From: lhoei@fwi.uva.nl (Liang Hwie Oei (I90))
Subject: Buku Lagu-lagu Indonesia kecil
Followup-To: idem dito
Summary: A small Indonesian songbook
Keywords: songs
Organization: FWI, University of Amsterdam
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 09:54:28 GMT


/News/alt/culture/indonesia/blik9302-memotong-padi

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% SOME TENTATIVE DEFINITIONS ON CULTURE: NARROW, STANDARD, ANTROPOLOGICAL  %
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(     
      koq aneh? ada kompleks kesepiaan? adem, ayem... kasiaaaaaaaaaaaaaan. 

 ide: yuk ngirim undangan ke soc.culture.portuguese! apa nasi tim.tim kita
      sudah mateng? tapi,... apa kabar ini? pramuwisma semua jadi wanita
      emansipasi - jadi lari. edan!
)

A very carefull reader has notified me indirectly that due an anomaly in the
distribution header of the previous issue of BLIK, the poster did not pass
the more stringent systems. Therefore here a very short summary:

Quality was defined as a moral yardstick for human life, including culture. A
system of hierarchical evolutionary stages has been set, with each higher
stage taking precedence over the lower ones. It was implicitly assumed that
moral systems developed by moral patterns (read: societies) of higher(!)
stage of development is entitled to actually pass a moral judgement over the
lower one(s). However, the key notion CULTURE itself was left undefined.

                              /* */

The book I was reffering to, [Lila] by Pirsig, does not help us either. In
[Lila], Pirsig shows himself to be very fascinated by Antropology. He even
goes as far as asserting that the basic American virtues have their roots at
the old Indian tribes (North American Pribumi?). What he meant by culture, he
takes as selfevident. For his purpusos, he didn't need a definition of
culture: he was mainly interested in (moral) Quality. 

                              /* */

Personally, I am quite happy to let visionaries like Pirsig, or for that
matter vicars, pastors, mullahs, rabbi's, guru deva's, bodidharmas define
what is good and what is bad. I dealt with that question on a personal level
when I got stuck in the Christian teachings I was brought up with; sofar
quite satisfactory. Now there is this culture thing I am stuck with. So I
better fix this bug before the system that operates me reports a fatal error.

                              /* */

'Let's do something cultural!', you may hear among the young, rich and
beautiful. They would mean going to the opera, a concert of Mahler, the
Russian Ballet or a visiting Indonesian dance squad at some Tropical Institu-
te. Some of these people even might insist that something cultural is always
abroad, meaning: the artists at Mont Matre in Paris, the Fado Cafe in Lisboa
where they can experience the unique Portuguese emotion of 'saudade', the
exotic beaches of Haiti, monastry prostitution in Thailand etc. etc. etc. If
you have the money, temptation would be great to join them. Not having money
leaves us to label this understanding of culture as narrow and snobistic.

                              /* */

Within the Dutch political system, there is a ministry of Culture. The full
mnemonic of this department in English would be 'CRS' = 'Culture, Recreation
and Social Work'. Such a instution would be a complete impossibility if they
didn't have some working definition of culture. Merely by observing their
policy of subsidizing you can draw some conclusions about what they regard as
culture and what is not. It turns out that their view on culture is about the
same as the populistic view of culture, as it should, albeit on a less
selfinterested basis. So who gets the bucks? Apart from musea, major thea-
ters, and all regular stuff, radio and television stations enjoy substantial
support from the government. But also smaller groups, like ethnical get
together clubs and even individuals who are trying to make their artistic
dream come true, do successfully apply for funding. 

Now we are able to extend the set of our cultural activities: { eat, read,
write, draw, dance, romance, fight, make love, sing, play and bury }, say...
Everybody is happy. It is often said that Holland is finished - positive
meaning. The only thing left to do is cover it up with an automatic wind,
rain and snow shield. Of course there are still some minor problems, but we
can comfortably broom them under the carpet. The standard definition of
culture IS instutionalized. So what's my problem?

                              /* */

Imagine yourself to be professor Stephen Hawking. The legendary supposedly
brilliant physicist who is the only one considered respectable enough to take
over the chair of Sir Isaac Newton, ...in a wheelchair. Suppose you are in a
much worse state that him. You're both deaf and blind. The only way you can
communicate with the world is via a Braille standard input output device.
Meanwhile your mind is travelling trough black holes, super novae and maybe
even intergalaxy batttles. On the surface it seems that your imagination is
faster than the speed of light and the spanwidth of your universe is infini-
te. But at some point you get stuck with these same WORDS and IDEAS that have
nurtured you at the prestigeous British colleges. And we in our turn are
unable to imagine a Stephen Hawking in another context than the one of the
original. Could there be another one in for instance Somalia? A talent for
being a genius might be enough reason to be crucified in a hostile enviro-
ment. A cripple should call himself lucky to be alive in hungrying Africa.
Unconsciously we have NARROWED the physical area where this phenomenon of a
crippled genius communicating liberal thoughts through hightech channels can
dwell. We also have put limitations on the domain of thoughts he can genera-
te. Newton himself said that he could see as much because he was standing on
the shoulders of giants. Now, the same holds for Hawking. And giants are a
rare species only to be found in highly civilized countries. And giants are
only human so they all have their cultural preferences and biases. 

                              /* */

Oops... did I say culture?! Can we denote a crippeld genius as a man of
culture? I am afraid we must. But he maybe eats space food through a plastic
tube, and shits in Pampers. Are we supposed to include that to our honourable
set of cultural heritage? I am afraid we have no other options.

                              /* */

I had my little discussion on the scope of culture in the past. The person
who countered my populistic notion of culture was a Cultural Antropologist.
She said that culture is everything a human being does, to the very smallest
detail, including the steps s/he fakes, the moves s/he makes, the breaths
s/he takes. Back then I had a little trouble accepting that definition,
because that would mean that there would be too many (sub, including very
personal) cultures that I didn't especially favour. My naive assumption was
that culture was either intrinsically good or at the least value free. On the
other hand, my own understanding of culture at that time leaves too many
people without a culture, which left me uneasy anyhow. But now I simply have
to embrace the cultural antropologist definition of culture; unreluctantly
however, because now I have MOQ, the Metaphysics of Quality, that simply pass
judgement on good and bad (sub)cultures, and everybody is happy again.

                              /* */

There is one little thing left that needs stretching. If culture is that big,
why isn't the same as LIFE or human life? Life and even human life are too
big, as you probably immeadiately have seen. It would include the banyan tree
(pohon waringin), Amoeba, AIDS virusses, coma patients. We don't want that.
We need to narrow our scope. What makes the example of professor Stephen
Hawking so compelling was his limitations. His physical limitations in the
first place. His mental c.q. philosophical(!) limitations in the second
place. The word that focuses our train of thoughts is LIMITATIONS. Culture is
ALWAYS understood in correlation with some boundary. In the narrowest sense
it would be the boundary of one individual. The most general accepted notion
of the broadest scope of culture would be continental boundaries. 'The Asian
Culture', that's as big as we might get. As long as no Martian lands on our
soil, it wouldn't make sense to speak of 'human culture'; all culture is
inherently human. Thus formally we could define culture as a partial subset
of active human life over its total (world)population.

                              /* */

Don't you feel the liberating power of that word: limitations? (Ah, mungkin
anda sudah tau. Karena aku pernah membaca ada seseorang yang menulis di aci:
'...jangan harap bisa kuasa...' dsb.). The American have that beautiful
dream: everyone can become anything s/he wants as long you work hard enough
to achieve it. That believe actually has proved to work for very exceptional
individuals, but the majority of the lesser gods, have learned to accept the
limitations of their own possibilities and the limitations that American
society itself posed to realizing the same dreams. Just look what has become
to the idea of the great melting pot. Some Black-Americans are actively
engaged in selfsegregation trying to create a state within a state.  

                              /* */

There have been few studies in the biological limitations of cultural
development of individuals. Some observations are made though on the nondeve-
lopment of culture with children who have grown up without human assistance.
The most famous is the Kaspar Hauser kid. Some of these kids never learn to
walk properly and remain crawling on the ground. A related issue is our
decreasing ability to learn new languages. We don't have to do much effort to
learn the use of our mothertongue (unless it is slipping of your memory, like
in my case), but second languages are harder to get into. The same very
plausibly also holds for foreign cultures. Where I am heading is the idea
that human beings are limited in their ability to assimilate culturally in a
enviroment that has not been his nest. Even the most acculturated person will
eventually recall his past or roots and lose the fight against it.

                              /* */

As not to lose the scope of the target of this article I'd like to mention
the mother of Indonesian women emancipation: Ibu Kartini. She was free to
write down her progressive ideas to the world, but was eventually put back to
her own context, which is to marry a husband of her fathers choice. It takes
hunderds of years to change a tradition that had in its turn taken hunderds
of years to become what it was. We are close now to the term that the west
uses for this sort of situation. In literary circles it is called: the human
condition. In the end Ibu Kartini was not able to escape the entanglement of
her human condition, no matter how honourable and loving her parents were.

                              /* */

No reason to become down though. Even the Metaphysica of Quality allows for
dynamic forces for change, as long it does not endanger the basis of suste-
nance. There is still a lot that can be done. There is a lot we can do. But
we cannot have anything we want. And we cannot do everything we'd like to do.
Culture is the food we eat, the clothes we dress ourselves with, the books we
read, the stories we tell, the thoughts we cook up, the debates we hold, the
politics we engage in; the wars we try to stop, the blows we deliver, the
insults we swallow, the science we practice, the computers we hack into; the
songs we sing, the dances we perform, the prayers we mumble, the newsgroups
we un/subscribe to; the fields we plow, the rice we plant, the fruits we
harvest, the wo/men we make love with, the children we educate... and this
all within the constraints of our human condition, which is: our culture.

                              /* */

The challenge for each individual is to find the exact location of his/her
field of cultivation and then cultivate it to his/her best abilities.

And by now the careful reader could have concluded that alt.culture.indonesia
might be in a way be regarded as a test field, either for planting or for
harvesting. alt.culture.indonesia is a culture by itself since it is merely a
narrowing of scope, due to the limitations of its users, within the total sum
of the world wide internet communication domain, of human intercourse.

Nevertheless, in the worst case of a demised alt.culture.indonesia, because
of a thundering silence, mind you, there is a big world out there, with its
possibilities and its limitations, and knowing your part in it, as long you
are actively engaged in the cultivation of YOUR CULTURE, either in thought or
in deed, there is really nothing else to wish for.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  oOo  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

WAKTU POTONG PADI                   WHEN WE WE ARE HARVESTING

nomen nescio                        folklore


Waktu potong padi                   When we are harvesting
Ditengah sawah                      In the midst of field
Sambil bernyanyi                    Singing a folksong
Riuh rendah                         From high to low

Memotong padi                       Cutting the paddy
Semua orang                         All kinds of folk
Sedari pagi                         From early morning
Sampai petang                       Till the afternoon

Bersenang hati                      We are so happy
Sambil bersuka                      Our hearts rejoice
Sungguhlah kami                     Indeed we are truly
Bersama sama                        Together again

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" acknowledgement """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""

Buku Lagu-lagu Indonesia kecil - A small Indonesian songbook is a serial
drafted at the ends of odd weeks by a lover of Indonesian songs as a vehicle
for thoughts on culture, either Indonesian or in a more general context. 

Questions, requests, actions or reactions on related topics should be posted
on this newsgroup rather than mailed to yours truly and responded or handled
by other knowledgeable active users of alt.culture.indonesia in the first
place. Much factual knowledge about Indonesians or their songs are beyond me.

The formula as defined within these lines you may use at your own discretion.

This close door and rather one sided approach I must adopt to protect myself
from a too great involvement; writing a serial is a commitment by itself.

I am a Sumbaborn descendant of the Chinese with a few drops of Javanese blood
in my veins currently living and studying in Europe as a Dutch citizen.

""""""""""""""""""""" see you again two weeks from now """"""""""""""""""""""
From: Steve.Gill@rumah.DIALix.oz.au (Steve Gill)
Sender: UUCP@rumah.DIALix.oz.au