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rasa Pak X, when he had written something,. . . he felt that it was right. And because we were Javanese, including myself, we were reluctant to correct him. I used to feel very reticent about that.. . . I always say to students, “rather than have me write [the notation on the board] incorrectly and then have you use it forever afterwards, [I want you to tell me if I’m wrong].” But the late Pak X was different. He didn’t want to be corrected, so we all had to keep quiet. Once, when he was teaching Pangkur Mataram [Yogyastyle Pangkur], he told me, “you haven’t even gotten as far as Prambanan yet.”6 [ . . . ] But his own Pangkur was “not all the way to Yogya” yet, either. Mine was more Yogyanese than his! I had lived there before! (Suhartå, May 2, 1992) Even though I’m of the younger generation, I don’t always trust what my elders tell me—and you shouldn’t necessarily trust me, either. [ . . . ] Being Javanese, I always answered “nggih” [yes, sir]—but I don’t always use [what they taught me] when I teach. (Suhartå, June 27, 1992)
Susilo sums up the deference one shows to one’s elders by the term nylondhoh [ J], which he defines as “aware of [one’s] own ignorance and respectful of the experience of [one’s] elders” (1984:123). Where rasa is concerned, the main complaint younger musicians have about older musicians is that they haven’t kept up with changing tastes: what once sounded good, now merely sounds old fashioned. This came out explicitly in the following reconstructed conversation with the late Waridi, an outspoken, energetic teacher (voice, rebab, ethnomusicology) at STSI, who was in his early thirties at the time: As for båwås [a typically male vocal genre] that are nyindhèni [sung in a pesindhèn style], many of the older generation haven’t accepted that norms have changed, and that what used to be considered good has shifted. There’s nothing wrong with tastes changing, in fact, and what used to be thought of as kurang mbawani [not in a proper båwå style] might now be considered to be the way båwås should be sung. Pak Sastro [Sastro Tugiyo] said that he’s sometimes criticized for nyindhèni-ing, to which he replies, “Nonsense!” (February 2, 1991)7
This kind of generational disagreement has probably always existed. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine major changes in musical style—which, as far as we know, have always occurred—without such conflict. The eminent choreographer Tasman Ronoatmodjo underscored this tendency as it relates to Javanese dance: [Dance experts] often complain and fret about how the dance situation has declined terribly and gives cause for worry. . . . I once heard a comment made by an expert in
6. Prambanan is a town about three quarters of the way from Solo to Yogya.The idea was probably not that he was literally singing in a Prambanan style, rather that his singing still had a lot of Solonese traits in it. 7. See Waridi 2005:378–81 for more on this point.