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Asia > Indonesia > Nusa Tenggara/ Southeast Islands > Bali > Festivals > Articles > Bali Nights

Bali Nights

by Bradley Winterton

“The witch at Batubulan is only illusion,” said the man in the blue headdress and mauve sarong standing beside me in the temple forecourt. “But here she will be for real”

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“The witch at Batubulan is only illusion,” said the man in the blue headdress and mauve sarong standing beside me in the temple forecourt. “But here she will be for real.”

A full moon was shining, and the high palms stood silhouetted against the sky, rustling slightly, their leaves like the long, elegant fingernails of many a fashionable Bali teenager or temple dancer. I raised my eyebrows questioningly and he laughed. Then, suddenly serious again, he said “It’s true. And not maybe. For sure.”

Batubulan is a village outside the Balinese capital of Denpasar where the celebrated Barong Dance is performed every morning for frequently large numbers of tourists. But the performance of the same dance here in this small village was to be, as my informant had just pointed out, the drama as it was meant to be enacted, as an essential and magical ingredient in a temple festival.

The Barong Dance, though it has comic elements, is fundamentally an exorcism drama. As recently as 30 years ago this kind of Balinese dance was only ever performed at such celebrations. Its purpose there was, and at village festivals still is, to influence the balance of the spirit world in favour of the participants. In defeating the long-fanged witch, known as the ‘rangda’, the benevolent ‘barong’, a shaggy dog played by two men in the style of an English pantomime horse, limits, for the time being at least, her power.

What the comic barong overcomes, however, is not the power of some folk-tale witch that the stage one merely represents, but a real one that (so the Balinese believe) actually possesses the stage one during the performance. Here, in this tropical village under a full moon, the witch was to be “for real”.

Four girls in golden helmets started it, the evening hot and full of the scent of cloves. The aroma hung alongside the villagers crowding round the grass arena where the dance was even then in progress. I’d arrived within a couple of hours of getting off the plane, after being hurriedly kitted out in sarong and headdress and given instructions by a smiling and enthusiastic hotel porter. How very Balinese, I thought, to insist on putting first things first despite all the competing attractions imported onto the island to cater to the interests of mass tourism.

At first sight, though, the festival appeared eminently relaxed and casual. People wandered from the inner temple compound to the outer courtyard that contained the grassy acting area and back again just as if it was nothing more solemn than an English summer fete. In Bali it’s often not clear how far the temple ceremonies themselves are serious or meant to be taken with at least a measure of light-heartedness, and the unavoidable impression is that the Balinese themselves are not particularly interested in establishing the difference.

Earlier, in the glittering informality of the hotel lobby, I’d asked my porter friend if I needed to take any cash with me to the temple. “Oh no! For God, no money!” he’d replied, smiling sweetly. But when I got to the festival, almost the first thing I saw was saronged devotees squatting in circles under bright paraffin lamps busy laying bets on a wide variety of gaudily coloured board games, for all the world as if they were at an American or European carnival.

A considerable looseness, too, applied to the blessing of devotees. Nobody appeared to care a whit if tourists approached the white-clad temple priests, and two other visitors to the island were, as I approached, kneeling and being routinely blessed with grains of rice pressed to the brow and sprinklings of holy water along with all the rest.

In the outer court of the temple, the white-masked children in high golden headdresses were still dancing to the silver rain of the ‘gamelan’ (Balinese orchestra), and the stall-keepers were selling plastic children’s watches under bunches of brashly-coloured balloons, when suddenly, across the throng of spectators, I saw the Professor. He was standing on the other side of the arena, philosophically contemplating the astonishing dexterity and lissom fluidity of the young dancers. With the gamelan hammering away in its unstoppable and joyous routine, it was no use trying to call out to him, so I gently extricated myself from the crowd and made my way round its circumference to greet him.

“Hi,” he said. “When did you arrive?”
“Just a couple of hours ago,” I replied laughing. I was pleased that I had found him, and also rather pleased with myself for being able, simply by my presence there so soon after my arrival, to demonstrate to one of the great authorities on Balinese culture living on the island my own not inconsiderable enthusiasm.
“Looks like a good one,” I said.
“They’re all good ones,” he replied. “The Balinese appear to enact these things just because their calendars dictate the time is ripe, but you’ll never catch them putting on a show that’s a notch below their best.

“Tourism has had no effect on these people. It brings them money, of course, but money that’s for the most part spent on rituals. The enactment of these festivals is the main purpose of their lives. Dance is the key to Balinese social behaviour.”

I thought this was an extraordinary thing to say. And again I felt pleased to have run into the Professor.

A solo dance ensued, while the other dancers crouched with their wide-eyed, serene masks towards the performer. The human beings beneath the masks, however, were less concentrated, happy to adjust their headdresses and twiddle with their fans. The crowd, all attired in their formal best and somehow at one and the same time respectful and relaxed, remained unperturbed, clearly pleased to be part of something pre-ordained. No one, of course, ever clapped.

The malign rangda entered slowly and was purified by the temple priests before beginning his performance. The role is always taken by a male actor. The rangda, according to the Professor, is “the Queen of Balinese magic”. She flourished a white cloth, seemingly possessed of magical powers, and featured pendulous breasts, protuberant eyes, and long, ominous fangs.

As for the barong itself, he was splendidly outfitted with long, neatly-combed hair along his full length. He sported leather saddles, and a wooden mouth which he would clack open and shut noisily. With the barong the hero of such a sacred dance, I couldn’t help wondering why it was that actual Balinese dogs were invariably so shoddily treated. Perhaps it was the existence of the sacred Barong Dance itself that provided the reason they weren’t treated worse.

An important part of the performance consisted of a mock-comic battle between the witch and a group of would-be stalwart assistants summoned by the barong to help him. These men were armed with short swords, but the witch put a spell on them which rendered the swords useless, and reduced the men to a display of impotence much enjoyed by the onlookers.

Then the music suddenly took on a new loudness and urgency, and sections of the crowd appeared to be becoming less passive. A few moments later some men pushed their way into the acting area as if to confront the actors. Quickly priests appeared from nowhere and made efforts at keeping actors and audience apart, controlling the forces that the entry of the spirit into the witch had let loose.

After a lull the customary form of the sword-dance ensued, with much violence, both mock and real. Priests and public were again milling about in the arena. People seemed to be displaying their willingness to go crazy for the benefit of the prestige of their village’s Barong Dance festival. It was becoming a cross between a ritual and a melee.

Eventually the rangda and the barong were escorted off-stage and through an archway into the temple’s inner compound. Their faces were covered in cloths. I turned to the Professor.

“Do you believe all this?” I asked him. “I mean, you’ve studied these customs for most of your adult life. Do you believe what these Balinese believe?”
The Professor looked at me for a long time, straight in the eyes. “Of course not,” he said. “As rational men we can’t possibly believe these things. People who talk of the wisdom of the East are talking through their hats.”
“So, them, what is possession?” I said. “I mean, if spirits don’t really come down and inhabit these people, what is it that’s going on? What do the priests do to them to make them behave like this, to enable them to do things ordinary people in their right minds would never think of doing?”

The Professor glanced at me, sharply I thought. In the silence that ensued I looked back at the scene before us. The musicians were hammering away now almost with abandon.

When I turned again towards the Professor, I found he’d disappeared.

More than slightly taken aback, I broke away from the crowd and went up the steps and through the archway into the inner temple to see for myself what was happening.

The two barong dancers, with priests in attendance, were coming out from inside their shaggy-dog costume. They were shaking and juddering - clearly they were still ‘possessed’. Had they been like this all along, or had they become so during the increasing tension of the dance? They rolled their eyes and moaned, and the priests tried to restrain them. Even the man playing the rangda, the one who, of all the actors, had been the one earmarked to be possessed ‘for real’, had by now come out of his costume and was trying to help. Gently but firmly the priests brought the two men in front of what was clearly an important shrine and sprinkled their faces with holy water. At last the men’s shuddering subsided, and they turned and looked at the people around them as if again recognising the faces of their dearest friends after a long time away.

I walked back through the arch into the outer courtyard again. The Barong Dance and its ensuing rituals were at an end. Bottles of Balinese arak were much in evidence. Some distance away, though, a small clutch of people were looking at something, so I went over to see that it was.

They turned out to be regarding another ‘possessed’ man who was being supported between two others. As I arrived, someone came towards him holding a small, chirping week-old chick. The possessed man appeared to go into convulsions, then suddenly closed his eyes, leaned forward, and bit off the chicken’s head. Then he swallowed it.

I turned away. I have to admit I was shaken. What is all this, I thought, looking at the ground wet and littered with trodden sacrifices of rice and flowers. Men stood in groups damp-eyed, with their palms together and between them sticks of incense. Others held holy water for some further ritual of ablution. What magic was this? Or was it merely mumbo-jumbo, beautiful but essentially unreal, maintained by an intellectual priesthood to ensure who knew what - social cohesion, perhaps, or their own continuing authority?

I walked away, past the paraffin lamps and the food stalls, out of the temple and into the moth-soft darkness. I couldn’t reconcile the festival’s beauty and the mindlessness it encouraged. Sometimes, I thought to myself glumly, I suspect I prefer surfing.

And then, back in the temple, the singing started. It was so peaceful, so ancient, so fresh. Women’s voices led a rising and falling melody like plainchant from some remote village in the hills of southern Europe. Why do all religions believe that singing will be so very pleasing to the gods? Its only accompaniment was a frail, tinkling bell.

The following evening I went to a show of Balinese dance specially put on for tourists. It only contained three dances, but it was in its way a microcosm of Balinese dance, as indeed it was intended to be. With the moon once again shining from high in the dark sky on a warm, windless night, the musicians in their gorgeous mauve and gilt hats beating away at their xylophone-like instruments, the young women dancers with their luxuriant black hair gathered in long, heavy tresses, and with fixed expressions within which only their eyes moved as they scattered frangipani and oleander blossoms, it was the perfect picture of a generous and benign culture. A masked figure in courtly dress and wearing a golden, triple-tiered crown vibrated his long fingernails in the direction of the audience.

Sitting back and taking in the beauty and harmony of the occasion, I thought over the events of the night before.

Here in Bali you learn what culture means. This is true culture. It binds the people together in a humane and life-enhancing way. Earlier, I had gone back-stage. With the crowded costumed figures and the general air of merriment, it was evocative of charades at a Victorian Christmas party. One dancer had told me that for a living he sold counterfeit watches on Kuta Beach, the island’s most popular tourist location. Similarly, the man who drives your bus by day might well be the one who goes crazy dancing the witch at his village festival.

In other words, this is a culture that unites people, and continues to do so despite the inroads of modern technology and the influx of tourists. It’s fixed and unchanging, expressing an attitude to the universe and enacting that expression in colourful rituals the ordinary people can both understand and take part in.

How different a world this is from modern London or New York, where one man goes to Catholic mass on a Sunday while his neighbour is a Buddhist, or a Protestant, and the man across the road is an atheist who prefers golf on his Sunday mornings and collects canaries.

Ours is a diverse, individualistic world, Bali’s a more ancient one, despite its airport and petrol stations. It is a living example of a pre-literate, pre-individualistic world, coherent, cohesive, hierarchic, ornate and sustaining.

Bali’s world is like the garden clocks made of flowers popular in 17th century Europe - all phases of time are graced with beauty of one kind or another.

Then the Kechak dance began, with the smell of wax from the stand of candles that was its only light-source drifting across the spectators. The musicians, too, had now left their stands and the only sound was unaccompanied men’s voices. How joyfully these men took up their immemorial parts, how lustily they gave forth their complex vocal sounds, learnt - so I’d been told back-stage - when they were still at school. Compared with this, the baying crowds at a pop concert, and even highly-trained classical musicians tamely playing from printed music, seemed pale by comparison.

But the real charm of these festivals lies not only in the dances and the music, but also in the very event, seen as a whole, something this stage display inevitably lacked. In a real festival it’s the gathered people that are so wonderful, the women with their hair dressed and neatly decorated, the men in their headdresses and best shirts. The warm air is heavy with the aroma of clove cigarettes, the orchestra hammers away, the faces are both absorbed and unconcerned, utterly unconscious of being parts of what in the hands of a fine photographer would undoubtedly be a work of art, and that is one anyway in the eye of the sympathetic beholder.

Were we, then, to envy the Balinese their simple faith and its colourful enactment, or seek to convince them of the error of their ways, and what we consider the truth of scientific materialism?

Sitting there in the warm night, I couldn’t find any satisfactory answer to this conundrum. That perhaps I’d framed the question a trifle too simply, though, was suggested to me towards the end of my stay.

I didn’t see the Professor again until the day I left. I was standing in the hotel lobby with my bags, waiting for my transport to arrive.
“Hello,” he said cheerily, pacing earnestly towards me across the polished floor. “Going somewhere?”
“I’m leaving,” I said. “Got to get back. You know how it is.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “See you again soon, shall we?”
“Oh, I expect so. Eventually. No immediate plans, though.”

I wondered whether to raise the subject of possession again. It might, after all, be my last chance. I decided to risk it.
“You never did tell me what, in your view, possession involves,” I said, smiling. “We got as far as agreeing it can’t really be spirits descending. So what happens? I really would love to know.”
The Professor looked down at the impeccable floor for a moment, then, with the toe of his sandal, lined up a crushed cigarette butt that was lying there, and kicked it smartly towards a waste-paper bin.
“So you’re off,” he said. “Look after yourself! Look forward to seeing you again soon. Bye!”
And he was gone.

“Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu.”
Why was it that Keats kept coming to mind in Bali, I wondered. No other poet seemed anything like as appropriate. But the finger at the lips isn’t always bidding you farewell. Sometimes it’s just telling you to keep your mouth shut.

I got into the taxi. A porter - the same one who had directed me to the festival, and now himself resplendently dressed as if for yet another Balinese celebration - gently closed the door.

I took one look back over my shoulder to where some hotel guests were sitting out under the palms, drinking tea and listening to Schubert’s “Fifth Symphony” being relayed from somewhere among the flowering bushes. Beyond was the Badung Strait, with the cliffs of Nusa Penida showing yellow in the declining light of afternoon. A stone deity gestured silently.

And then we drove away.