots in Bali. Warungs act as fora for spreading news and sharing information. They are also integral to the political life and development of the arts in Balinese village society.
In a typical Balinese village there are several kinds of warung. A tenten is usually located at the three-way junction in the middle of the village or in the outer yard of the temple. It is here that villagers ngewarung, nganggur or ngingke: chat with fellow villagers over a plate of rice. There is also the dakocan, where pretty young girls serve glasses of sweet, black coffee and the evening pasar senggol, where mobile stalls sell ice drinks, bowls of noodles and fried bananas. Finally, there is the village ‘pub’: the petuakan where men gather to drink tuak (rice wine) after finishing work in the rice paddy. Every evening, at least five or six men can be seen assembled here, metuakan (drinking tuak).
But what is all this hanging about in warungs, all this nganggur and metuakan, for? Is it simply to pass the time? Most Balinese will tell you that the petuakan does not only function to quench a tired farmers thirst. Going to the petuakan is a way for men to find out what is happening around the village. It is here that matter of irrigation, harvest time, rice plagues, gossip about women and rumours arbout village politics are discussed, and efforts to keep the peace and maintain the status quo are made. Likewise the case in the tenten, which as well as suckling pig also serves up the latest gossip about matters such as ownership of the village temple or disputes over land. But although they are politically fraught, the social importance of these discussions is concealed within satrical references, and nervousness is dispersed with frequent joking.
But the Balinese warung does not only serve to maintain the integrity of village society. As is the case in Paris cafes, it is not unusual for important ideas and works of art to be inspired by the petuakan or tenten milieu. Art criticism also takes place here. A performance will be considered a success if it is talked about at length in the warung. The greatness or otherwise of a work of art is often measured by the length of time it is talked about in the petuakan, market or in the communal bathing place. In other words, it is the general public determines the value of a work of art. In this sense, each and every villager is an art critic, and it is the warung that provides the forum for them to air their critique.
So is the Warung Budaya a modern version of the petuakan? Both are fora for discussion and appreciation of the arts. Both are also places where cultural matters are considered - whether that be irrigation of the rice paddies or who Bali’s artists and intellectuals should support as Bali’s next governor. Although Warung Budaya is indeed more global in nature than the petuakan, both essentially function as media - both are attempts to enliven local cultural and artistic life. So, may the Warung Budaya irrigate well the parched paddies of Bali’s arts scene!
 |
Copyright © 1998 Bali Echo.
All Rights Reserved
site design by Access Bali Online