At the center of traditional Javanese statecraft is the ruler, his court, and his capital (negara); it should come as no surprise that some ceremonial effort by the Kraton Yogyakarta be focused on the Sultan himself. A regularly recurring ceremony marking and celebrating the birthdate of the reigning Sultan of Yogyakarta is called uyon-uyon Hadiluhung, and on Monday evening December 19, 2016, I attended, along with about two dozen other observers, an iteration of it. This ceremonial gesture is, in essence, a concert of Yogyanese-style gamelan music that I interpret is meant to stand as a metaphor for the orderly, civilized perfection of the Sultan and the negara.[1]
“Uyon-uyon Hadiluhung” (“exquisite gamelan music concert”)[2], is enacted every thirty-five days on the tingalan dalem, the sultan’s weton in the distinctively Javanese selapan cycle (see The Temporal Dimension of Kingship appendix). The tingalan dalem of the Tenth Sultan is Selasa-Wage, and throughout his reign, except when Selasa-Wage falls in the fasting month of Pasa (during which gamelan performance in the palace is prohibited), an uyon-uyon Hadiluhung is presented to mark the birth of the Sultan in this temporal cycle. Although Hadiluhung takes place every fifth Monday night, because the Javanese day begins at sunset, Monday night is viewed by the Javanese as being the evening (malam) of Selasa (Tuesday).
Uyon-uyon Hadiluhung takes place in bangsal Kasatriyan, which is located at the eastern end of the residential axis of the palace (see The Spatial Dimension of Kingship appendix). In times past, the Kasatriyan area was the residence of the Crown Prince, although it no longer serves in this capacity. The elegant pavilion at its center has long been incorporated into royal family wedding ceremonies, which were and still are centered in the bangsal Kencana-Prabayeksa ceremonial complex at the heart of the palace’s symbolic layout. Today, and possibly as far back as the 1940s[3], the Kasatriyan area has served as the home of the palace’s performing arts office (Kawedana Hageng Punakawan Kridhamardawa) and its pendhapa has been where realizations of uyon-uyon Hadiluhung have taken place and where palace musicians (abdidalem niyaga) and dancers rehearse for upcoming palace events. Although by day the Kasatriyan area of the palace is inundated with tourists, at night, when the palace is closed to the public and when uyon-uyon Hadiluhung takes place, the traditional ambiance of this area as part of the residential axis of the palace’s symbolic layout is palpable.
The music that is the ceremony itself is realized on a pair of palace common-practice gamelans, one tuned to laras sléndro, the other to laras pélog. There are five such pairs of gamelan in the palace’s holdings that are of sufficient age, are complete in their instrumentation, carry associations with past Sultans, and are considered at least kagungan dalem if not pusaka —qualifications necessary for gamelans to be viewed as being worthy of inclusion in this ceremony celebrating the Sultan.[4] These five pairs are used in rotation (though not a strict one) for Hadiluhung, one pair set up at the south end of bangsal Kasatriyan for the period of a Javanese lunar year before being replaced by another pair of suitable gamelans.[5] Each of these 10 gamelans has its own distinctive personality that was introduced in the Kraton Yogyakarta Gamelans section of this site. On December 19, 2016, the gamelan sléndro K.K. Harjanegara and the gamelan pélog K.K. Harjamulya were located in bangsal Kasatriyan and sounded for uyon-uyon Hadiluhung, contributing their individual caches of cultural meaning to the other meaning-laden interacting parameters in play at the moment to produce an efficacious event.
The key human resource involved in the realization of an uyon-uyon Hadiluhung is the musicians through whose efforts the voices of the gamelans being used are made audible and the structured patterns of ephemeral sounds that give form to the ceremony are created. Only abdidalem musicians, both instrumentalists (niyaga) and vocalists (pesindhen if female and lebdoswara if male), participate in the Hadiluhung ceremony (see the Palace Musicians appendix). It is they who know the repertoire and the treatments of it that are associated with the musical style of the Kraton Yogyakarta. It is they who have committed some significant portion of their lives to serving the Sultan and who understand the significance of Hadiluhung within the larger project of Javanese kingship as it has come down to the present day.
For many palace ceremonies, including uyon-uyon Hadiluhung, the performing arts play a primary role beyond entertainment. More than five weeks prior to a scheduled Hadiluhung ceremony a committee of Kridhamardawa administrators and musicians sets the repertoire for the upcoming iteration of the event. Through their choice of repertoire (with its myriad associations within the palace tradition between specific gendhing and other gendhing, specific court dances or dance genres, puppet theatre genres, ceremonies, and individuals) and the performance practice treatment packages applied by the musicians while realizing that repertoire in live performance, sound-structures (realized musical repertoire items) are created that communicate something more than musical artistry alone.
By putting in relation to one another a number of distinctive sound-structures each with their own musical and/or extra-musical associations, a form is created from ephemeral materials in the time-space of the ceremony. In its totality, the resulting sonic order of a realization of the uyon-uyon Hadiluhung ceremony, I would suggest, stands as a metaphor for the order and harmony of the macrocosm as conceived in traditional Javanese statecraft. That this is done on a day associated with the birth of the living Sultan, the individual around whom the traditional negara is conceived, seems to be a most appropriate ceremonial gesture for the palace to enact.
What are these sound-structures that constitute the building blocks of the larger ceremonial form? Some are gendhing that, in the palace context, are directly associated with the Sultan himself and that will be referred to here as his “signature gendhing.” These are sounded when the Sultan arrives and departs from ceremonies, or at the beginning and end of ceremonies celebrating the Sultan whether or not he is present. Expansive, bi-sectional gendhing introduced and guided by the player of the bonang barung and played soran (in the loud style) is a second identifiable sound-structure the playing of which is associated with the royal courts of Java.
Lampah bedhayan – a multi-piece sequence of gendhing and vocal pieces arranged and treated to accompany a bedhaya or srimpi, two ceremonial palace dance forms performed by ensembles of female dancers — constitutes yet another distinctive sound-structure incorporated into Hadiluhung ceremonies (for which it is realized without the dancers). Solo, unaccompanied singing by a lebdoswara (male singer) of a tembang (classical song) in a florid, ornate style is a sound-structure inserted into Hadiluhung ceremonies that stands in stark contrast to all the other ones involving gamelan performance. There are also several closely related but nonetheless distinct sound-structures comprised of two or more gendhing strung together to form a medley.
The interacting details of gamelan performance practice give rise to distinctions between these medley sound-structures: instrumentation used (soran or lirehan); tempo treatment (irama), drumming styles (kendhangan) incorporated, especially in terms of whether or not kendhangan batangan is used; and the degree to which vocal or vocal-derived pieces (tembang and pathetan) are introduced into the medley. These medley structures differ from one another in their general character associations — some carry a greater association with historical practices of the palace, others with practices that have evolved more recently outside of the palace context.
In addition to the various sound-structures outlined above, another organizational tool used in creating the form and balance of a Hadiluhung program relates to the fact that two gamelans are available for the ceremony, one set tuned to laras sléndro and the other to laras pélog. Each successive gamelan item in a program will be performed in the contrasting laras of its previous item. For a closer look at and listen to a single realization of the Hadiluhung ceremony see the appendix Uyon-uyon Hadiluhung, November 26, 1982. It also features a more detailed musical analysis of the sound-structure building blocks themselves and how they are organized in relation to one another to give rise to the characteristic form of this ceremony.
Finally, the intended “audience” of an uyon-uyon Hadiluhung needs to be explored and understood in relation to other interacting parameters of this event. In fact, no live audience is expected or necessary for this ceremony, not even the Sultan himself on whose weton the ceremony is held. From the standpoint of an institution whose stated mission is to preserve Javanese cultural heritage, it is simply unthinkable to not acknowledge the re-occurrence of the tingalan dalem (the weton of the Sultan) in the cyclical flow of time that contributes so fundamentally to the conception of order and harmony in traditional Javanese thought. The small audience that was present in bangsal Kasatriyan on December 19, 2016, and consisted of local and foreign gamelan aficionados (myself including) with personal connections to abdidalem niyaga, was most definitely not the intended audience of the ceremony. However, it could be argued that, at least in part, there was a nebulous, disembodied audience of Yogyanese/Javanese traditionalists that were able to experience this ceremony as it unfolded. Uyon-uyon Hadiluhung are broadcast live over the Yogyakarta branch of the national radio station Radio Republik Indonesia (RRI).[6] Just how many Yogyanese traditionalists tune in for a given broadcast cannot be determined, but the option to do so is available to such individuals in the Yogyakarta region to make of it what they will.
Marking the tingalan dalem of the ruling Sultan of Yogyakarta with a ceremonial gesture of an artistic nature is a long-standing practice of the Kraton Yogyakarta.[7] The necessity to do so precedes the era of radio broadcasting, and uyon-uyon Hadiluhung continues to be held even if it is not broadcast.[8]
Though the content and structure of this ceremony has changed over time, its perpetuation appears to be considered by the palace community as essential to the contemporary practice of kingship in Java and to anyone who finds meaning in this practice. Gamelans play a fundamental role in the realization of this ceremony not only because it is upon them that the palace musicians realize the sound-structures that articulate the form of the ceremony. The Kraton Yogyakarta-specific cultural baggage possessed by all of the appropriate gamelans used for this ceremony also enhance the interaction of the myriad agents and semiotic signs that are at play during a realization of uyon-uyon Hadiluhung.
