Cuisine and Traditional Dress

          Cuisine and traditional dress across Indonesia share clear similarities and remarkable differences. As people increasingly migrated between islands over the past century, now eateries serving distant cuisines appear by the sides of roads on remote islands. Regarding dress, people buy Javanese factory-made sarungs, shirts, slacks, skirts, or blouses in markets across the archipelago. Many men and women wear sarungs at home, as they are inexpensive and comfortable. Urban Indonesians have adopted modern dress for many decades, and denim jeans and T-shirts are established casual wear among young people everywhere. Yet local cuisines and dress still thrive and even have resurged in many places. Traditional dress and food have gained renewed distinction in modern times, as people strive to maintain their ethnic, clan, gender, and class identities.

Bali, Java, and Sumatra, influenced by India, court cultures, Hindu-Buddhism, and Islam early on, offer some of the most sophisticated, subtle, and spicy foods of Indonesia. These islands also produce elegant and refined fabrics for clothing, including silks and weavings of silver and gold. Ceremonial costumes in Bali or Sumatra may be multi-layered and splendid,

comparable to the archipelago’s finest cuisine. In some places, traditional dress involves complex textiles whereas food remains simple, receiving relatively minimal attention. For example, many eastern islands maintain highly developed textile traditions and people take special care in ways of making and wearing cloth. Yet local foods frequently offer little diversity

or flavor in these regions—likely because these were not court influenced societies. As times change everywhere, so do ways of dressing and eating. While essential for survival, food and clothing fundamentally denote social rank, wealth, and more recently a modern savvy following global fashion trends. This chapter will describe customary ideas and manners of cuisine and dress in contemporary Indonesian contexts.

CUISINE

Most foreign visitors to Indonesia vividly remember their first “sense” after arrival—the multiple and exotic aromas of foods wafting through the air from houses and open-air eateries. Reflecting centuries of incoming influences, many ingredients flavoring Indonesian cuisine originated from around the globe. The hot chili made its way from Mexico through Spanish conquest in the Philippines, along with green beans, tomatoes, maize, and potatoes. Portuguese introduced peanuts and sweet potatoes from colonies in Africa and Brazil, along with papayas and pineapples. Dutch brought cabbage, carrots, and cauliflower. Centuries before, Chinese imported soy products, stir-frying, noodles, and domestic pigs. Earliest known influences arrived from India, introducing onions, garlic, eggplant, and spices like coriander, cumin, and ginger. Most notably, India also brought the fine culinary art of making curries, which Indonesians adopted and recreated with ingenuity and zest. Living amid native and abundant coconut palms, people could freely access milk forming the basis of curry sauce.

Apparently, Indonesians used turmeric, coconut, cassava, palm sugar, salt, tamarind, and fish paste before the introduction of other foods. Fruits grew far more abundantly than vegetables, including mangoes, bananas, durians, jackfruits, rambutans, citrus fruits, and mangosteens. Some fruits, however, functioned as vegetables, as people ate them green. Indonesians flavor and cook un-ripened jackfruits, papayas, bananas, and mangoes as they would vegetables. Many enjoy the sautéed, bitter flowers of the papaya plant and believe they prevent malaria. Fish may have been the most common meat-like protein of early Indonesian diets, along with wild pigs, dogs, and chickens. Austronesians probably introduced wet rice farming to some islands as far back as two to three thousand years ago.

As the staple grain of Indonesia, rice feeds millions three times a day and carries immense religious importance. In most of the eastern islands, cassava (ubi kayu in Indonesian) formerly provided the main carbohydrate, and people still mix bits of this root into the rice they now eat. Many believe this enriches the grain, but often mixing cassava or maize (corn) enables people to stretch a rice supply until the next harvest or to when they can afford to buy more.

Rice and Life

During its many centuries of association with man, rice in raw and cooked form has assumed special meanings, much as in the Occident, bread has become “the staff of life,” the food to be ceremonially “broken.”

Rice represents a fundamental spiritual, social, and nutritional basis for much of Indonesia. Balinese wear small dabs of rice on their temples and foreheads after prayer. Life’s passages inspire festive accompanying rice dishes or sculptures, and most everywhere rice carries spirit. Indeed, Bali’s complex irrigation systems for growing rice shaped land and culture, while sustaining strongly cooperative communities for many centuries. Likewise in Java, wet-rice cultivation involved tightly functioning political systems early on, developing into great polities such as Majapahit. Dewi Sri, the rice goddess recognized in Bali, Java, and places beyond, holds prominence among deities. Balinese honor Siwa (adopted from the Indian god Shiva) as god of the soil, supporting the growth of everything, including rice. Siwa and Dewi Sri work in complementary balance with one another.

While the “Green Revolution” (launched in the mid-twentieth century) allowed far more rice production throughout Indonesia, it also created problems for numerous farmers. Suspecting Dewi Sri’s disapproval, President Suharto went to the extent of modifying national policy toward new pesticides, banning the most toxic following reports of their poisonous environmental effects. Pesticides often destroyed creatures (such as ducks, frogs, shrimps,

and minnows) integral to fertilizing rice paddies and controlling crop-eating pests and malarial mosquitoes. The expense of chemical fertilizers, moreover, was beyond the means of the poor, who had formerly relied upon manure and composted plant material in fields.

Nonetheless, Indonesia is now self-sufficient in rice whereas it once was the world’s largest importer of the grain. In many regions people follow modern agricultural methods and plant imported, high-yielding rice hybrids. Yet farmers in some areas maintain their time-honored methods and plant varieties. Many people express that they do not like the texture nor taste of the newer rice hybrids and much prefer their older types. This echoes older values upon precedence and origins, as in clans, houses, metaphysical beliefs, and personal identities.

In the minds of most Indonesians, consuming rice is essential to living. Many regard a meal without rice as nonsustaining and incomplete. People often express that they will weaken and become sick if deprived of rice and complain that they do not feel “satisfied” (kenyang) after any type of meal excluding it. They marvel at how Westerners might ever become kenyang,

as they see them eating small portions of rice or none at all. For the Indonesian majority, rice bears crucial cosmological significance. Regarding culinary etiquette, some advise that it is acceptable if guests leave other sorts of food uneaten, but not to consume all of the rice on a plate is next to sinful.

As so much effort goes into its planting, growing, harvesting, husking, and accompanying ritual offerings, rice maintains a position of sanctity among foods. Likely for reasons of fertility, rice carries an association with women in much of Indonesia, who often plant and then harvest the grain, using small, curved knives. These cutting devises take different forms across the islands. Women cup them within their hands while cutting so as not to cause shock and fear among the rice sheaves. This method also respects the rice goddess and related spirits.

Rice paste forms the sculptural medium for brightly dyed and detailed Balinese offerings at ceremonies. It also becomes the basis for sweets eaten at these events. During a cremation procession, family members sometimes throw rice toward by-standers to ensure good feelings along their passage. In Java, a cone-shaped rice form called nasi tumpeng (“mountainshaped

rice”), communicates passages in life—such as the seventh month of pregnancy, weddings, and birthdays. Any number of adornments or dishes may surround this cone. After a death, relatives serve the dish sliced in half down the middle, then reorient the sections to symbolize that life

and growth have come to an end. In many parts of Indonesia, fertility of rice crops connects to dead relatives and pageants honor rice and ancestors in specific ways. People symbolically feed the dead through ceremonies (including rice offerings), and in turn receive their blessings through fertile crops.

Rice marks important times of the year for people, and countless beliefsand rituals correspond with its planting, growth, and harvesting. In West Sumba, people fear that others can steal the souls of their growing rice by dancing and singing with magic baskets. Describing this belief, one account also remarks that “[f]or this reason, the months when the young rice crop is growing are shrouded in a strict silence.”

Types of Indonesian rice include natural colors of black, red, and white. Indonesians also like to tint rice using the turmeric root, producing nasi kuning, or “yellow rice,” favored at festive events. The Balinese specialize in a rich pudding made of black rice, coconut milk, and palm sugar. Red rice holds special value in drier, less fertile parts of Indonesia, where people believe it provides greater nutrition than other types (likely true, as it remains un-husked).

Flavorful Fare

Popular almost everywhere, people prepare noodles (mie) in a number of ways. Unlike rice, they do not carry religious significance. Consisting of rice or wheat flour, Indonesian noodles might be very fine or similar to fettuccine in shape and size. Rarely served without seasoning, noodles become bases for stir-fried dishes mixed with bits of meat or vegetables. Noodles also make for filling, economical soups. Often they appear in mixed forms as side dishes with rice. Mie goreng (fried noodles) is one of Indonesia’s most widespread simple dishes, along with nasi goring (fried rice). These fast, wok-cooked, economical meals typically include inexpensive ingredients or leftovers to enhance them.

Often a molasses like sauce, called kecap manis (sweet sauce) flavors these dishes, or else a spicy hot sauce called sambal. The word “ketchup” in English comes from the similarly pronounced Indonesian word kecap (“sauce”). In recent decades, monosodium glutamate (MSG), has become popular across

Indonesia. This ingredient now goes into many foods, especially those stir-fried. Many simply call it rasa (“flavor”).

As does Thai cuisine, the finest of Indonesian cooking requires subtle combinations of flavors and complementary dishes. Seasonings include lemon grass, ginger, shrimp paste, chilies, pureed peanuts, coconut milk, lime leaves, lemon juice, garlic, shallots, tamarind, laos root, cloves, nutmeg, coriander, salt, and a variety of ready-made sauces. Indonesian meals at their best offer a wide and colorful range of distinctively different dishes, always served with an abundance of rice. Curries and soups carry explicitly Indonesian tastes and scents, often including chicken, goat, beef, or seafood. For non-Islamic peoples, pork is a favorite meat. Kangkung, a common Indonesian vegetable served with meals stir-fried or stewed, is an aquatic green like watercress. Shrimp crackers (krupuk), stir-fried peanuts, along with small potato or corn fritters embellish many plates. In fact, condiments and side dishes pull together all elements of meals.

Sauces called sambal are one of Indonesia’s extraordinary culinary art achievements. Of endless variety, many people make their own favorites. Preparing sambal involves pounding chilies with oils, shallots, garlic, sugar, salt, shrimp paste, and other seasonings using a mortar and pestle. Some prefer to fry pounded pastes to deepen their flavors. Sambals can be sweet, salty, sour, garlic-seasoned, or extremely hot with chilies. They may be smooth or chunky with ingredients such as shallots, chilies, tomatoes, and orange peel (similar to Mexican salsa).

Indonesians make brilliant use of soybeans, producing both tofu (tahu) and tempeh. Tempeh is a Javanese invention of fermented, compressed soybeans. Typically sold in public markets by the slice off of a long rectangular block, this soy product far surpasses tofu (and meat) in protein content. Tempeh is cheap and often referred to as “poor people’s meat.” However, it incorporates well many spices and sauces, is especially good fried, and people of all classes enjoy it in Java, Bali, and beyond. Tempeh often becomes a condiment, in small pieces deeply fried with shallots and bits of potato. Also inexpensive and available in public markets, Tahu (tofu) develops from fermented soybean paste and originates from China. Like tempeh, cooks primarily fry tahu, serving it with other dishes. Many eat both tahu and tempeh as snack foods sold in stalls or from small carts, often with a bit of sambal or a few small chilies.

As walking while eating constitutes rudeness in much of Indonesia, people usually consume snacks on the spot where they buy them or take them to where they can sit.

Certain renowned recipes please locals and foreigners with their unique flavors and visual appeal. These largely originate from the western islands. Pungent, curry dishes might contain any number of combinations, such as chicken, beef, fish, eggplant, beans, or young jackfruit, and are among Indonesia’s tastiest foods. Usually made with beef, rendang originated in the Minangkabau region of West Sumatra. Part of an intricately spiced, piquant cuisine called Padang (after the port city of the region), richly seasoned rendang becomes tender through stewing in coconut milk and appears at special events. Of course, rice, vegetables, and condiments round out this dish. Balinese gado-gado (meaning “mixture”) consists of a salad of greens, compressed glutinous rice slices, cooked vegetables, peanuts, bean sprouts,

tahu, tempeh, and so forth—covered with puréed peanut sauce containing coconut milk and spices. This usually includes no meat. Saté is Indonesia’s answer to the Turkish shish kebab but includes only meat. Most frequently chicken or beef coated with a spicy peanut sauce and impaled upon a slender wooden skewer, this quickly cooks on open grills. Saté ranks among the most popular of street foods.

Then there are limitless variations upon rice dishes, a few of which follow. Nasi campur (mixed rice) offers a mound of white rice surrounded with a mixture of meats, seafood, vegetables, potato or corn fritters, sambal, krupuk crackers, peanuts, and tahu or tempeh. This attractive dish displays a medley of Indonesian foods and condiments. Nasi Padang also provides ample white rice with blends of spicy, curried meats and vegetables distinctive of West Sumatran food. Nasi goreng (fried rice) incorporates almost any ensemble of palatable ingredients fried in a wok, flavored and colored with red sambal. People in Flores, Sumba, and Timor eat nasi jagung (corn rice), a simple rice dish cooked with bits of ground maize. Lemper consists of glutinous rice simmered in coconut milk, steamed with meat and spices, and then wrapped in tubes of banana leaf. These resemble small, green Mexican tamales and vendors sell them in Java and elsewhere. For take-away meals, people eat nasi bungkus (wrapped rice), containing any mixture of rice and foods in a large banana leaf package. These often include a “spoon,” also fashioned from banana leaf.

Martabak stands offer a sort of large crepe enfolding spicy meat or sweet peanut and coconut fillings. They open in the evening and their food descends from recipes introduced by Arabs. While usually a snack, people might take several portions home to add to a meal. Martabak offers variation from rice, as it often includes wheat flour and Westerners frequently enjoy this food.

Places to Eat

While in urban regions some middle-class people have taken to Western fast foods, most still prefer Indonesian diets and never seem to abandon rice. Throughout Indonesia the most common eating-place long has been the warung. This is a small, inexpensive, streetside food stall where cooks quickly prepare meals, often in a wok. Common fare also includes soups and curries stewing in large pots and ready to eat. Customers typically share benches at simple tables set with condiments such as salt, kecap, chilies, and sambal. Awnings or tarps shelter these small eateries from the elements. Warungs range in size, quality, specialties, and remain popular places for all sorts of people to eat quickly and even very well. Most provide take-out food wrapped in banana leaves.

Warungs often serve cuisine from different regions, such as Padang food from Sumatra and Javanese dishes. Padang warungs attract people through the diversity and flavor of their dishes. Commonly, Indonesian bus stations feature bordering Padang warungs. Prepared early in the day and then served at room temperature, Padang food is always ready to eat. These modest eateries appear in the most remote places of Indonesia, as do small stalls called kios (borrowed from the word “kiosk”), selling soft drinks and packaged snacks. Individual vendors on most islands also sell food in the evening, as they squat beside small lanterns—offering simply peanuts, roasted corn, or fried bananas. “Fast food” is not a new phenomenon in Indonesia but centuries old.

In Java, modest hand-pushed food carts called kaki lima (meaning “five legs” of supports when standing still) travel residential streets. Their vendors sell soup, fried noodles or rice, sweets, fruit juices, sodas, ice cream, and so on. Each peddler emits a uniquely identifying sound to broadcast his arrival and

fare. Thus, bells, drum beats, twangs of metal wires, horns, gongs, or distinctive vocal chants enliven streets and lanes—notably after dark or early morning. Often people await signals of specific carts to buy breakfast, snacks, or an evening meal. Indonesians comment that they realize the time of day by the sounds of specific kaki lima, heralding their specialties through neighborhoods.

As Indonesians love snacks, they also like sweets. Some warungs specialize in es (ice) dishes. Composed of finely crushed ice mixed with fruits and colorful bits of sweet agar jelly, sweetened, canned condensed milk drenches all ingredients, adding richness. Es dishes are Indonesia’s version of ice cream

sundaes and the young flock to these stands. Vendors and kiosks also sell candies, cookies, ice cream, and batter-fried bananas.

Many warungs serve neighborhoods as social centers to meet and talk. People exchange local gossip, discuss rising prices, and express political opinions. During the 2004 political campaigns, one determined candidate opened warungs—bearing his name on the front awning—in every Indonesian province; thus, they were called Warung Wiranto. Warungs now cater to separate social classes. The more upscale resemble outdoor restaurants, with private tables, chairs, and elevated television sets. Some warungs play lively, popular music to draw in fans.

A restaurant in Indonesia is a rumah makan (eating house) and some warungs catering to the middle class resemble them. Rumah makans can be humble places to eat, but many are beyond the means of common people. Indonesian Chinese families often run restaurants serving a mixture of Chinese and Indonesian dishes. Rumah makans are common in cities and towns but rare in village or rural regions. Warungs and kiosks, however, seem to exist wherever there are people.

Food, Beliefs, and Behavior

Everywhere cuisine interconnects with metaphysical and practical beliefs and social behavior. Throughout Indonesia, people talk about food often, sharing recipes, expressing likes and dislikes, comparing ritual feasts, discussing crops and livestock, or complaining of high prices. The sheer number

and variety of roadside food sellers reflect the paramount concern of eating in Indonesian daily life. Preparation, tastes, and customs of eating vary across the islands, as do the values placed upon certain foods. Sociability connected to food also ranges from communal events to singularly private acts.

Families might normally eat an evening meal together or separately in different parts of a household. Lunch is usually an informal affair—to the extent that in some areas individuals simply will grab a handful of cooked rice from a kitchen and eat it immediately. Formality or shared activity of eating relates to each society and class. In many areas people eat with their right hands, but most Indonesians use a tablespoon. Breakfast often consists of rice porridge with coffee or tea. Indonesians do not usually linger over meals as do Westerners, and often conversation waits until after eating.

When eating together, custom frequently determines that the head of the household or oldest male initiate dining. When guests are present, etiquette requires that the host or hostess express, “Please eat” (Silakan makan) before anyone makes a gesture toward doing so. Some Indonesian families share meals around a table, some dine together on a tikar mat, and some eat alone in private at the back of a house. Moreover, food and eating can relate to real or metaphysical dangers, as people fear poisoning, curses, or spirits entering their open mouths. Many Indonesians do not speak while eating for such reasons, and sometimes water must wait until after a meal.

Food throughout the islands incorporates greater systems of belief. As discussed, offerings and rituals ensure fertility and all crops rely upon the good will of ancestors, nature spirits, or deities. So with livestock, which affords both sustenance and status to owners. Many island people use metaphors of plants or animals as concepts—in house design, clan organization, ritual prayers, and the reckoning of space and time. Elderly people without birth records typically estimate their age by events such as the year a certain mango tree was planted. In Sumba, water buffalo correspond with their owners’ biographies. The animals a man begins to raise after marriage represents the moment in time in which he reached adulthood.

Certain taboos apply to foods, the most common one upon pork for Muslims. In animist regions, people often follow strictures against eating particular “clan animals.” Following these ideas, creatures historically assisted the living or were even original ancestors. While not forbidden, other foods may bring on disease or relapses in malaria, if too cold or too hot. Foods might also transmit dangerous curses, and people will avoid anyone rumored to have caused illness repeatedly through offering meals or even water.

Various food taboos apply to pregnant women. In parts of Timor, expectant mothers must refrain from eating hot meals and goat meat, also classified as “hot” and thereby dangerous in Tetun society. In some regions, any food held too close to a pot of indigo dye then becomes “hot” and perilous to pregnant women, as is the dye itself. In eastern Indonesia, new mothers avoid spiritually “hot” foods, yet often sit for days warmed by a household fire. On the other hand, in central Java during the slametan ritual celebrating the seventh month of pregnancy, the expectant woman ceremoniously eats a hard-boiled egg as a symbol of the actuality and health of her unborn child. Thus, certain foods might ensure healthy reproduction.

At funerals in many regions, all attending must have eaten to their contentment before a body can be carried safely to its grave. This relates to the Indonesian concept of kenyang, or satisfaction mentioned above. To leave anyone at critical ritual events unsatisfied with the food might cause bad feeling, arouse harmful spirits, and invite supernatural problems. Sumba funeral fare includes boiled pork and rice, distributed in deliberately generous servings. Feeding guests and spirits is a serious matter across Indonesia. At shamanic ceremonies of the Meratus Dayak of Kalimantan, people prepare sweet rice desserts to host the spirits, shaped into boats, airplanes, flowers, and lines of uniformed soldiers to represent both pleasant and powerful possessions. In this way, fearsome spirits (dewa) are appeased.

To refuse hospitably offered food constitutes a grievous insult in Indonesia. Among the Meratus Dayak people of Kalimantan, “[b]y refusing food—and by extension, social connection—one becomes vulnerable to accidents, such as bites by poisonous snakes or centipedes, as well as to illness.” A visiting European “eco-tourist” to Sumba in 1994 created alarm and fears of witchery in several villages where she camped in her tent. A vegetarian and fearful of germs, she firmly refused all food and drink from villagers, while shunning interaction. Her inexplicable unsociability gave rise to suspicions of madness or sorcery. This tourist entered local folklore, as “the women who would not socialize.”

Foods also carry political functions, sometimes for the better, but also creating unforeseen problems. As the national government centers in Jakarta, Java, it attempted for decades to deploy Javanese models of “civilization” by establishing wet-rice agriculture throughout the islands. In some regions this worked well, but in others environmental and social conditions were most unsuited to this farming method. This policy accompanied the New Order’s transmigration (transmigrasi) of people from over-crowded Java to less populated islands. Despite the use of pesticides, the introduction of wet-rice farming in some regions significantly increased incidences and strains of malaria, encephalitis, and dengue fever through the amount of standing water rice required. This provided ideal breeding environments for mosquitoes carrying these diseases. Unlike Balinese, many peoples unaccustomed to growing wet-rice were unaware of how to control mosquitoes through animals suited to rice paddies.

In the Tetun region of Timor, the gebang palm feeds people and carries ritual value, while the sago palm is the food of nobles. In this dry, mountainous region, people prefer dry-rice growing to wet-rice methods promoted by the national government. Tetun claim that the latter method is not the way of their ancestors, thus locally invalid.8 For these people, dry rice holds precedent ritual significance while wet rice does not. Indigenous farming methods carry on through the long-standing spiritual value of foods and the practicality in producing them. As do local lineages, so do native plants carry on metaphysical worth. Likewise in Sumba, the more recently introduced white Brahmin cattle carry no ritual value, as compared to long-established species of horses, pigs, chickens, and water buffalo.

Recent Food Trends

In modern Indonesia, many have taken to fast foods and especially to instant noodles called “Super Mie” (Mie means “noodles”), similar to “Top Ramen” available in the United States. Sold everywhere, Super Mie crosses all ethnic and class boundaries and feeds urbanites and rural villagers. Now other noodle brands compete and offer a plethora of “flavor packets,” some catering to more elite customers by offering “gourmet” varieties. As noted in a June 2001 article in Latitudes, “[m]ore than the national anthem or even the national language, the instant noodle unites.”

Modern notions of fashion and global influences stimulated new ideas of prestigious eating in Indonesia. In numerous urban settings, American fastfood restaurants became elevated locally to status domains of young elites. Well-dressed, dating couples frequented McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken in Jakarta. In Java and Bali, Indonesians dining at such franchises often demonstrated savoir-faire to others in ordering and eating American “junk” food. Moreover, the bright lights and sterile, plasticized interiors of these restaurants exemplify an international standard of modernity. The seductive lure of “being modern” (moderen in Indonesian) in Indonesia especially entices the young and the upwardly mobile. Yet, as Adrian Vickers notes in Being Modern in Bali: “In Bali, as in most of Southeast Asia, the desire to embrace the new [is] not new.” So with cuisines, as people select from incoming foods and build upon what has sustained them.

In recent times of political and economic crises, numerous Indonesians have returned to farming and raising animals with renewed vigor. Realizing the dangers of over-reliance upon tourism, foreign aid, modern global trends, or their own government, many now increasingly value their customary foods and ways of producing and preparing them. Further, following extensive international disdain of the Bush administration, Indonesians have become far less admiring of things “American.” Thus, McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut, and the like may come to bear different symbolic meanings than in the past. It remains to be seen how the international chaos following the terrorist attack on New York’s World Trade Towers in 2001—and the United States’ subsequently controversial invasion of Iraq—will reshape Indonesian ideas and trends regarding the Western world. In particular, the United States, Australia, and Britain may come to bear an altered status compared to previous years.

DRESS

Everywhere in Indonesia, manners of dress carry fundamental social importance. Even as customary dress currently wanes in some regions, people aspire to appear clean, neat, and fashionable. The Indonesian term rapi means “neat” but also implies a modern sleekness in dress. In cities, people typically wear contemporary, factory-made clothing, similar to styles in the West, albeit comparatively conservative. Indonesian women dress modestly and normally do not wear sleeveless blouses or short skirts. The Muslim female custom of covering the hair by wearing a jilbab—a cloth leaving only the face exposed—has grown in popularity in recent decades in parts of Indonesia. This may be in response to perceived excesses of modern popular culture and a renewed ethnic and religious identity. The custom has recently increased in Indonesia, reflecting attitudes of Islamic peoples toward the Bush policies in the Middle East.

Nevertheless, numerous urban youth (male and female) sport jeans, T-shirts, body piercings, tattoos, and spiky dyed hair, and they attend rave parties. In fact, T-shirts and jeans constitute standard youthful garb throughout the archipelago and have for some time. “Style” has been called a visible reference point for life in progress. While styles of traditional dress still integrally link to prestige and power, knowledge of “newness” in an expanded, volatile world often matters most in recent status contests.

Yet style might arise and proceed from any direction, and novelty does not necessarily issue from the Euro-American world. Diversely modern Asian trends affect Indonesians: from heroes of Hong Kong martial arts action films; to songs, dances, and fashions of India’s spectacular Bollywood movies; to head wraps worn by Indonesian youth following the contemporary dance style called joget. Joget moves to the lively Indian and Arabic inspired rhythms of dangdut, a Malay/Indonesian pop music craze. Through mass media and ever changing fashions in urban centers, more than ever before Indonesians enjoy access to stylistic trends from both hemispheres.

People throughout the islands proclaim identities through their dress, involving deeper personal and social meanings. Traditional garb has not remained static in design, but reflects individual choices in aesthetics and lives revealing changing times. This likely always was so, although to a far lesser extent than in today’s world. Across Indonesia, many dress in combinations of new and old ways: selectively modern while retaining essentials of their homeland customs.

Where Threads Still Bind

Customary dress across Indonesia communicates binding cosmological principles, group identities, and local systems of meaning and power. It enhances cultural ideals of masculinity and femininity, in multiple ways. Still thriving through the islands, some traditional styles gained renewed value in recent times. However, as textile scholars note: “Precisely because it wears thin and disintegrates, cloth becomes an apt medium for communicating a central problem of power: Social and traditional relationships are necessarily fragile in an impermanent, ever-changing world.”

Traditional Indonesian apparel chronicles people’s histories, secures social relationships, and communicates to others. Such dress widely ranges between islands in specific motifs and techniques, but most always emerges from local designers, weavers, and dyers. In some regions, imported cloths, such as ancient Indian trade fabrics (patola cloths) or Javanese batik head cloths, became adopted into costumes regarded as locally traditional. These may symbolize formerly prestigious foreign trade connections or assertions of descent from royal courts on other islands.

Still, “tradition” usually survives through changing—incorporating aspects that update and enhance its current relevance. Traditions rarely function over time as rigidly inadaptable dogmas. As does life, they constantly undergo flux. Otherwise, old ways die out, as they have in much of the world. In so-called developed countries, people tend to regard “traditional societies” as completely static—following resolutely ancient, unalterable forms of culture. Moreover, when such societies demonstrate creative innovations reflecting their current ideas of the world, outsiders might then label them as “spoiled” or “no longer authentic,” as though they must remain frozen in time to be genuine. Romantic or stark definitions of the traditional give short shrift to non- Western peoples, whose lives are as dynamic and innovative as people elsewhere (not to mention “modern,” which carries unique interpretations the world over). The difference in customary societies lies in certain tenacious principles that maintain traditions. These include reverence toward ancestors, belief in the metaphysical, and the successful carrying on of clan lineages— values that have lapsed in much of the industrialized world. Precisely because Indonesians have remained so continuously adaptive and ingenious, they have been able to brilliantly maintain traditions important to them in the face of modern pressures. This applies to all aspects of cultures but becomes visible and individual through manners of dress.

Clothing throughout the archipelago historically derived from local plants and barks. Thus, cloth, dyes, and looms intricately connected with indigenous ecologies and cosmologies. Manners of dress long have signified people’s identities, their comings and goings, what they regard as meaningful, and diverse social interactions with outside peoples throughout the past. Traditional dress also reflects ongoing tensions between the past and the present. In recent times, customary dress interweaves and convolutes the traditional and the modern, blurring these categories. As surviving traditions are never inert, so it goes with Indonesian clothing.

Most customary Indonesian dress bases upon a sarung or a kain. Sarungs are cloths sewn together at either end to form a tube. People then step into, pull up, then wrap and tuck this cloth around their waists, sometimes adding a sash. Sarungs and kains always extend to the ankle, except when worn by men on certain islands, where they reach the knees. In Java, Bali, and other islands both men and women wear sarungs, which vary in their patterns and manners of fastening. On islands like Sumatra, Sulawesi, Flores, Sumba, Timor, and beyond, traditional sarungs differ. Of heavier, handwoven textiles, they are narrower and longer in shape. Only women wear these tubular garments— long enough to pull up over the breasts and fasten, or to draw up to the waist and tuck.

Kain means simply “cloth” in Indonesian. In dress it refers to a lengthy stretch of unsewn fabric, typically 3 meters in length. This might be wrapped and cinched in multiple ways and worn by men or women in many places, involving all levels of formality. Women often wear a batik kain with a matching selendang—a shawl draped over one shoulder. They use kain for practical needs, like carrying babies by tying the cloths into a sling across their shoulders. Kain often functions as backpacks, as women carry purchases from the market in them, or female vendors bundle their goods to market in this cloth.

Traditional wear visibly accentuates cultural ideals of masculinity and femininity across the islands. Women’s hips become emphasized and attractive to men through the way they appear in sarungs or kains. Men in diverse regions express that they only appreciate a woman’s figure if clad in local dress. This follows the ways a garment fits and hangs, as well as how it flows in movement. Following customary poise, women throughout Indonesia should be slow and graceful (halus), and clothing accentuates their movements. Most traditional wear inhibits long strides affecting a woman’s poise. Some have interpreted this as constraining women’s mobility in a larger sense, notably in Java where women’s tightly wrapped kain can be especially binding.

Regarding this kain, one argues that, “restrictions on the behavior of women symbolized by ‘traditional’ Javanese clothing were actually an innovation of the 1950s and 1960s and are kept in place by oppressive government programs and policies circulated throughout Indonesian society by modern media.”15 In fact, the national government deployed images of the ideal Indonesian woman as primarily those of “motherhood” (keibuan)—the foundation of home life and nationalism. It follows that inflated emphasis upon binding, traditional female dress was part of these programs and policies.

Batik often epitomizes “Indonesian-ness,” carrying the status of the national costume, yet also providing everyday wear as sarungs and kains. Batik is mandatory formal wear in Java. The finest cloths of silk adorn men and women in assorted styles and colors. Javanese men don distinct batik headpieces for ceremonial wear, folded and shaped in complex ways to construct a classical, pleated cap (called iket, meaning “bundled” or “bound,” relating to the word ikat). The traditional iket descends from court cultures and indicates refinement. Male headpieces express cultural and individual notions of status and masculinity throughout the archipelago and range widely in style.

Better sarungs or kain are of silk or fine cotton decorated with elegantly precise handcrafted batik. This wax-resist dye method (described in Chapter 3) lends status to clothing through the time and skill involved in its patterns. Internationally, batik represents the quintessentially Indonesian textile. Elegant and inexhaustible, its motifs take natural forms like birds and flowers, but also contain abstract, symbolic designs from diverse courts and regions. Altogether, approximately three thousand batik patterns are on record.

Although originally and still predominantly a Javanese art, this cloth long ago traveled to outer islands, where batik headpieces worn by men still denote their standing. Women on various islands proudly don their best batik kains and selendangs for special occasions. In many regions of Indonesia, wearing their finest batik clothing is how people “dress up.”

With a sarung Indonesian women usually wear blouses called kebayas, of silk, voile, or nylon. These form-fitting, long-sleeved garments resemble sheer jackets, delicately embroidered down the front panels and the wrists. As they do not include buttons, women secure them with broaches (or often simply

safety pins) to keep them closed. These came to Indonesia via Malaysia, following religious conversions of Indonesians to Islam or Christianity. Formerly, women of most islands went bare-breasted or wore simple cloths across their chests, leaving their shoulders and arms free. Dutch further encouraged modesty in unconverted societies, and women complied by wearing cloth or blouses. Kebayas also took long, shapeless forms and women have worn loose tunics (baju).

Minangkabau women wear a spectacular head cloth called a tengkuluak (“head cloth”) often folded around a crescent-shaped form. At formal events, these textiles go on display as women form a parade and represent their matrilineal descent groups. The long tengkuluak contain intricate patterns of

finely woven gold threads. Motifs evoke key Minangkabau tenets of spiritual and behavioral righteousness, including ceremonial foods and esteemed animals. The wealthier the woman, the more intricate and multiple the designs on her headpiece, along with its increased size. In bulk and elaboration, the tengkuluak communicates the weight and complexity of women’s responsibilities in this persistently matrilineal society. These headpieces mirror the shape of Minangkabau roofs, as they form upward-curving crescents suggesting water buffalo horns. As do roofs, they also may imply spiritual notions of an

invisible realm, required to complete the arcs to form full circles. The women also wear silken shoulder cloths, long-fitted tunics, and sarungs containing gold threads and mica or sarungs of fine batik.

In the Lampung region of South Sumatra, gold threads, embroidery, and mirror-like mica sequins adorn some of the most splendid and intricately patterned traditional clothing of Indonesia. Tapis (meaning “wrapped cloth”) skirts worn by women display elegantly curving, labyrinthine designs. Gold threads are laid upon sections in patterns and then hand sewn into a woven cloth by a technique called “couching.” Further embroidery and sequins of varying sizes render these pieces spectacular. Viewing a tapis is like seeing countless possibilities in art and life portrayed in cloth. International museums and collectors especially seek and prize tapis pieces.

The island of Timor produces textiles using a broad scope of techniques and motifs, some solely specific to regions. Moreover, “one of the delights of the textiles on Timor is that they are still very much a part of a living tradition.” Across its length, Timor’s peoples might employ the most varied scope of techniques of all the Indonesian islands, including ikat, embroidery, couching, twining, supplementary warps and wefts, floating threads within a weave, and so on. Motifs across this island differ tremendously. Cloth of some regions bears no resemblance to that of not-so-distant parts of the same island. The history of mountainous Timor Island is complex and particular and vividly emerges through the range and intricacy of its woven clothing. Indigenous dress has maintained in Timor to a far greater extent than other traditional forms such as houses.

Ikat textiles represent an older type of fabric that for centuries has clothed the royalty of some islands. Torajans of Sulawesi, Sumbanese, Bataks of northern Sumatra, Dayaks of Kalimantan and peoples of Flores, Lembata, Timor, Savu, Solor, Adonara, Lamalera, Tanimbar, and other islands have

long produced distinctive patterns using the ikat technique. Entire books have been written on the ikat cloth of just one island region, and this section only can attempt a general description of this important fabric. Many ikats contain symbols from animist iconographies such as plant forms, animals, and amphibians or human figures representing ancestors. People have borrowed motifs from many incoming sources and ikat pieces contain images from Indian, Dutch, Chinese, or Portuguese encounters. These include ancient Indian trade cloth patterns, Chinese dragons, heraldic lions from colonial coins and seals, European floral designs with vases, and winged cherubs. The late queen Wilhelmina of the Dutch colonial era became a standard, localized motif in East Sumba. Helicopters and the likenesses of President Bill Clinton also appeared in eastern Sumba ikat in the early 1990s.

Larger, blanket-like ikat pieces wrap the lower bodies of men, sometimes with matching shoulder cloths. Ikat also decorates head cloths for men, worn proudly in diverse manners. Women wear ikat as tubular skirts and shawls. In Sumba, 100 ikats may enfold a dead body—the motifs of the outermost fabric identifying the deceased to ancestors in the next world. People use the best cloths possible for burials. The departed family member and ancestors directly affect well-being of the living so must receive due honors. These tenacious beliefs, more than anything else, maintain local quality control in textiles.

Ikats also are essential in bridal exchange. In the eastern islands of Indonesia (sometimes called the exchange archipelago), typically a new wife’s family gives textiles to that of her husband’s, who reciprocate with animals such as water buffalo, horses, and gold pieces of jewelry. In fact, to be marriageable, women of some islands must be appropriately skilled in the arts of creating ikat and other fabrics. Daughters in this part of Indonesia, however, hold immense value for their parents, due to the wealth they are able to bring in through their bride price.18

Ikat cloths for men are generally called selimut in Indonesian (meaning “blanket”) but hold specific names in every regional language. These wrap lower bodies in multiple styles but usually extend no longer than knee length. Men of Timor, Sumba, Flores, and elsewhere still commonly wear these garments. Many ride horses between villages clad in ikat cloths. People wear their best ikat fabrics for ceremonies. Indispensable head cloths mark men’s rank or ritual function, proclaim their masculinity, and assert their personality. In recent years, the head cloth might be the sole element of a young man’s attire marking his historical identity. Ironically, jeans and a T-shirt further accentuate a traditional cloth wrapped about the head. Head cloths consist of pounded bark, batik, a bright solid color, the finest ikat, or other esteemed types of fabric. Men in some areas fashion these in individualistic ways.

In Sumba, a wrapped head cloth characteristically features a starched, upright, protruding end. This resembles a cockscomb (of a rooster) or pompadour when worn at the front, though some wear them to one side. Terms for “cock” bear the same double entendre in Indonesian as in English (as well as in some local languages of the archipelago). Following this, a jauntily stiff, upright portion of cloth suggests a phallus. Remarkably, Elvis Presley, with his trademark hairstyle, has been a hero for decades in East Sumba. Such was his popularity that for a number of years an annual “Elvis Impersonator” contest took place on the east coast of the island. The Elvis frontal pompadour, stiffened with pomade to remain erect and distinctly masculine, incited a multi-cultural overlapping of style in Sumba—with the head cloth symbolizing similar attributes. Thus, cultural ideals of masculinity become enhanced through traditional dress, which paralleled more recent trends from afar.

For women of Sumba, ikat sarungs (lau) of finer style include other methods of complex weaving, embellished with shells and beads. Lau hada (“lau with beads and shells”), display decorative images solely through densely clustered beads and shells sewn onto black woven cloth. Lau hada contain the oldest of Sumba’s motifs, from times before people used the ikat technique. Women’s traditional cloths more often feature older indigenous motifs than do men’s (which might include the old with the new). This secures these ancient symbols and provides women with the role of safeguarding patterns of the distant past. Adornments on fine clothing further advertise a woman’s social standing or “worth” in terms of a bride price. Thus, clothing signifies much for the family of a marriageable girl

and considerable effort goes into what a daughter wears at a ritual event. This extends to gold jewelry.

Today, many Indonesians wear factory-made batik or plaid cloths throughout the islands. Ikat also issues from factories in Java and beyond but never approximates the look of handmade textiles. Most Indonesians resist wearing cheap renditions of their own traditional clothing—and always mark important

life transitions with the best of customary cloth and dress. In the words of one young women of Sumba, “[t]o not wear our finest tradition cloth at funerals or weddings would be like saying that we don’t know where we come from. Like saying that we don’t know whom our parents are. This would be a great shame upon us, no matter how modern we may think that we are. No matter if we have converted to being Christians.”

Source : buku jill forshee tentang culture and costums of indonesia