Here is the Bali nightlife update for June 4th-15th 2007 provided by the Beat Magazine.
* Sunday Jun 3rd
ESC/Sky Garden
Sunday Chillout
Come and chill all day with great music, refreshing drinks and tasty home style comfort food. champagne brunch, sunset pitchers, and proper Sunday roast with all the trimmings
F Lounge
Fuzzy
Laid back downtempo classics massage ya mind & let ya unwind one fine track at a time. From 11pm
Kudos
Reflection
Cool down with live DJ performance and 50% off all cocktails all night. From 11pm
MBarGo
New Vibration
DJs Lazy Bones (JPN), Gust and host G-Voiz, blend R&B, Hiphop, Rock and Trance with no limit. Free welcome shot till midnight. From 11pm
Obsesion
Sweet Soul Music
O’Line Band take the stage. From 10pm
* Monday Jun 4th
ESC/Sky Garden
Margarita Mondays
Frozen lime margaritas, glass 19k, Pitchers 99k, and gourmet Mexican food from 29k. Still with great music
F Lounge
Flow
Filtering ya system with soulhouse nutrition Rizal recharges ya booty. Finger food & fresh oven pizza till 1am. From 11pm
MBarGo
Liberated Monday
Forget “I Hate Monday”, liberate yo self with Reggaeton sounds from DJ Nacho, Leon (76Beat) and Adith on percussion. From 11pm
* Tuesday Jun 5th
Bahiana
3rd Year Anniversary
The shrine of Salsa hit their 3rd year of Latin madness. Tonight, special performance by El Amore Band (JKT), Salsa dance, Hip Hop, Sexy dancers, drag queen, Hawaiian dance, fire dance, body painting, live DJs and not to forget free flow beer, and coconut punch. Just join the birthday bash! From 10pm
ESC/Sky Garden
Pizza, Pasta & Ribs
25% off pizza, pasta and BBQ ribs and Mojito & Sangria at just 19k glass/99k pitcher. And of course live DJs playing soulful, funky house. From 9pm
F Lounge
Female Fylosofy
Fat beats bump, hot ladies jump, old skool stay cool like humptey hump, served fresh by Lazy B. 2/4/1 on all Roskas for the ladies till 1am. From 11pm
Hook
Ten Thousand Tapas
Selected tapas @ 10k, cocktail pitchers @ 70k with tunes by DJ Danny. From 11pm
MBarGo
HipBreaks
DJ Iman Electrofux (Bandung), L.Shady (76Beat), with G Voiz as the host, Kyu on guitar. Guaranteeing the ultimate electronica/hip hop mash up. From 11pmm
* Wednesday Jun 6th
Hard Rock Cafe
FHM Girl Next Door 2007
The all girl line up is in the house! 21 honeys from across Indonesia will be shakin some tail and droppin some jaws. The cutest one will be chosen to be “The Girl Next Door 2007”. Beats by DJs Redy and Mamit (1945MF). From 11pm
ESC/Sky Garden
Thousand Wings
Just 1k per chicken wing (5 flavours) and large Bintang & Storm beer 15k. Plus great music as always
F Lounge
The F Notes
Rewind to tha time of Acid Jazz sublime as KeNeBe steam up tha open mic. Free drinks for guest talents. From 11pm
Hu’u
Cigars, Single Malts & Jazz
Refreshing Jazzy remakes of your favorite pop chart hits presented by the Hu’u jazz trio that is bound to give you an eargasmic experience. Rp 130k for a shot of Macallan 12 years single malt & SUper Partagas cigar, 1 for 1 wines of the month (by the glass). Also on Thursday. From 8pm
Kudos
Drama Queen
Full cabaret show, featuring characters from Moulin Rouge. From 11pm
MBarGo
Ashpalt Jungle
DJ P-pen pull his trick to rock the dancefloor with Hip Hop and Tribal flavaz, with live djembe performance by Javaica. From 11pm
Obsesion
The Fusion
Saharadja band take world music fusion to all new levels. Feat. Marina. From 10pm
* Thursday Jun 7th
Bacio
DJ G Force (Chocolate City). From 11pm
Bahiana
Latin Mood
Two weeks 5x inLatin Mood, presenting El Amore Latin band (JKT), free salsa lesson with Made Alfa , Intan & Yuli, sound by DJs Soma & Jonas. From 10pm
Double Six
World Sound
DJs Peter P (UK) and Fadi (SWE)
DeJaVu
High Heels
Proudly presents HOST NIGHT with DJ Pete Poyton (UK) along with backup sound from DJs Sofyan & Anastacia. From 11pm
ESC/Sky Garden
Thirsty Thursday
For those who need re-hydration: Storm pale ale 19k, Long Island ice tea 29k, Infusion Martini 39k, Spirit bottles 75cl 299k and fresh Oysters from NZ 9k. Plus the best in house music. From 9pm
F Lounge
Fetish
Deep kinky electro juice squeezed fresh from tha tube by special guest rockers Sean Candy (SlotMachine) & Nick Taylor. Dont miss this. From 11pm
Hu’u
Cigars, Single Malts & Jazz
From 8pm
Hook
Tequila Gila
Join the party as Hook get down ‘n’ dirty with Mr Jose Quervo. Tequila bottles @250k, shot @ 15k only, get 5 shots for 70k, complimentary chips’n’dips with every order of tequila, and Funky HOuse/Electro by DJ Fadi
Kudos
2QT2BSTR8
All the divas pulling out all the stops, beats from DJ U-you. From 11pm
MBarGo
Lingerie Fashion Show by 69 Slam
International babes strutting on the bar in little 69 Slam numbers… also with giveaways. From 11pm
Paparazzi
Stiletto
A ladies night out with 50% off champagne, wine and cocktails for the ladies. DJ Alfan on the tracks. From 11pm
Obsesion
Latin & Soul
Tropical Transit giving you the sexy sound. From 10pm
* Friday Jun 8th
Bacio
DJs Peter P (UK) and Jonny. From 11pm
Centerstage
Slumber Party
Don’t be sleepy, slumber party is here, with After9 band, stilt walker, lingerie fashion show, and night lullaby show. FDC applies.From 9.30pm
Double Six
DJs Wilson & Anastacia.
DeJaVu
Le Chique
High society party with DJs Anastacia & Lanang. From 11pm
ESC/Sky Garden
TGIF Fridays
50% off tapas, sunset pitchers 99k, mojito, strawberry daiquiri, long island ice tea, sangria and frozen lime margarita. spirit bottles 75cl 299k: Absolut, Jim Beam, Bacardi & Gordons, plus great live music. From 9pm
F Lounge
HipShaker
Award winning night of fonkadelic finesse moves to tha prime time. Fatstacks from wayback, with another fonky payback as G Force & Wayne Wonder shake tha mothership connection. From 11pm
Kama Sutra
Kerispatih Live On Stage
Kerispatih’s first performance last February had this venue in a swoon as these kings of romance played famous tracks such as “Kejujuran Hati” (A Honest Heart) and “Cinta Puith” (White Love). Expect more of the same this time round…bring your loved one. From 11pm
Hard Rock Cafe
Live Lady DJ Radio 40 Hour Set
Veteran female DJ Cachya attempts to break the Indonesian record for the longest ever non stop set - she’s aiming for 40 hours, spinning tracks from the nineties all the way through to the latest dancefloor hits. From 9am.
Hook
D.A.N.C.E.V.O.L.U.T.I.O.N
76 Beat DJ line up: Yonk di Gio, L.Shady, and Kent. Spirit bottles @ 399k only. Cocktail pitchers @ 100k, buy 1 get 1 free on selected cocktails all night (60k). From 11pm
Hu’u
Hu’u Society
Party with the ‘Hu’u’s who’ as the music takes on a sophisticated flavor with DJs Nason & Yudi. From 11pm
Kudos
Showtime
Vegas come to Kudos with dancers, and DJ U-you. From 11pm
MBarGo
Digital Birth presents Electroshock
DJ L.Shady (76Beat) and Fadi (SWE). From 11pm
Obsesion
Cuban Night
Lare band serve up the deep latin sound, feat. Salsa Bali dancers. From 10pm
Paparazzi
DJ Taro (CAN)
The Wave
Glam n Luxury
A school prom night party, performing live: School band, sexy dancers, Evorbia band and King or Queen of the prom? Could be. From 10pm
* Saturday Jun 9th
Bacio
DJ Jonny. From 11pm
DeJaVu
Socialite
High society party with DJs Sofyan & Georgia. From 11pm
Double Six
Anniversary Bash
20 years on the block no less and the old bird is looking fresher than ever. Time to celebrate with a huge DJ line up including Paul Mendez (UK), Clubworxx (GER), Nick Taylor (UK), Fadi (SWE), Wilson, Helmy, Dede and Nolly (Bali). See HereNow for details.
Hu’u
In Transit with DJ Jensen (S’Pore)
Guest DJ Jensen (S’Pore) will get you soaring with his stratospheric style of progressive house & euphoric trance. FDC 100k. From 11pm
ESC/Sky Garden
2.4.1 Saturday
2 for 1 tapas and 2 for 1 shots, Highballs & Heineken beer. Still with great music
F Lounge
First Class Ticket
Super modified presents a kinky jet set session with special guest rockers Astro & Glyde (NY), don’t miss this. From 11pm
Kudos
Tequila Night
The title explain it all, 20k/shot. From 11pm
MBarGo
Digital Birth presents Electronic Warfare
DJs Fadi (SWE) and guests. From 11pm
Paparazzi
DJ Peter P (UK)
Obsesion
The Fusion
Saharadja band throw down sublime world fusion, feat. Marina. From 10pm
* Sunday Jun 10th
ESC/Sky Garden
Sunday Chillout
Come and chill all day with great music, refreshing drinks and tasty home style comfort food. champagne brunch, sunset pitchers, and proper Sunday roast with all the trimmings
F Lounge
Fuzzy
Laidback downtempo classics massage ya mind & let ya body unwind one sweet track at a time selected by Frenqui le Fonque. From 11pm
Kudos
Reflection
Cool down with live DJ performance and 50% off all cocktails all night. From 11pm
MBarGo
New Vibration
DJs Gust, Lazy Bones (JPN), hosted by G-voiz will stir,mix and fry the essence from Hiphop, Oldskool, RnB, Rock all the way to Trance with no limits, free welcome drinks till midnight. From 11pm
* Monday Jun 11th
Cafe Wayang
Born In Bali
A six days in a row birthday bash from today till 16th of June. For nine years this venue has been a key venue for live bands in Sanur. Performing live The Wheels, Ed Eddy & Residivis (11th), Telephone & Devildice (12th), Kaimsasikun & Navicula (13th), Jonny Agung & Double T (14th), The Ubud & XXX (15th) and on the 16th DJs Steven, Georgia and Shumi. Free entry & free-flow beer. From 10pm
ESC/Sky Garden
Margarita Mondays
Frozen lime margaritas, glass 19k, Pitchers 99k, gourmet Mexican food from 29k. Live DJ
F Lounge
Flow
Filtering ya system with soul house nutrition Rizal recharges ya booty. Finger food & fresh oven pizzas till 1am. From 11pm
MBarGo
Liberated Monday
Reggaeton sounds shake the ground, courtesy of DJs Nacho and L.Shady (76Beat). From 11pm
* Tuesday Jun 12th
ESC/Sky Garden
Pizza, Pasta & Ribs
25% off pizza, pasta and BBQ ribs and Mojito & Sangria at just 19k glass/99k pitcher. And of course live DJs playing soulful, funky house. From 9pm
F Lounge
Female Fylosofy
Fat beats bump, hot ladies jump, oldskool stays cool like humpteyhump, served fresh by Lazybones. 2/4/1 on all Roskas for the ladies till 1am. From 11pm
* Wednesday Jun 13th
Hook
Ten Thousand Tapas
Selected tapas @ 10k, cocktail pitchers @ 70k with tunes by DJ Danny. From 11pm
MBarGo
Hipbreaks
DJ Iman Electrofux (Bandung), L.Shady (76Beat), with G Voiz as the host, Kyu on guitar. Guaranteed the ultimate electronica/hip hop mash up. From 11pm
DeJaVu
Launching of Liason Dangereux
Fashion show - Sellini by Marilena, with sounds from DJs Bimo, Didi (Spinach JKT), Fire dance support from DJs Ifin & Yudi. From 11pm
ESC/Sky Garden
Thousand Wings
Just 1k per chicken wing (5 flavours) and large Bintang & Storm beer 15k. Plus great music as always.
F Lounge
The F Notes
Rewind to tha time of Acid Jazz sublime as KeNeBe steam up tha open mic chased by Frenqui le Fonque. Free drinks for guest talents. From 11pm
Hu’u
Cigars, Single Malts & Jazz
Refrshing Jazzy remakes of your favorite pop charts hits presented by the Hu’u jazz trio that is bound to give you an eargasmic experience. Rp 130k for a shot of Macallan 12 years single malt & Super Partagas cigar, 1 for 1 wines of the month (by the glass). Also on Thursday. From 8pm
Kudos
Drama Queen
The Kudos cabaret collective takes you on a colourful trip to Bollywood. From 11pm
MBarGo
The Asphalt Jungle
DJ P-pen pulls out the tricks to rock the dancefloor with HipHop and Tribal flavaz, plus live djembe performance by Javaica Percussion. From 11pm
* Thursday Jun 14th
Bacio
DJ Peter P (UK). From 11pm
DeJaVu
High Heels
Showing the sleek range from Nico Nico Mens wear collection, with background grooves from DJs Anastacia & Sofyan. From 11pm
Double Six
Worldsound
DJs Alex Joy (CAN) and Fadi (SWE). From 11pm
ESC/Sky Garden
Thirsty Thursday
Storm pale ale 19k, Long Island ice tea 29k, Infusion Martini 39k, Spirit bottles 75cl 299k fresh oysters from NZ 9k. Live DJ. From 9pm
F Lounge
First Class Ticket
Super modified presents another kinky jet set session with special guest rockers Astro & Glyde (NY). Dont miss this. From 11pm
Hard Rock Cafe
Founder’s Day
36 years ago, down in Hyde Park London a legend was born: Hard Rock Cafe opened its door in a former Rolls Royce showroom by Isaac Tigrett & Peter Morton. Today, the world wide franchise celebrate its “Founder’s Day” where Bali’s own Hard Rock Cafe will shoot the quiet dark sky with some serious New Wave performance of The Upstairs (Bandung) and C-H-A-N-G-C-U-T-E-R-S (Bandung). Witness the real time of Rock’n’Roll tonight From 11pm
Hook
Tequila Gila
Invites you to come and join as Hook get down ‘n’ dirty with MR Jose Quervo. Tequila bottles @250k, shot @ 15k only, get 5 shots for 70k, complimentary chips’n’dips with every order of tequila, and Funky HOuse/Electro by DJ Fadi
Hu’u
Cigars, Single Malts & Jazz
From 8pm
Kudos
Dream Girls
Brand new show at Kudos, taken from the Dream Girls movie. From 11pm
MBarGo
BKK Style Dancers
Summersaulting with the B-boys or shake it sexy with the go-go girls? you choose. From 11pm
Coming Events
* Friday Jun 15th
Bounty Club
Foam Party
No need further explanation. Just come in your boardshorts or bikini, and slide on baby!. From 11pm
DeeJay Club
Viva El Toro
Barcelona born DJ Eric Entrena, who has graced such events as Love Parade, manages his own label, Toro. See HereNow for interview. From 1am
Double Six
Big Bash #6
DJs Jerry Ropero and Fadi (SWE). See HereNow for details
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Bali Culture and Customs
Each stage of Balinese life is marked by a series of ceremonies and rituals known as Manusa Yadnya. They contribute to the rich, varied and active life the average Balinese leads.
Birth
The first ceremony of Balinese life takes place even before birth. Another ceremony takes place soon after the birth, during which the afterbirth is buried with appropriate offerings. The first major ceremony takes place halfway through the baby's first Balinese year of 210 days.
Names
Basically the Balinese only have four first names. The first child is Wayan or Putu, the second child is Made or Kadek, the third is Nyoman or Komang and the fourth is Ketut. The fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth will be another Wayan, Made, Nyoman, Ketut and Wayan again.
Childhood
The Balinese certainly love children and they have plenty of them to prove it. Coping with a large family is made much easier by the policy of putting younger children in the care of older ones. After the ceremonies of babyhood come ceremonies marking the stages of childhood and puberty, including the important tooth-filing ceremony.
Marriage
Every Balinese expects to marry and raise a family, and marriage takes places at a comparatively young age. Marriages are not, in general, arranged as they are in many other Asian communities although strict rules apply to marriages between the castes. There are two basic forms of marriage in Bali - mapadik and ngorod. The respectable form, in which the family of the man visit the family of the woman and politely propose that the marriage take place, is mapadik. The Balinese, however, like their fun and often prefer marriage by elopement (ngorod) as the most exciting option. Of course, the Balinese are also a practical people so nobody is too surprised when the young man spirits away his bride-to-be, even if she loudly protests about being kidnapped. The couple go into hiding and somehow the girl's parents, no matter how assiduously they search, never manage to find her. Eventually the couple re-emerge, announce that it is too late to stop them now, the marriage is officially recognized and everybody has had a lot of fun and games. Marriage by elopement has another advantage apart from being exciting and mildly heroic it's cheaper.
The Household
There are many modern Balinese houses, but there are still a great number of traditional Balinese homes. The streets of Ubud; nearly every house will follow the same traditional walled design.
Men & Women
There are certain tasks clearly to be handled by women, and others reserved for men. Social life in Bali is relatively free and easy. In Balinese leisure activities the roles are also sex differentiated. Both men and women dance but only men play the gamelan. Today you do see some women painters, sculptors, and woodcarvers.
Community Life
Balinese have an amazingly active and organized village life. You simply cannot be a faceless nonentity in Bali. You can't help but get to know your neighbors as your life is so entwined and interrelated with theirs.
Death & Cremation
There are ceremonies for every stage of Balinese life but often the last ceremony-cremation-is the biggest. A Balinese cremation can be an amazing, spectacular, colorful, noisy and exciting event. In fact it often takes so long to organize a cremation that years have passed since the death. During that time the body is temporarily buried. Of course an auspicious day must be chosen for the cremation and since a big cremation can be very expensive business many less wealthy people may take the opportunity of joining in at a larger cremation and sending their own dead on their way at the same time. Brahmans, however, must be cremated immediately. Apart from being yet another occasion for Balinese noise and confusion it's a fine opportunity to observe the incredible energy the Balinese put into creating real works of art which are totally ephemeral. A lot more than a body gets burnt at the cremation. The body is carried from the burial ground (or from the deceased's home if it's an 'immediate' cremation) to the cremation ground in a high, multi-tiered tower made of bamboo, paper, string, tinsel, silk, cloth, mirrors, flowers and anything else bright and colorful you can think of. The tower is carried on the shoulders of a group of men, the size of the group depending on the importance of the deceased and hence the size of the tower. The funeral of a former rajah high priest may require hundreds of men to tote the tower.
A long the way to the cremation ground certain precautions must be taken to ensure that the deceased's spirit does not find its way back home. Loose spirits around the house can be a real nuisance. To ensure this doesn't happen requires getting the spirits confused as to their whereabouts, which you do by shaking the tower, running it around in circles, spinning it around, throwing water at it, generally making the trip to the cremation ground anything but a stately funeral crawl. Meanwhile, there's likely to be a priest halfway up to tower, hanging on grimly as it sways back and forth, and doing his best to soak bystanders with holy water. A gamelan sprints along behind, providing a suitably exciting musical accompaniment. Camera-toting tourists get all but run down and once again the Balinese prove that ceremonies and religion are there to be enjoyed. At the cremation ground the body is transferred to a funeral sarcophagus, this should be in the shape of a bull for a Brahmana, a winged lion for a Satria and a sort of elephant-fish for a Sudra. These days, however, almost anybody from the higher castes will use a bull. Finally up it all goes in flames funeral tower, sarcophagus, body, the lot. The eldest son does his duty by poking through the ashes to ensure that there are no bits of body left unburned. And where does your soul go after your cremation? Why, to a heaven which is just like Bali!
Read more...
Birth
The first ceremony of Balinese life takes place even before birth. Another ceremony takes place soon after the birth, during which the afterbirth is buried with appropriate offerings. The first major ceremony takes place halfway through the baby's first Balinese year of 210 days.
Names
Basically the Balinese only have four first names. The first child is Wayan or Putu, the second child is Made or Kadek, the third is Nyoman or Komang and the fourth is Ketut. The fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth will be another Wayan, Made, Nyoman, Ketut and Wayan again.
Childhood
The Balinese certainly love children and they have plenty of them to prove it. Coping with a large family is made much easier by the policy of putting younger children in the care of older ones. After the ceremonies of babyhood come ceremonies marking the stages of childhood and puberty, including the important tooth-filing ceremony.
Marriage
Every Balinese expects to marry and raise a family, and marriage takes places at a comparatively young age. Marriages are not, in general, arranged as they are in many other Asian communities although strict rules apply to marriages between the castes. There are two basic forms of marriage in Bali - mapadik and ngorod. The respectable form, in which the family of the man visit the family of the woman and politely propose that the marriage take place, is mapadik. The Balinese, however, like their fun and often prefer marriage by elopement (ngorod) as the most exciting option. Of course, the Balinese are also a practical people so nobody is too surprised when the young man spirits away his bride-to-be, even if she loudly protests about being kidnapped. The couple go into hiding and somehow the girl's parents, no matter how assiduously they search, never manage to find her. Eventually the couple re-emerge, announce that it is too late to stop them now, the marriage is officially recognized and everybody has had a lot of fun and games. Marriage by elopement has another advantage apart from being exciting and mildly heroic it's cheaper.
The Household
There are many modern Balinese houses, but there are still a great number of traditional Balinese homes. The streets of Ubud; nearly every house will follow the same traditional walled design.
Men & Women
There are certain tasks clearly to be handled by women, and others reserved for men. Social life in Bali is relatively free and easy. In Balinese leisure activities the roles are also sex differentiated. Both men and women dance but only men play the gamelan. Today you do see some women painters, sculptors, and woodcarvers.
Community Life
Balinese have an amazingly active and organized village life. You simply cannot be a faceless nonentity in Bali. You can't help but get to know your neighbors as your life is so entwined and interrelated with theirs.
Death & Cremation
There are ceremonies for every stage of Balinese life but often the last ceremony-cremation-is the biggest. A Balinese cremation can be an amazing, spectacular, colorful, noisy and exciting event. In fact it often takes so long to organize a cremation that years have passed since the death. During that time the body is temporarily buried. Of course an auspicious day must be chosen for the cremation and since a big cremation can be very expensive business many less wealthy people may take the opportunity of joining in at a larger cremation and sending their own dead on their way at the same time. Brahmans, however, must be cremated immediately. Apart from being yet another occasion for Balinese noise and confusion it's a fine opportunity to observe the incredible energy the Balinese put into creating real works of art which are totally ephemeral. A lot more than a body gets burnt at the cremation. The body is carried from the burial ground (or from the deceased's home if it's an 'immediate' cremation) to the cremation ground in a high, multi-tiered tower made of bamboo, paper, string, tinsel, silk, cloth, mirrors, flowers and anything else bright and colorful you can think of. The tower is carried on the shoulders of a group of men, the size of the group depending on the importance of the deceased and hence the size of the tower. The funeral of a former rajah high priest may require hundreds of men to tote the tower.
A long the way to the cremation ground certain precautions must be taken to ensure that the deceased's spirit does not find its way back home. Loose spirits around the house can be a real nuisance. To ensure this doesn't happen requires getting the spirits confused as to their whereabouts, which you do by shaking the tower, running it around in circles, spinning it around, throwing water at it, generally making the trip to the cremation ground anything but a stately funeral crawl. Meanwhile, there's likely to be a priest halfway up to tower, hanging on grimly as it sways back and forth, and doing his best to soak bystanders with holy water. A gamelan sprints along behind, providing a suitably exciting musical accompaniment. Camera-toting tourists get all but run down and once again the Balinese prove that ceremonies and religion are there to be enjoyed. At the cremation ground the body is transferred to a funeral sarcophagus, this should be in the shape of a bull for a Brahmana, a winged lion for a Satria and a sort of elephant-fish for a Sudra. These days, however, almost anybody from the higher castes will use a bull. Finally up it all goes in flames funeral tower, sarcophagus, body, the lot. The eldest son does his duty by poking through the ashes to ensure that there are no bits of body left unburned. And where does your soul go after your cremation? Why, to a heaven which is just like Bali!
Read more...
Bali History
Bali history. There is no trace of the Stone Age in Bali although it's certain that the island was already populated before the Bronze Age commenced there about 300 BC. Nor is much known of Bali during the period when Indian traders brought Hinduism to the Indonesian Archipelago. The earliest records found in Bali, stone inscriptions, date from around the 9th century AD and by that time Bali had already developed many similarities to the island you find today. Rice was grown with the help of a complex irrigation system probably very like that employed now. The Balinese had also already begun to develop the cultural and artistic activities which have made the island so interesting to visitors right down to the present day.
Hindu
Hindu Java began to spread its influence into Bali during the reign of King Airlangga from 1019 to 1042. At this time the courtly Javanese language known as Kawi came into use amongst the royalty of Bali, and the rock-cut memorials seen at Gunung Kawi near Tampaksiring are a clear architectural link between Bali and 11th century Java. After Airlangga's death Bali retained its semi-independent state until Kertanegara became king of the Singasari dynasty in Java two centuries later. Artists, dancers, musicians and actors fled to Bali and the island experienced and explosion of cultural activities. The final great exodus to Bali took place in 1478.
European
Marco Polo, the great explorer, was the first recorded European visitor to Indonesia back in 1292 but the first Europeans to set foot on Bali were Dutch seamen in 1597. Setting a tradition that has prevailed right down to the present day, they fell in love with the island and when Cornelius Houtman, the ship's captain, prepared to set sail, half of his crew refused to come with him.
Dutch
In 1710 the capital of the Gelgel kingdom was shifted to nearby Klungkung but local discontent was growing, lesser rulers were breaking away from Gelgel rule and the Dutch began to move in using the old policy of divide and conquer.
Independence
On 17 August 1945, just after the end of WW II, the Indonesian leader Sukarno proclaimed the nation's independence but it took four years to convince the Dutch that they were not going to get their great colony Back.
Read more...
Hindu
Hindu Java began to spread its influence into Bali during the reign of King Airlangga from 1019 to 1042. At this time the courtly Javanese language known as Kawi came into use amongst the royalty of Bali, and the rock-cut memorials seen at Gunung Kawi near Tampaksiring are a clear architectural link between Bali and 11th century Java. After Airlangga's death Bali retained its semi-independent state until Kertanegara became king of the Singasari dynasty in Java two centuries later. Artists, dancers, musicians and actors fled to Bali and the island experienced and explosion of cultural activities. The final great exodus to Bali took place in 1478.
European
Marco Polo, the great explorer, was the first recorded European visitor to Indonesia back in 1292 but the first Europeans to set foot on Bali were Dutch seamen in 1597. Setting a tradition that has prevailed right down to the present day, they fell in love with the island and when Cornelius Houtman, the ship's captain, prepared to set sail, half of his crew refused to come with him.
Dutch
In 1710 the capital of the Gelgel kingdom was shifted to nearby Klungkung but local discontent was growing, lesser rulers were breaking away from Gelgel rule and the Dutch began to move in using the old policy of divide and conquer.
Independence
On 17 August 1945, just after the end of WW II, the Indonesian leader Sukarno proclaimed the nation's independence but it took four years to convince the Dutch that they were not going to get their great colony Back.
Read more...
Ubud, the Heart of Bali
This part of Indonesia remains welcoming and serene.
by Jamie James
TOURISM to Bali began in the early 1920s, when the Royal Dutch Steam Packet Company added the island to its itinerary. By 1930 there were about a hundred visitors a year; a decade later the figure was 250. The ships stopped off the north coast, where passengers were ferried to shore first aboard tenders and then on the backs of Balinese men. Most visitors would traverse the island by motor car to the capital city of Denpasar, in the south, where they stayed at the luxurious Bali Hotel, opened in 1927.
Discriminating travelers, however, headed for the green hills of the interior, to visit the princedom of Ubud. There was no hotel in Ubud: travelers stayed in the bungalows that Prince Gde Agung Sukawati had built for the circle of artists he patronized. What was surely the most exotic art colony in the world at that time began with the arrival of Walter Spies, a Moscow-born German artist and musician who came to Bali for a visit in 1927 and stayed there until the Second World War, when he became a prisoner of war in the Dutch-controlled East Indies. In Ubud he encountered a culture as graceful and refined as any in the world, where everyone, it seemed, was an artist of one sort or another and child dancers in mystic trances enacted the fables of the Hindu classic Ramayana to the exuberant, clangorous accompaniment of a gamelan.
One early visitor to Ubud, Noel Coward, had his traveling companion, Charlie Chaplin, in mind when he wrote this bit of doggerel verse:
Today Bali welcomes thousands of foreign visitors every day. After the political upheavals in other parts of Indonesia last year, tourism dropped off temporarily, but Australians and Japanese, who constitute about half the island's visitors, are back in throngs. They know that regardless of what's going on in Jakarta and elsewhere, Bali remains as safe as can be: even as Indonesia's political and economic future remains cloudy, the Balinese, famous throughout the archipelago for their hospitable, easygoing ways, have maintained their wonted serenity.
Most tourists here are young travelers on a budget, who have turned the beaches south of Denpasar into a hell of traffic jams, raucous pubs, peddlers – and, yes, pickpockets and prostitutes. At the opposite end of the tourism spectrum are those who stay at one of Bali's many luxury resorts, where it's possible to spend as much as $1,000 a night to stay in a walled villa, and be served champagne and foie gras beside one's own private swimming pool. Yet today, just as in the days of the Royal Dutch Steam Packet Company, discriminating travelers – those who may not see the need to travel so far from home for loud bars or French food – come to Ubud, the heart of Bali.
I won't mislead you: Ubud is anything but undiscovered. On any afternoon most of the faces on its main streets are foreign, and most of the Balinese you meet are offering transport or other services (though, fortunately, the scene is far more subdued here than in the south). Yet it's still possible for even the lazy traveler – and Bali will have failed you if you don't soon lapse into a tranquil languor – to stray from the touristic path and discover the enchanted place that seduced Walter Spies and the glittery visitors who passed through.
THERE'S no better place to begin than the Hotel Tjampuhan (phone 011-62-361-975369, fax 975137), built on the site of Walter Spies's home. The hotel, which is owned by the sons of Prince Sukawati, is a funny old place. Much of the romance of the bamboo- and teak-finished rooms derives from inadequate lighting. (Bali, generally speaking, is a low-wattage island.) The service is a little erratic too: there was no stationery in my room, so I called the front desk to ask for some. Ten minutes later a man appeared at my door under a dripping umbrella, holding two sheets of writing paper as limp as boiled cabbage leaves.
Never mind – the site is exquisite. Tjampuhan, the old-fashioned spelling of Campuan, means "place where two rivers meet." The hotel's bungalows and guest rooms are arrayed along a steep ravine overlooking a turbulent river that rushes between rocky crags to meet its mate. Winding paths lead through the hotel's lush, sprawling garden, past lily ponds and shrines. On the opposite bank, perched just below terraced rice fields, is the ancient temple where the royal family of Ubud worships and performs its rituals. (Officially, there's no royalty in Indonesia now, but Bali doesn't pay much attention to rules).
I find that jet lag often conduces to discovery. On the first morning of my most recent visit to Ubud I awoke before dawn. Knowing that it would be impossible to go back to sleep, I dressed and strayed out into the streaky gray mist for a wander. I met Wayan, the "room boy," a lithe, quick-eyed man in his mid-thirties who had introduced himself the night before, when I checked in. He was in the garden gathering hibiscus flowers, which would be artfully tucked behind the ears of sculptured deities or scattered across bed sheets for romantic effect. I asked him how to get to the river, and he immediately set down his basket and led the way, along hairpin pebble pathways and then down a crude wooden staircase. It had rained during the night, so the river dashed ferociously through the gap. A forty-foot waterfall splashed noisily at the first bend in the river.
Wayan didn't stop there. He skipped across the water on a broad plank bridge and led the way up a steep dirt path to the crest of the ridge opposite the hotel. Here he pointed down a narrow lane lined with bamboo, and said, "You can walk." I thanked him and did as he suggested. Rice fields were on one side of the lane, the roaring river gorge on the other. A mother duck and her brood fell in behind me, gently gabbling to one another as they followed me to the end of the fields. Eventually I made my way past the royal temple to an old Dutch suspension bridge, just down the main road from the Hotel Tjampuhan.
No place in the world could be greener than Ubud. Everything here is green: the young rice fields glow a fluorescent shade of emerald; the thick curtains of foliage appear all the greener for the scarlet accents of ginger and hibiscus. Things that began another color – brick walls or pebble walkways – soon become green with shaggy moss. Even the air has a pale-green cast: the moisture suspended in it picks up the pervasive glow of the verdure. The Balinese have long called their island "the morning of the world." It's an extravagant phrase, but that morning I had an inkling of what they were talking about.
Another verbal extravagance, beloved of travel writers whose descriptive powers have deserted them, is the word "magical"; usually it's just hyperbole for "especially pretty." Yet there really is magic in Ubud. When Balinese people lose something, they consult a balian, a benign sort of sorcerer, who tells them where to find it. Balians can interpret dreams, cure sickness, go into trances, and speak in the voices of ancestors. And magic, in the form of the island's unique religion, is at the core of Bali's arts. A blend of Hinduism and nature worship, the Balinese religion is an ecstatic union of the spiritual and the aesthetic, reminiscent of the religion of ancient Greece. Bali's famous trance dances, for example, suggest the rites of Bacchus: in one of the sanghyang dances two girls who are supposedly untrained in the dance's intricate choreography go into a trance and, eyes firmly shut, move in perfect unison. The dance is named after the divine spirit that inhabits them.
WHEN Walter Spies arrived in Bali, he found a culture completely devoted to art, yet to which the notion of art for art's sake was alien. The Balinese have no word for "artist"; painting, carving stone and wood, weaving, playing a musical instrument, and, above all, dancing were just what one did when not fishing or working in the rice fields.
It is an axiom of art history that what used to be known as primitive art had a profound influence on the emergence of modernism in twentieth-century Europe. In Bali, Europe returned the favor: Spies had an uncanny affinity for the Balinese sensibility, and he thoroughly transformed the arts of the island in the fourteen years he lived there. The famous school of painting in Ubud, one of the principal attractions for people from every part of the world, was virtually his invention.
Traditionally the Balinese considered painting to be among the lowest of the arts; such painting as was done before Spies came was comparatively unsophisticated, consisting mainly of astrological calendars and scenes from the wayang, the mythological shadow-puppet show popular throughout the archipelago. Painters were limited by convention and by the natural pigments, such as bone, soot, and clay, that were available to them.
Spies, later joined by the Dutch artist Rudolf Bonnet, introduced Balinese artists to the wider range of colors of Western painting, and to the variety of effects possible with ready-made brushes and fine-woven canvas. More important, Spies and Bonnet introduced Western techniques, like perspective, and encouraged their students to venture beyond the traditional mythological subject matter and paint scenes from everyday life. Lest the two be accused of tampering with tradition, it should be pointed out that Balinese art, while formulaic, was never opposed to individual expressiveness; the island's most famous artist, I Gusti Nyoman Lempad, had begun to innovate stylistically before Spies's arrival.
As far as I know, there has never been another case of one person's having such a profound impact on the arts of a foreign culture. The best-known dance of Bali, the kecak, in which a chorus of men lie in a circle, loudly chanting "chak-a-chak-a-chak" as elaborately costumed soloists act out a tale from the Ramayana, was choreographed in its present form by Spies, in 1931. Originally the chorus was much smaller, and performed in a trance, but Spies wanted to create something more dramatic for a film he was working on – Victor Baron von Plessen's Island of Demons, an early effort to capture the romance of Bali and convey it abroad.
Ubud in the 1930s was among the most chic bohemian destinations in the world. Chaplin is said to have been disappointed that Balinese girls were not as promiscuous as their bare-breasted condition suggested. Margaret Mead and her lover, Gregory Bateson, got married on a ship steaming toward Bali, where they dropped in on Spies. Ruth Draper visited for a while, no doubt reciting her droll monologues for everyone after dinner. Most flamboyant of all was the heiress Barbara Hutton, who fell violently in love with Spies and dragged him off to Cambodia to see Angkor Wat. With the money she paid him for some paintings, he built her a bungalow and a swimming pool next to his house, but by the time it was finished, she had moved on to Persia. (Guests at the Hotel Tjampuhan may stay in this bungalow; the swimming pool is now a lily pond.)
Spies, however, was sexually inclined in a different way, with disastrous results. The Dutch authorities, scandalized at the general moral laxity of foreigners in Ubud, and as part of a crackdown on homosexuals throughout the colony, arrested Spies on New Year's Eve, 1938, for committing sodomy with a minor. According to his biographer, Hans Rhodius, the Balinese were shocked and puzzled by the arrest, and brought Spies's favorite gamelan to play for him outside the window of his jail cell. The boy's father told the trial judge, "He is our best friend, and it was an honor for my son to be in his company. If both are in agreement, why fuss?"
Spies was released from prison in September of 1939. While war was breaking out in Europe, he threw himself into the study of insects and marine life, turning out some exquisitely observed gouaches of his specimens. After Germany invaded Holland, the following year, all German citizens living in the Dutch East Indies were arrested. Spies, the last German on Bali, was sent to a prison in Sumatra. There he continued painting and organized an orchestra, which he conducted in performances of Rachmaninoff. In 1942, fearful of an imminent Japanese attack, the Dutch authorities put their German captives on a ship for transport to Ceylon. The day after it embarked, the vessel was hit by a Japanese bomb. The Dutch crew abandoned the sinking ship, and left their prisoners to drown, slowly and horribly.
THERE is still too much artistic endeavor in Bali, though the scene is not as lively as it once was. The last great burst of creativity came in the early sixties, again at the instigation of a foreigner. In 1960 a Dutch painter named Arie Smit, who had been living in Bali for four years, was strolling through the countryside near Campuan, and came upon some boys who were drawing in the sand. He was struck by their talent, and invited them to his studio. There he gave them paints and brushes and instructed them in technique but made no suggestions as to color or content, and kept his own richly coloristic, Matisse-influenced paintings out of sight. The results, which became known as the Young Artists movement, were vigorous genre scenes, often broadly humorous, rendered in bright, flat colors with strong contours.
Smit lives in a bungalow at a small hotel next door to the Museum Neka, one of the best museums in Indonesia, where many of his paintings are on display. Now eighty-three, Smit is a big, tall man, with the benevolent, well-shaped head of a Rembrandt prophet. He welcomed the opportunity I provided to talk about old times in Bali. He told me about a Waterman fountain-pen heiress who dressed her servants in gold livery. While Margaret Mead was a guest of Smit's, Buckminster Fuller came for a visit to the island; the two luminaries conceived an instant and intense dislike for each other.
When I asked Smit to characterize the contemporary art scene in Bali, he laughed and said, "Confused." He recommended a young artist named I Gusti Agung Wiranata, who paints in the brooding, dramatic style of Walter Spies. "People criticize him, saying he only copies Spies," Smit said. "But he has succeeded in making better paintings than Spies, because he is Balinese." He told me I would find some of Wiranata's work at the Museum Puri Lukisan, Ubud's other art museum, which was founded in the early fifties by Rudolf Bonnet and Prince Sukawati.
The Puri Lukisan's collection is excellent, with a particularly strong holding of I Gusti Nyoman Lempad's work, but the gardens are so lovely that I could hardly bring myself to go indoors to look at the art. A deep gorge at the entrance is spanned by a bridge, which leads to a brick path winding among a series of lily ponds and bowers. When I arrived, some laborers were clearing the hillside in front of the garden, making terraces to plant rice.
I quickly found a fine Wiranata: next to the entrance of one of the galleries hung a round painting, no more than a foot in diameter, of a paddy field at day's end, the sinuous terraces reflecting the extravagant pastels of a Balinese sunset. The style was undeniably close to Spies's, but with a sense of repose that is lacking in the German's work. On my way out I struck up a conversation with the young woman who worked at the postcard pavilion. I asked her if a curator was about, or someone in charge I could speak to. She called out to an old man working in the rice terrace, ankle-deep in mud. After he had washed off his feet and put on a clean shirt, he came over to meet me.
Pak Muning, as he was called, was indeed a curator. He said that he knew Wiranata, and asked if I would like to meet him. I agreed to come back with a car. We drove to a little village about fifteen miles out of Ubud, and found the artist, a handsome young man in his mid-twenties, dozing on his back porch. He received us affably, and asked his wife to prepare coffee for us. I complimented him on his work, and then asked him what was his response to people who said that he copies Walter Spies. He had a pat answer: "If people say I only copy Walter Spies, I say that's okay. Walter Spies came to copy Bali." His father was an artist, Wiranata said, and his uncle was also an artist. Now he lived with his in-laws, and he complained about it, saying he missed Ubud. "A better place for painting, I think." He showed me his studio, a fluorescent-lit cubicle with a boom box and a collection of American rock tapes.
When I returned to the Hotel Tjampuhan, Wayan was making up my room. He told me that he must say good-bye, because he had to go to a cremation; his brother-in-law, a twenty-two-year-old stone carver, had died the day before, buried in a landslide at his outdoor studio, on the bank of the river. His wife, Wayan's sister, was four months pregnant. When I offered my condolences, he shrugged and said, "It was God's will. Good-bye, sir. Please to have a happy life." He bowed and quietly left the room.
Disconcerted, I ordered a coffee from room service and moved to the balcony to watch night fall. I sipped the sweet, strong brew until I came to the mud at the bottom of the cup. The moon was a pale presence behind mottled clouds; a chill crept into the air. Across the ravine I could just make out the slim shapes of worshippers arriving at the temple, their gold and pink satin sarongs glinting in the green gloom. The silvery, slightly hysterical jangle of the gamelan commenced, accompanied by the trumpeting of frogs and the screech of a gecko, melded by the basso continuo of the river torrent.
"Have a happy life": of course it was just a pleasantry. But, I reflected, a man whose job it was to collect hibiscus flowers at dawn, in a river gorge in Ubud, and who could cope with the tragic death of a twenty-two-year-old relative with such equanimity, might have some idea of what that meant. [BaliGuide]
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by Jamie James
TOURISM to Bali began in the early 1920s, when the Royal Dutch Steam Packet Company added the island to its itinerary. By 1930 there were about a hundred visitors a year; a decade later the figure was 250. The ships stopped off the north coast, where passengers were ferried to shore first aboard tenders and then on the backs of Balinese men. Most visitors would traverse the island by motor car to the capital city of Denpasar, in the south, where they stayed at the luxurious Bali Hotel, opened in 1927.
Discriminating travelers, however, headed for the green hills of the interior, to visit the princedom of Ubud. There was no hotel in Ubud: travelers stayed in the bungalows that Prince Gde Agung Sukawati had built for the circle of artists he patronized. What was surely the most exotic art colony in the world at that time began with the arrival of Walter Spies, a Moscow-born German artist and musician who came to Bali for a visit in 1927 and stayed there until the Second World War, when he became a prisoner of war in the Dutch-controlled East Indies. In Ubud he encountered a culture as graceful and refined as any in the world, where everyone, it seemed, was an artist of one sort or another and child dancers in mystic trances enacted the fables of the Hindu classic Ramayana to the exuberant, clangorous accompaniment of a gamelan.
One early visitor to Ubud, Noel Coward, had his traveling companion, Charlie Chaplin, in mind when he wrote this bit of doggerel verse:
As I said this morning to Charlie,
There is far too much music in Bali.
And although as a place it's entrancing,
There is also a thought too much dancing.
It appears that each Balinese native
From the womb to the tomb is creative,
And although the results are quite clever,
There is too much artistic endeavor.
Today Bali welcomes thousands of foreign visitors every day. After the political upheavals in other parts of Indonesia last year, tourism dropped off temporarily, but Australians and Japanese, who constitute about half the island's visitors, are back in throngs. They know that regardless of what's going on in Jakarta and elsewhere, Bali remains as safe as can be: even as Indonesia's political and economic future remains cloudy, the Balinese, famous throughout the archipelago for their hospitable, easygoing ways, have maintained their wonted serenity.
Most tourists here are young travelers on a budget, who have turned the beaches south of Denpasar into a hell of traffic jams, raucous pubs, peddlers – and, yes, pickpockets and prostitutes. At the opposite end of the tourism spectrum are those who stay at one of Bali's many luxury resorts, where it's possible to spend as much as $1,000 a night to stay in a walled villa, and be served champagne and foie gras beside one's own private swimming pool. Yet today, just as in the days of the Royal Dutch Steam Packet Company, discriminating travelers – those who may not see the need to travel so far from home for loud bars or French food – come to Ubud, the heart of Bali.
I won't mislead you: Ubud is anything but undiscovered. On any afternoon most of the faces on its main streets are foreign, and most of the Balinese you meet are offering transport or other services (though, fortunately, the scene is far more subdued here than in the south). Yet it's still possible for even the lazy traveler – and Bali will have failed you if you don't soon lapse into a tranquil languor – to stray from the touristic path and discover the enchanted place that seduced Walter Spies and the glittery visitors who passed through.
THERE'S no better place to begin than the Hotel Tjampuhan (phone 011-62-361-975369, fax 975137), built on the site of Walter Spies's home. The hotel, which is owned by the sons of Prince Sukawati, is a funny old place. Much of the romance of the bamboo- and teak-finished rooms derives from inadequate lighting. (Bali, generally speaking, is a low-wattage island.) The service is a little erratic too: there was no stationery in my room, so I called the front desk to ask for some. Ten minutes later a man appeared at my door under a dripping umbrella, holding two sheets of writing paper as limp as boiled cabbage leaves.
Never mind – the site is exquisite. Tjampuhan, the old-fashioned spelling of Campuan, means "place where two rivers meet." The hotel's bungalows and guest rooms are arrayed along a steep ravine overlooking a turbulent river that rushes between rocky crags to meet its mate. Winding paths lead through the hotel's lush, sprawling garden, past lily ponds and shrines. On the opposite bank, perched just below terraced rice fields, is the ancient temple where the royal family of Ubud worships and performs its rituals. (Officially, there's no royalty in Indonesia now, but Bali doesn't pay much attention to rules).
I find that jet lag often conduces to discovery. On the first morning of my most recent visit to Ubud I awoke before dawn. Knowing that it would be impossible to go back to sleep, I dressed and strayed out into the streaky gray mist for a wander. I met Wayan, the "room boy," a lithe, quick-eyed man in his mid-thirties who had introduced himself the night before, when I checked in. He was in the garden gathering hibiscus flowers, which would be artfully tucked behind the ears of sculptured deities or scattered across bed sheets for romantic effect. I asked him how to get to the river, and he immediately set down his basket and led the way, along hairpin pebble pathways and then down a crude wooden staircase. It had rained during the night, so the river dashed ferociously through the gap. A forty-foot waterfall splashed noisily at the first bend in the river.
Wayan didn't stop there. He skipped across the water on a broad plank bridge and led the way up a steep dirt path to the crest of the ridge opposite the hotel. Here he pointed down a narrow lane lined with bamboo, and said, "You can walk." I thanked him and did as he suggested. Rice fields were on one side of the lane, the roaring river gorge on the other. A mother duck and her brood fell in behind me, gently gabbling to one another as they followed me to the end of the fields. Eventually I made my way past the royal temple to an old Dutch suspension bridge, just down the main road from the Hotel Tjampuhan.
No place in the world could be greener than Ubud. Everything here is green: the young rice fields glow a fluorescent shade of emerald; the thick curtains of foliage appear all the greener for the scarlet accents of ginger and hibiscus. Things that began another color – brick walls or pebble walkways – soon become green with shaggy moss. Even the air has a pale-green cast: the moisture suspended in it picks up the pervasive glow of the verdure. The Balinese have long called their island "the morning of the world." It's an extravagant phrase, but that morning I had an inkling of what they were talking about.
Another verbal extravagance, beloved of travel writers whose descriptive powers have deserted them, is the word "magical"; usually it's just hyperbole for "especially pretty." Yet there really is magic in Ubud. When Balinese people lose something, they consult a balian, a benign sort of sorcerer, who tells them where to find it. Balians can interpret dreams, cure sickness, go into trances, and speak in the voices of ancestors. And magic, in the form of the island's unique religion, is at the core of Bali's arts. A blend of Hinduism and nature worship, the Balinese religion is an ecstatic union of the spiritual and the aesthetic, reminiscent of the religion of ancient Greece. Bali's famous trance dances, for example, suggest the rites of Bacchus: in one of the sanghyang dances two girls who are supposedly untrained in the dance's intricate choreography go into a trance and, eyes firmly shut, move in perfect unison. The dance is named after the divine spirit that inhabits them.
WHEN Walter Spies arrived in Bali, he found a culture completely devoted to art, yet to which the notion of art for art's sake was alien. The Balinese have no word for "artist"; painting, carving stone and wood, weaving, playing a musical instrument, and, above all, dancing were just what one did when not fishing or working in the rice fields.
It is an axiom of art history that what used to be known as primitive art had a profound influence on the emergence of modernism in twentieth-century Europe. In Bali, Europe returned the favor: Spies had an uncanny affinity for the Balinese sensibility, and he thoroughly transformed the arts of the island in the fourteen years he lived there. The famous school of painting in Ubud, one of the principal attractions for people from every part of the world, was virtually his invention.
Traditionally the Balinese considered painting to be among the lowest of the arts; such painting as was done before Spies came was comparatively unsophisticated, consisting mainly of astrological calendars and scenes from the wayang, the mythological shadow-puppet show popular throughout the archipelago. Painters were limited by convention and by the natural pigments, such as bone, soot, and clay, that were available to them.
Spies, later joined by the Dutch artist Rudolf Bonnet, introduced Balinese artists to the wider range of colors of Western painting, and to the variety of effects possible with ready-made brushes and fine-woven canvas. More important, Spies and Bonnet introduced Western techniques, like perspective, and encouraged their students to venture beyond the traditional mythological subject matter and paint scenes from everyday life. Lest the two be accused of tampering with tradition, it should be pointed out that Balinese art, while formulaic, was never opposed to individual expressiveness; the island's most famous artist, I Gusti Nyoman Lempad, had begun to innovate stylistically before Spies's arrival.
As far as I know, there has never been another case of one person's having such a profound impact on the arts of a foreign culture. The best-known dance of Bali, the kecak, in which a chorus of men lie in a circle, loudly chanting "chak-a-chak-a-chak" as elaborately costumed soloists act out a tale from the Ramayana, was choreographed in its present form by Spies, in 1931. Originally the chorus was much smaller, and performed in a trance, but Spies wanted to create something more dramatic for a film he was working on – Victor Baron von Plessen's Island of Demons, an early effort to capture the romance of Bali and convey it abroad.
Ubud in the 1930s was among the most chic bohemian destinations in the world. Chaplin is said to have been disappointed that Balinese girls were not as promiscuous as their bare-breasted condition suggested. Margaret Mead and her lover, Gregory Bateson, got married on a ship steaming toward Bali, where they dropped in on Spies. Ruth Draper visited for a while, no doubt reciting her droll monologues for everyone after dinner. Most flamboyant of all was the heiress Barbara Hutton, who fell violently in love with Spies and dragged him off to Cambodia to see Angkor Wat. With the money she paid him for some paintings, he built her a bungalow and a swimming pool next to his house, but by the time it was finished, she had moved on to Persia. (Guests at the Hotel Tjampuhan may stay in this bungalow; the swimming pool is now a lily pond.)
Spies, however, was sexually inclined in a different way, with disastrous results. The Dutch authorities, scandalized at the general moral laxity of foreigners in Ubud, and as part of a crackdown on homosexuals throughout the colony, arrested Spies on New Year's Eve, 1938, for committing sodomy with a minor. According to his biographer, Hans Rhodius, the Balinese were shocked and puzzled by the arrest, and brought Spies's favorite gamelan to play for him outside the window of his jail cell. The boy's father told the trial judge, "He is our best friend, and it was an honor for my son to be in his company. If both are in agreement, why fuss?"
Spies was released from prison in September of 1939. While war was breaking out in Europe, he threw himself into the study of insects and marine life, turning out some exquisitely observed gouaches of his specimens. After Germany invaded Holland, the following year, all German citizens living in the Dutch East Indies were arrested. Spies, the last German on Bali, was sent to a prison in Sumatra. There he continued painting and organized an orchestra, which he conducted in performances of Rachmaninoff. In 1942, fearful of an imminent Japanese attack, the Dutch authorities put their German captives on a ship for transport to Ceylon. The day after it embarked, the vessel was hit by a Japanese bomb. The Dutch crew abandoned the sinking ship, and left their prisoners to drown, slowly and horribly.
THERE is still too much artistic endeavor in Bali, though the scene is not as lively as it once was. The last great burst of creativity came in the early sixties, again at the instigation of a foreigner. In 1960 a Dutch painter named Arie Smit, who had been living in Bali for four years, was strolling through the countryside near Campuan, and came upon some boys who were drawing in the sand. He was struck by their talent, and invited them to his studio. There he gave them paints and brushes and instructed them in technique but made no suggestions as to color or content, and kept his own richly coloristic, Matisse-influenced paintings out of sight. The results, which became known as the Young Artists movement, were vigorous genre scenes, often broadly humorous, rendered in bright, flat colors with strong contours.
Smit lives in a bungalow at a small hotel next door to the Museum Neka, one of the best museums in Indonesia, where many of his paintings are on display. Now eighty-three, Smit is a big, tall man, with the benevolent, well-shaped head of a Rembrandt prophet. He welcomed the opportunity I provided to talk about old times in Bali. He told me about a Waterman fountain-pen heiress who dressed her servants in gold livery. While Margaret Mead was a guest of Smit's, Buckminster Fuller came for a visit to the island; the two luminaries conceived an instant and intense dislike for each other.
When I asked Smit to characterize the contemporary art scene in Bali, he laughed and said, "Confused." He recommended a young artist named I Gusti Agung Wiranata, who paints in the brooding, dramatic style of Walter Spies. "People criticize him, saying he only copies Spies," Smit said. "But he has succeeded in making better paintings than Spies, because he is Balinese." He told me I would find some of Wiranata's work at the Museum Puri Lukisan, Ubud's other art museum, which was founded in the early fifties by Rudolf Bonnet and Prince Sukawati.
The Puri Lukisan's collection is excellent, with a particularly strong holding of I Gusti Nyoman Lempad's work, but the gardens are so lovely that I could hardly bring myself to go indoors to look at the art. A deep gorge at the entrance is spanned by a bridge, which leads to a brick path winding among a series of lily ponds and bowers. When I arrived, some laborers were clearing the hillside in front of the garden, making terraces to plant rice.
I quickly found a fine Wiranata: next to the entrance of one of the galleries hung a round painting, no more than a foot in diameter, of a paddy field at day's end, the sinuous terraces reflecting the extravagant pastels of a Balinese sunset. The style was undeniably close to Spies's, but with a sense of repose that is lacking in the German's work. On my way out I struck up a conversation with the young woman who worked at the postcard pavilion. I asked her if a curator was about, or someone in charge I could speak to. She called out to an old man working in the rice terrace, ankle-deep in mud. After he had washed off his feet and put on a clean shirt, he came over to meet me.
Pak Muning, as he was called, was indeed a curator. He said that he knew Wiranata, and asked if I would like to meet him. I agreed to come back with a car. We drove to a little village about fifteen miles out of Ubud, and found the artist, a handsome young man in his mid-twenties, dozing on his back porch. He received us affably, and asked his wife to prepare coffee for us. I complimented him on his work, and then asked him what was his response to people who said that he copies Walter Spies. He had a pat answer: "If people say I only copy Walter Spies, I say that's okay. Walter Spies came to copy Bali." His father was an artist, Wiranata said, and his uncle was also an artist. Now he lived with his in-laws, and he complained about it, saying he missed Ubud. "A better place for painting, I think." He showed me his studio, a fluorescent-lit cubicle with a boom box and a collection of American rock tapes.
When I returned to the Hotel Tjampuhan, Wayan was making up my room. He told me that he must say good-bye, because he had to go to a cremation; his brother-in-law, a twenty-two-year-old stone carver, had died the day before, buried in a landslide at his outdoor studio, on the bank of the river. His wife, Wayan's sister, was four months pregnant. When I offered my condolences, he shrugged and said, "It was God's will. Good-bye, sir. Please to have a happy life." He bowed and quietly left the room.
Disconcerted, I ordered a coffee from room service and moved to the balcony to watch night fall. I sipped the sweet, strong brew until I came to the mud at the bottom of the cup. The moon was a pale presence behind mottled clouds; a chill crept into the air. Across the ravine I could just make out the slim shapes of worshippers arriving at the temple, their gold and pink satin sarongs glinting in the green gloom. The silvery, slightly hysterical jangle of the gamelan commenced, accompanied by the trumpeting of frogs and the screech of a gecko, melded by the basso continuo of the river torrent.
"Have a happy life": of course it was just a pleasantry. But, I reflected, a man whose job it was to collect hibiscus flowers at dawn, in a river gorge in Ubud, and who could cope with the tragic death of a twenty-two-year-old relative with such equanimity, might have some idea of what that meant. [BaliGuide]
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Billabong Pro Junior Series Indonesia
International Surfing Returns to Indonesia: Bali Shores Lures Worlds Best Juniors
Thursday May 31st (Keramas, Bali, Indonesia); World professional surfing returned to Indonesia today with the first of three Billabong Pro Junior Series events commencing in flawless four foot waves at Keramas Beach in Bali. In a highly charged opening round Indonesian surfers displayed equal talent but less experience than their Australian counterparts in the perfect right hand barrels breaking over a black lava ledge.
In the day’s most exciting heat Madison Williams (Coffs Harbour, NSW) was challenged all the way by talented Balinese Made “Garut” Widiarta.
Eighteen year-old Williams never doubted Garut’s skills after falling victim to the hard hitting goofy footer at Manly Beach in Australia last year.
Williams came out blazing for an early lead with an 8.17 wave score before managing the days highest heat score of 15.17.
“I was lucky to get two bombs straight up and the waves are that good that I just had to go for it,” said Williams.
“I knew Garut was good and after his win over me at Manly it was great to get one up on him.”
Garut pushed all the way but came unstuck on two potentially high scoring rides to advance in second place on 11.17 but clearly marked himself as one of the tournaments serious contenders.
“The Australian surfers have more experience than the Balinese so it’s exciting for us to be pushed,” said Garut.
Former world ISA junior champion and current no.6 ranked Aussie junior Julian Wilson (Sunshine Coast, Qld) overcame first round jitters to post another of the day’s top heat scores finishing on 15.07 out of a possible 20.
The natural footer who was forced to change his approach at the notoriously photographed break looked sharp and powerful in the fast breaking conditions.
“I was kind-of nervous out there and I thought I could have surfed a little better than what I did,” said Wilson. “It’s just weird, contest surfing this wave looking to do three turns instead of normally free surfing the wave and looking for a big punt section.”
“I’ve seen the Balinese surf and they are going to be tough competition here at their local break. Garut is definitely one of the stand-outs,” added Wilson.
Emerging Indonesian super talent, 14 year-old One (Oh-Nee) Anwar surprised only his international counterparts with an explosive performance that saw him advance with an opening round win.
Anwar who has recently relocated from Lakey Peak in Sumbawa to Bali to contest the inaugural run of professional junior events resembled a young Mick Fanning with his fast and whippy approach.
“I am excited, first time I surf contest with Julian (Wilson) and all the pro’s from Australia,” said Anwar in broken English. “I came to Bali especially for contests and to do school in Bali. I came only with my brother who is sixteen.”
Anwar’s brother Gazali Hamzah was not so lucky bowing out by less than one point behind heat runner-up Brent Savage (Casuarina, NSW) with Kuta’s Made Lahirun claiming victory.
Another Balinese surfer to impress was Raditya Rondi who managed to outpoint no.3 ranked Australian junior Brendan Leckie (Gold Coast) in a super tight match-up. Leckie opened quickly for a 7.50 but Rondi came from behind with a super consistent performance that saw both of them advance into round two.
“I was so nervous,” admitted Rondi straight after the heat. “It’s good to see how the Aussie do competition, it’s very good for Bali surfing.”
Top seed and current no.2 ranked Australian junior Heath Joske (Numbucca Heads, Aus) was forced to use a late charge to claim victory in the tournaments opening heat. With just 15 minute heats staged due to the affects of the tide and wind at the break Joske charged a last minute ride to claim victory.
Other opening round heat winners included John Cummings (Gold Coast, Australia), Nyoman Septiana (Bali), Tim Stevenson (Torquay, Vic) and Kalim Schloss (Sunshine Coast, Qld).
Capitalizing on Bali’s superb surf breaks, the Billabong Pro Junior Series, supported by Kustom footwear and Von Zipper eyewear, will be held at three different locations.
The Keramas and Kuta Reef (29 June – 1 July) series events hold US$4,500 each in prize money, with the final event at Canggu (2-5 August) having a total of US$6,500 up for grabs.
The highest placed Indonesian surfer at the end of the three event series will be granted a position into the Von Zipper Trial, the 16 man precursor to the Billabong ASP World Junior Championships at North Narrabeen, Sydney.
Entry into the World Junior Championships is exceptionally valuable to any aspiring professional surfer, with the likes of Joel Parkinson and three-time world champion Andy Irons having launched their careers on the strength of wins at the WJC.
Day two of the four day tournament will recommence tomorrow morning at 7am local time at Keramas Beach with the finals set down for Sunday.
This event is part of the Indonesian Surfing Championships and is evidence of the depth of local surfing talent. [BaliBlog]
Read more...
Thursday May 31st (Keramas, Bali, Indonesia); World professional surfing returned to Indonesia today with the first of three Billabong Pro Junior Series events commencing in flawless four foot waves at Keramas Beach in Bali. In a highly charged opening round Indonesian surfers displayed equal talent but less experience than their Australian counterparts in the perfect right hand barrels breaking over a black lava ledge.
In the day’s most exciting heat Madison Williams (Coffs Harbour, NSW) was challenged all the way by talented Balinese Made “Garut” Widiarta.
Eighteen year-old Williams never doubted Garut’s skills after falling victim to the hard hitting goofy footer at Manly Beach in Australia last year.
Williams came out blazing for an early lead with an 8.17 wave score before managing the days highest heat score of 15.17.
“I was lucky to get two bombs straight up and the waves are that good that I just had to go for it,” said Williams.
“I knew Garut was good and after his win over me at Manly it was great to get one up on him.”
Garut pushed all the way but came unstuck on two potentially high scoring rides to advance in second place on 11.17 but clearly marked himself as one of the tournaments serious contenders.
“The Australian surfers have more experience than the Balinese so it’s exciting for us to be pushed,” said Garut.
Former world ISA junior champion and current no.6 ranked Aussie junior Julian Wilson (Sunshine Coast, Qld) overcame first round jitters to post another of the day’s top heat scores finishing on 15.07 out of a possible 20.
The natural footer who was forced to change his approach at the notoriously photographed break looked sharp and powerful in the fast breaking conditions.
“I was kind-of nervous out there and I thought I could have surfed a little better than what I did,” said Wilson. “It’s just weird, contest surfing this wave looking to do three turns instead of normally free surfing the wave and looking for a big punt section.”
“I’ve seen the Balinese surf and they are going to be tough competition here at their local break. Garut is definitely one of the stand-outs,” added Wilson.
Emerging Indonesian super talent, 14 year-old One (Oh-Nee) Anwar surprised only his international counterparts with an explosive performance that saw him advance with an opening round win.
Anwar who has recently relocated from Lakey Peak in Sumbawa to Bali to contest the inaugural run of professional junior events resembled a young Mick Fanning with his fast and whippy approach.
“I am excited, first time I surf contest with Julian (Wilson) and all the pro’s from Australia,” said Anwar in broken English. “I came to Bali especially for contests and to do school in Bali. I came only with my brother who is sixteen.”
Anwar’s brother Gazali Hamzah was not so lucky bowing out by less than one point behind heat runner-up Brent Savage (Casuarina, NSW) with Kuta’s Made Lahirun claiming victory.
Another Balinese surfer to impress was Raditya Rondi who managed to outpoint no.3 ranked Australian junior Brendan Leckie (Gold Coast) in a super tight match-up. Leckie opened quickly for a 7.50 but Rondi came from behind with a super consistent performance that saw both of them advance into round two.
“I was so nervous,” admitted Rondi straight after the heat. “It’s good to see how the Aussie do competition, it’s very good for Bali surfing.”
Top seed and current no.2 ranked Australian junior Heath Joske (Numbucca Heads, Aus) was forced to use a late charge to claim victory in the tournaments opening heat. With just 15 minute heats staged due to the affects of the tide and wind at the break Joske charged a last minute ride to claim victory.
Other opening round heat winners included John Cummings (Gold Coast, Australia), Nyoman Septiana (Bali), Tim Stevenson (Torquay, Vic) and Kalim Schloss (Sunshine Coast, Qld).
Capitalizing on Bali’s superb surf breaks, the Billabong Pro Junior Series, supported by Kustom footwear and Von Zipper eyewear, will be held at three different locations.
The Keramas and Kuta Reef (29 June – 1 July) series events hold US$4,500 each in prize money, with the final event at Canggu (2-5 August) having a total of US$6,500 up for grabs.
The highest placed Indonesian surfer at the end of the three event series will be granted a position into the Von Zipper Trial, the 16 man precursor to the Billabong ASP World Junior Championships at North Narrabeen, Sydney.
Entry into the World Junior Championships is exceptionally valuable to any aspiring professional surfer, with the likes of Joel Parkinson and three-time world champion Andy Irons having launched their careers on the strength of wins at the WJC.
Day two of the four day tournament will recommence tomorrow morning at 7am local time at Keramas Beach with the finals set down for Sunday.
This event is part of the Indonesian Surfing Championships and is evidence of the depth of local surfing talent. [BaliBlog]
Read more...
