Pakaian Tradisional: October 2009

Welcome to the Pakaian Tradisional Blog designed by the bulletin group of LAB1201 Semester 1 2009/2010. This informative blog will educate you with the rich culture of traditional costumes in different areas of Indonesia.

In this project, we were exposed to 12 different traditional costumes from different regions of Indonesia. Details of each traditional costumes will be provided and of course we will showcase to you our lovely LAB1201 project students who were all nicely dressed up in their costumes during D-day! (~mereka tampan dan cantik sekali ya!~)

Padang

Padang, the capital and largest city of West Sumatra has a population of 1.2 million (2006). The culture of its people, the Minangkabau, is beautifully expressed through their traditional architecture, clothing and cuisine amongst others. Interestingly, the most distinctive feature in their traditional clothing is the regular female headdress, which, like the rumah gadang, is reminiscent of buffalo horns. On a symbolic level, this headdress highlights the import status of women in this matrilineal society as the women wear the pride of the Minangkabau. Another interesting feature is the spectacular golden headdress of the Minangkabau bride. Called a suntiang, it can weigh up to 3.5 kilograms and is made in a remote village called Pisang Kampung.

Jevon & Sherlynn

Minang

The Minangkabau are famous for its traditional dress and women’s traditional headdress. The traditional dress consists of silk robes with metallic thread woven into the material. The silk robes are made with the handlooming of silk kain songket, woven with a supplementary weft of foil thread, which creates a gleaming metallic design. As the old kain songket decay, the valuable threads are picked out and recycled. The women's traditional headdress is a turban with sharp conical points called Tikuluak-tanduak, which resemble buffalo horns.

Bryan & Fiona

Palembang

Palembang is the capital city of South Sumatra Province. It has a population of 1,441,500 and is the seventh largest city in Indonesia. Songkets, or woven fabric, of Palembang is the queen of cloth and its cultural heritage is highly values since the olden days. The fabric designs have been influenced by Palembang’s cultural heritage of Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam. Most of the songket materials have geometric and floral designs and they resemble the richness and grandeur of the fabrics that was worn in the past by the noble people. Weaving of the songkets require techniques of high accuracy. The cloth composed of a series of threads and teranyam to create a symmetrical pattern on the fabric. Red, green and yellow are the common colours found in songket fabric. Today, the songket is used mainly for weddings and grand occasions.

You Wee & Wan Yee

Yogyakarta

Geographically, Yogyakarta Special Province is situated in the Southern part of Central Java. A population of over one million people live in Yogyakarta from a total of four million spread throughout the province. Yogyakarta is well-renowned as a centre of classical Javanese fine art and culture such as batik, ballet, drama, music, poetry, and puppet shows. It is also famous as a centre for Indonesian higher education as many universities span across this island. The picture below shows the traditional wedding costume worn by the people of Yogyakarta.

Zong Tang & Lavrina

Central Java

Located in the middle of the island of Java, the Central Java province is bordered by the West Java and the East Java provinces. To the north and the south, the Central Java province faces the Java Sea and the Indian Ocean. The Borobudur temple is arguably the most famous place of interest in Central Java. It is one of the best-preserved ancient monument in Indonesia and a world renowned heritage site. The people of Central Java has a rich culture and wears the traditional costume as shown in the picture below.

Jalvin & Kesleen

Madura

Madura is one of Indonesia’s many islands, and it is located off the north-eastern coast of Java. It is administered as part of the East Java province, and is divided into four regencies, Bangkalan, Sampang, Pamekasan and Sumenep. The traditional costume worn during ceremonies or major occasions by the women of Madura Island is the ‘baju sono’. It is red or green varied with bright and vibrant colours. It consists of a belt called ‘sivet’ and a long shawl called ‘sarong bini’ which is worn crossways over the left or right shoulders. As for the men, it consists of ‘baju pesa’, ‘celana komnor’ which is loose pants, ‘odeng’, ‘selempang sarung’ and ‘sabbu kale tepa’. This costume is usually accompanied with a grandeur weapon like a big and long grass knife.

Guo Wei & Karen

Bali

The island of Bali covers an area of 5,632.86 square kilometers with a population of 3,156,392. This averages to 517 people per km ².For the traditional costumes of Bali, both men and women wear a skirt called Kamben, (the women wear an underskirt tapih) of Javanese batik and a head-cloth. Kamben is a single piece of batik reaching from the waist to a little below the knees. For the men, they wear the head-cloth called the udeng. It is a square piece of batik worn as a turban and can be tied into a remarkable array of styles. A Balinese woman is seen wearing an underskirt which is dragged on the floor in the style of silk and gold. She wears the skirt wrapped tight around the hips, which reaches to her feet. The skirt is also tied at the waist by a bright-coloured sash (bulang). She also wears the scarf (kamben tjerik) which is generally thrown over one shoulder or wound around the head to keep the hair in place. It is usually in either white, pale pink or yellow cotton which completes the costume.

Davina and Yu Zhu

South Sulawesi

Sulawesi was born out of a collision between two islands three millions years ago. As a result, the land today is 500m above sea level, with 17 active volcanoes still growing!
South Sulawesi is a province located on the south-western part of Sulawesi in Indonesia. Shaped as an orchid, South Sulawesi has approximately 8 million inhabitants. The name of the traditional costume worn by the South Sulawesi people is the baju bodo. it is a traditional costume of the Bugis people from the province. It is a colourful, transparent silk blouse with silk sarong. The colour of the blouse will indicate wearer's status. Unmarried girls will wear light red while older women will wear darker colours.

June, Li Hui & Lynette

Kalimantan Tengah

Kalimantan is the area in Borneo that belongs to Indonesia. Kalimantan in Malay means the “river of diamonds”. Kalimantan has four provinces, namely the central, southern, western and eastern areas, and is the third largest island in the world. Kalimantan is famous for its’ indigenous Dayak culture. Dayak is a collective name for over 200 ethnic subgroups of Borneo, in Sarawak (Malaysia) and Kalimantan (Indonesia). In the traditional costumes of the Dayaks, the females will wear crowns which is similar to males but smaller. They will also wear sarongs with decorations. For the guys, they will wear special tattoos and decorations such as clouded leopard fang ear plugs.

Rajesh & Nora

Jawa Barat

Jawa Barat is located on the western side of Java Island. It has an area of 34,736 km2, with an estimated population of around 38 million people. It is one of the most populous provinces of Indonesia. Its capital city is Bandung. The formal costumes for women are Kebaya, soft Batik cloth, harmony shawl, and sandals Selop.

Cai Hong & Yixian

Riau

Riau is one of the richest provinces in Indonesia, located in the centre of Sumatra Island along the Straits of Malacca. Being a province with predominantly low relief, its coastal regions are rapidly losing land to the ocean. The Riau Islands were part of Riau until 2004, when they were made into a separate province. The Kain-Kebaya is the national costume of Indonesia. Worn as a blouse-dress combination by women across Java, Sunda and Bali, the Kebaya is derived from the Arabic term Kaba meaning “clothing”. There are two main varieties of the Baju Kebaya, the first being the Kain Kebaya, a semi-transparent straighter cut and more tightly tailored blouse worn on the islands of Java and Bali. An alternative is the Baju Kurung, a plainer, loose-fitting, knee-length long-sleeved blouse worn in the more adherent Muslim areas- including former Kingdom of Johor-Riau (now Malaysia), Sumatra and parts of coastal Java.

Xin Yan & Selene

Irian Jaya

Irian Jaya is Indonesia’s largest and easternmost province and covers the western half of the world’s second largest island. It is a hot, humid island rising from the sea with some of the most impenetrable jungles in the world and yet has snowcaps covering 5,000 meters.One of the tribes of Irian Jaya is the Asmat. The homeland of the Asmat tribe consists of an estimated area of 10,000 square miles and comprises the rugged and isolated southern coast of Irian Jaya. They were previously notorious as head-hunters and cannibals but now the Asmat people are known for their exceptional skill in the art of woodcarving. The photo below shows the traditional costume for the Irian people.

Siew Ee and Janis

Personal Reflections

It was a few months back when we were having a hard time thinking which elective module we should take. We heard a lot of rumours spreading around that Bahasa Indonesia language is a definitely must take module. And true enough, we really love this module. We can learn this language at an accelerated pace and yet enjoy the interactions with our classmates and Ibus in class. This project has allowed us to learn so much about traditional costumes in Indonesia. The project D-day has been a big exposure for all of us. We truly wish to thank all the Ibus in charged of us for this project: Ibu Idrianti, Ibu Lucia and Ibu Johanna. Love ya all. =)

Ibu Johanna & Ibu Indrianti

Behind the scenes

Ibu Johanna dolling up Lavrina before the D-day concert.

Our MCs! : Kellyn & Daphne

Support team of Traditional Costume Project

Logistics and photographers: Stephanie, Janet,Chee Wei Yen, Neo Surong

Last but not least~~ the bulletin and blog in charge members:
Xiao Han & Matthew

How can we forget about the video!!.. thanks to the photographers for the video and wonderful pictures and the logistic team for assisting out the Ibus. =)

hope you had enjoyed the stay in this blog.

Bibliography:

Syofiardi Bachyul Jb (20/03/2009), The Jakarta Post, Behind the Golden Headdress

Ricklefs (1991), Taylor, Jean Gelman (2003). Indonesia: Peoples and History. Yale University Press. pp. 325

http://kcm.co.kr/bethany_eng/p_code/1541.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javanese_cuisine

http://photography.nationalgeographic.com

http://indonesiacultural.blogspot.com/2008/05/traditional-dress-of-madura.html

http://www.eastjava.com/books/madura/html/culture.html

http://www.geocities.com/bali_traditional_life/bali_costume.htm

http://www.emp.pdx.edu/htliono/sulsel.html.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dayak_people

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iban_people

http://www.indonesialogue.com/destinations/riau-archipelago-foods-riau-islands-north-sumatra.html

http://www.indonesialogue.com/best-of/mango-–-a-delicious-delight-indonesia.html