Category: Americas and Eurasia and Africa

On 20 October 2024 Prabowo Subianto was inaugurated as Indonesia’s 8th President.

That afternoon his predecessor, Joko Widodo  – generally known as “Jokowi” – flew out of Jakarta, to return to his Central Javanese home city of Surakata – generally known as “Solo”.

Before his two terms as President (2014-2024) Jokowi was Jakarta’s governor for two years.

From 2005 to  2012 he was Solo’s very popular mayor; he is still hugely popular there.

On the afternoon and evening of 20.10.2024 much of Solo’s population lined its main thoroughfare to bid him “welcome home” and “thank you”.

It was the largest political event I have ever witnessed…and the happiest.

Although its “proper” name is Surakarta, most people refer to this pleasant city in Central Java by its nickname: Solo.

Every Sunday morning the city’s main thoroughfare – Jalan Slamet Riyadi – is closed to motorised traffic, so residents can enjoy “various leisure activities”.

These include dancing and exercising in the street, plus a nicely informal market that stretches long and thin, along the roadside edge of the footpaths.

…there were “artistic” performances of a more globally-familiar, less-refined kind.

I took the photo during a wayang wong performance in Yogyakarta’s Kraton – the Sultan‘s palace complex.

Yogyakarta, in south-central Java, is the only Indonesian region where the local monarch (its Sultan) is thereby the actual regional head of government.

Yogyakarta’s “royal” form of wayang wong – aka wayang orang, which literally translates as “human wayang” or “human puppet” – has a long history, and is highly refined/stylised.

Its “characters” are played by human dancers/actors, but their performance style is more than slightly akin to that of the puppets they have supplanted.