Entertainment

From Joseph and Darius
1. Are their any resorts?
2. What are popular types of performances?

From LaDorria and Jackie
1. What kind of music is popular?

ANSWER: Indonesia is the biggest archipelago in the world, which means a large group of islands. In fact there are over 13,000 islands that make up Indonesia but only about 1500 have names and the majority of them are uninhabited and unexplored. So of course there are a lot of beaches which means lots of resorts. One of the most popular Indonesian destinations is Bali which is an island in the west part of the Lesser Sunda Islands. Bali is renowned for its highly developed arts, including dance, sculpture, painting, leather, metalworking and music. My husband likes to play golf so this is a great place to go for the weekend.

In Jakarta there are beaches too. Close by Merdeka Square there is the Taman Impian Jaya Ancol or simply put Ancol Dreamland. It sits on Jakarta Bay and offers different things to do like SeaWorld, Fantasy World which is an amusement park, Atlantis Water Adventure which is a water park and Marina Beach (see photo) which serves as an entrance to Jakarta from the Thousand Islands. Thousand Islands or Pulau Seribu (poo-l-ow see-ree-boo), is a group of small islands scattered in Jakarta Bay, actually there's only about 125 of them and you can reach them by speedboat or ferry. Several islands have been developed as tourist resorts or for recreational purposes, where there are bird and marine sanctuaries.

Indonesia has performances siimilar to the U.S. such as concerts, movies, and recitals but one area that is unique to Indonesia is called Wayang Kulit (wah-young koo-leet) or shadow puppets. Wayang means theater and Kulit means skin referring to the leather that the puppets are constructed out of. The puppets are very ornate and well crafted and the performance is done behind a sheer cloth with a light behind it thus creating shadows. They tell romantic tales or old Indian classics with a narrator called the Dalang and he is accompanied by a traditional orchestra.Normally the story ends with good overcoming evil.

It seems no matter where I go in Asia, their music is our music. They like pop, rock, heavy metal, rap, and country music so normally this is what I hear when I'm riding in a taxi. The Western world definitely makes an impact on what is trendy throughout the world so I suppose it's normal for me to hear Justin Timberlake and Madonna anywhere I go. Indonesia does have their own unique music, and even though most of us will never hear it, it's very popular here. It's called Gamelan (gum-mee-lahn) and it's probably the defining sound of Indonesia. For the Javanese, it's the music of royalty; for the people in Bali, it's played for the Gods. The orchestra itself takes on a variety of forms featuring perhaps 80 different gongs, a few drums and a couple of xylophones to provide melody along with flutes and vocals. At times the sound seems chaotic and random and Gamelan may not be to everyone's taste, the sound is too harsh, too alien, the tempo changes too sudden. So there is a lot of music in Indonesia, it's just up to you what you want to listen to.





This is just a part of shadow puppet performance, most are very long and not in English, or if they are, their topics are little a sensitive for 6th graders.