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Monday, October 09, 2006
Gang Reyog No.8
by Adi Baskoro
 | Adi Baskoro
Mbah Tumpo is busy examining the tire of a motorbike. He turns the inner tube through his hands over and over. From time to time, he plunges the tire into water to asses whether it is indeed punctured as he presumes it to be. "Yo ngene mas kerjane Mbah Tumpo" (Ya, that's what Mbah Tumpo's work is like, Mas), says Kuswanto, a young man with long rusty-yellow hair who is a kendang (drum) player and a son of Mbah Tumpo.
Mbah Tumpo's hands are never still. every day he's doing something- tinkering ata the repair shop, or making naga (serpent) masks and barongan (masks and bodies of mythical beings) Mbah Tumpo is an elder from the Reog Singo Mangku Jaya Group. ( Reog is Javanese masked folk dance, using a giant mask of peacock feathers, a range of hobby-horse dancers and a large traple of male performers). If there's no invitation to perform, Mbah Tumpo ekes out a living working in his repair shop, patching tires near the entrance of Gang Reog (reog lane) in the city of Surabaya.
There is an eerie and ill-fated quality in the face of this white-bearded and mustached man. When he speaks, his eyes are sharp and searching. Although his body is thin, Mbah Tumpo appears strong and healthy at sixty eight years of age. An akar bahar bracelet ( a kind of amulet made of black coral) is coiled around his right wrist. He is often seen dressed in black. Sometimes his chest is bare. This old man is rarely known to bathe, and he's a champion at reading people thoughts; he posseses a magical expertise, which he uses for the protection of Reog Singo Mangku Jaya.
When there's Reog festival, it is Mbah Tumpo's task to provide a pagar gaib (magical protective fence). "This is so that the Reog group is safe from mischief by out side groups," explains Sugiono, the leader of Reog Singo Mangku Jaya.
"What kind of mischief?" I ask.
"At a Reog festival in Jember, we were marching across the alun-alun, and the gamelan instruments and gong wouldn't make a sound. At the moment we were supposed to perform, suddenly a storm came up, with wind and heavy rain."
Another of Mbah Tumpo's responsibilities is a pawang (magical expert) in the Kuda Lumping performance, in which men us flat hobby-horses of woven people are entered' by jinm they go into trance and lose conscousness. It's at theses time that extraordinary things take place, such as people eating broken glass or cobras; cracking open coconuts with their mouths; or being whipped just for the show. The Kuda Lumping is pat of the Reog performance. During the Reog Grebek Suro in Ponorogo in 2000, Mbah Tumpo perfomed his specialty-extinguishing fire with his mouth.
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Gang Reog is never quiet. Traffic and pedestrians pass through all day long. Groups of bare-chested youths, with tattoed arms and backs, sti along curbs. Groups of women rest along the edges of the gang, taking a few moments to fan away the heat of the Surabaya air.
To the side of the gang's entrance stands a reog statue, the standing figure represents a bearded Warog dancer and Dadak Merak, a giant figure somewhat similar tho the Balinese barong but made with masses of peacock feathers ( "merak" means "peacock). People often call this lane "Gang Reog".
Gang Reog is in Gubeng Kertajaya Raya, in the heart of Surabaya. The city is the second largest in Indonesia. Surabaya is also renowned for frequent flood and hot climate. When it rains, almost the entire city gets flooded, including the district of Kertajaya. Until it was repaired, the road in front of the Reog member's house was often swilling with floodwater.
On the right-hand side, about twenty meters from the entrance to the gang, are two houses squashed together under one address. This is No. 8, where the families of the members of Reog Singo Mangku Jaya live. To the passer-by, it looks stifling, over-crowded, noisy and hot. No. 8 measures eleven by twenty one meters and constitutes the dwelling of twenty-five families; the total number of inhabitants is over a hundred people.
The houses have been divided into sixteen tiny compartments, each one measuring the three-and-a-half by four meters, and each housing one or two families. Mbah Tumpo's compartment, where he live with his wife and three children, is only two by four-and-a-half meters, and part of root is used for living space.
(to be continued...)
translated from Indonesia by Latitudes Magazine | September 2004
Posted at 11:33 am by akubaskoro
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