Ronggeng Focus Group Discussions - Musicians

Ronggeng Revival Admin
Jul 23, 2022
2 min read

The objective of the Focus Group Discussion is to gather feedback from practitioners who have had engagement with Ronggeng as a social event or art dance, and/or cultural activists who are involved in matters of heritage and culture. The invitees were placed in groups and had a facilitator to guide them as they wrote their perspective in post-its and pasted it on mahjong papers. The invitees were responding to some general questions and after each respective question, the curator was tasked to initiate a dialogue based on what was written. The 2-hours sessions were conducted in both English and Malay simultaneously.

The questions included:

(1) In your perspective and lived experience, what is Ronggeng?

(2) What do you think is the perception of the community about Ronggeng?

(3) In your perspective, how important is it to recognise Ronggeng as an Intangible Cultural Heritage?

We provide a summary of the four Focus Group Discussions below:

Focus Group Discussion 2: Musicians (9 Feb 22)

In this discussion, most have agreed that Ronggeng is a community and social event that brings people together. There is acknowledgement that those who practiced Ronggeng are trained artists, regardless the place in which their art is practiced. Ronggeng 4was recognized as an opportunity for people to be exposed and appreciate live traditional Malay music. The term also brought them to remember a care-free environment of the kampung days where the Malay communities welcomed or accepted the cultural aspects of Ronggeng.

The musicians of the current industry talked about the original ensemble of traditional Malay music instruments, which includes the rebana, rebab and accordion. They also expressed that the Ronggeng music particularly, is made to be appreciated live. Without it, the dance aspect would be plain or simply boring. Collectively, they also believed that dance and music in general should always exist together when it comes to a performative setting.

There also came concerns that Ronggeng would always come with negative connotations and deemed as a practice that rarely brings any form of benefit to the community in general. Ronggeng as a dance genre, has been viewed as a social dance which holds a lot of promiscuous contexts.

Questions that were raised from this discussion revolves around the education to the younger generation regarding the context of what Ronggeng is, with the hopes that this would encourage an interest among the community on the diversities of art practices in Ronggeng itself.