Amongst the present day population of Indonesians residing in the Special Region of Yogyakarta (Daerah Istimewa Yogyakarta, or DIY) are individuals who not only self-identify as Javanese but who also find as meaningful the traditions of Javanese kingship that are perpetuated by the Kraton Yogyakarta. At the core of this nested cultural formation[1] are the Yogyanese nobility and the individuals who serve the institution as abdidalem (“one in the service of the royal court”)[2]. But I propose this formation also includes urban and rural residents of the DIY who are attracted to and participate in certain palace-sponsored events that fulfill traditional expectations of the “theatre-state” concept in which the king and his palace and capital serve as the exemplary center of the kingdom, or negara. Individuals who I have seen at a range of palace ceremonials struggling to catch drops of water falling from the yearly cleansing of pusaka carriages[3], attempting to catch coins tossed by a royal family member—sometimes the Sultan himself—at the opening and closing of Sekatèn[4], or battling with hundreds of others to procure a fragment of the gunungan offerings at the conclusion of a grebeg procession[5] are, I would argue, also members of a nested cultural formation that I will refer to as “Javanese traditionalists.” It is for this community of Javanese that the performative gestures I label here as “intra-negara” are realized.
I am grouping together as “intra-negara” ten palace-sponsored events that took place during my one-month visit to Yogyakarta in 2016. In order to successfully mount these and other intra-negara events on a continuing basis the palace must sustain in a state of preparedness its human artistic resources—musicians, dancers, and puppeteers. This is accomplished, at least for the palace musicians and dancers[6], by scheduling weekly practice sessions throughout the year except during the fasting month of Pasa. Eight such practice sessions took place during my month-long visit, bringing to a total of eighteen the number of events in the intra-negara domain of palace ceremonial life in which the palace gamelans play a role. Before providing descriptions of the actual events at the core of this domain and the preparations for them, I will present an overview of the interacting spatial, temporal, material, human, and artistic facets of their realization that bind them together as a coherent domain of palace ceremonial life.
Intra-negara events are, in general, temporally punctual with the timing of their realization regulated by either the 35-day selapan cycle or the Javanese/Muslim lunar year[7]. Events that mark one-time transitions in the lives of the Sultan and his family (coronations, circumcisions, weddings, funerals) are not punctual but are scheduled with these two calendrical systems, and any astrologically propitious or disadvantageous days in or between them, in mind. If the Sultan and/or his immediate family members are the focus of a ceremony, the event will most likely take place in the bangsal Kencana-Prabayeksa ceremonial complex[8]. Major ceremonies that symbolically link the Sultan to the negara-at-large move along the north-south ceremonial axis with Sitihinggil Lor and the Mesjid Ageng serving as the most prominent locations of spectacle, making them more open to Javanese traditionalists who wish to participate. Abdidalem niyaga (palace musicians) perform on these occasions, sometimes in collaboration with dancers trained at select academies perpetuating the palace dance tradition or with puppeteers associated with Yayasan Habirandha Ngayogyakarta, a private organization training dhalang (puppeteers) in the style of wayang kulit (shadow puppet theatre) associated with the Kraton Yogyakarta. Ceremonies and rehearsals in the intra-negara domain of palace life are the only settings in which the pusaka archaic gamelans are employed, along with the pusaka and several other of the oldest common practice sets belonging to the palace.
