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This essay is based on research done in Central Java in 1990-91 and then, briefly, in 1993 during which I was researching the role of the female gender player in the musical accompaniment of wayang or shadow puppet theatre. A gender is a metallophone with 14 keys suspended over pitched resonators which is thought, by some, to be necessary to the performance of a wayang. The gender is played continuously, accompanying the dhalang or puppeteer especially during narration or recitation when there is no other musical accompaniment.
I would like to begin with a couple of paragraphs reconstructed from my field notes written after a wayang performance which I attended in Surakarta in June of 1991.
The booming, heavily miked sound of the dhalang Ki Manteb's voice and the barely audible, light tinkling of the distant, bronze gamelan accompanied us as I walked up the sloping street lined with small, dimly lit stalls selling hand-packaged snacks and cigarettes. We reached the crest and I felt a surge of excitement as the crowd amongst which we had been walking poured into the mass of people encircling the tiny, at least from our raised and distant perspective, covered area, under which the wayang screen and the performers were sheltered. I tried to approach the performance area but after some futile jostling and pushing amongst the largely young, unyielding male audience, I decided to content myself with standing in the crowd, listening. I thought to myself that it would be interesting to experience the sound of a wayang without the visuals as just recently Bapak Naryacarita, a dhalang., had told me that he thought sound was more important than the sight in wayang performance despite the current trend for dhalang to concentrate on developing impressive sabetan or puppet movements and to spend more than half of their performance time doing battle scenes in which they could show off their manipulation skills at the expense of demonstrating their command over language and music (Naryacarita, unrecorded conversation: 5 April 1991).
I closed my eyes and tried to listen, to experience the performance in the way, in which, according to Pak Narya, people used to appreciate wayang. Although the sound of the dhalanrfs voice was very loud, his words were...