Balinese Shadow Puppetry and Gamelan Orchestra: the Height of Cultural Genius

Andy Hill

Common reasons for travelling include experiencing exotic and colorful customs and the prospect of gaining a greater or different kind of pleasure than one is afforded at home. For these reasons we leave our homes and venture to other places.

However, rarely is one able to gain that most precious and illuminating of travelling experiences: witnessing a people come together to express a unique, shared, cultural genius.

Wayang puppets and gamelan orchestra

I was recently afforded an opportunity to witness a Balinese shadow puppet show and gamelan orchestra performance in Ubud during a holiday celebration and was overwhelmed by the realization that I was experiencing a culture at the height of its genius.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands of people packed into a street minutes away from my apartment. A large, covered stage was set up in the street. On it were assembled several-dozen members of a gamelan orchestra and singers. The side of the stage facing the crowd was walled with a large screen lit from behind.

Eventually, after perhaps an hour of a mysterious, sometimes frantic and sometimes lilting gamelan performance, silhouetted figures began dancing across the screen and initiated a retelling of Bali’s version of the Ramayana, the myth which for centuries has been the basis of Balinese culture.

Children sat transfixed and grandparents smiled nostalgically as the fanciful characters acted out different scenes from the epic story.

Although the shadow puppet show and gamelan orchestra concert had been performed countless times across Bali throughout the centuries, and no doubt that many in the audience had seen it hundreds of times, it was apparent to me that I was witnessing something greater than a mere performance.

I found myself in the presence of that rarest treasure which we humans bestow on one another: the actuation of cultural genius, a cooperative creation of existential meaning executed with unspeakable finesse and distilled through generations; yet as fresh and as marvelous as a dewdrop in the moonlight.

The shadow play went on for hours through the night. It was with a gracious step that I walked back to my apartment in the early morning, my appreciation not just for Balinese culture having been expanded exponentially, but for our species as a whole.

We really are marvelous creatures.