TEMPO.CO, Bali - I Made Taro, 74, watches as Balinese children play at a school yard. These children are members of the Kukuruyuk Studio, quite famous in Bali. Taro has trained almost 5,000 children at Kukuruyuk, which he founded in 1979. One alumni is photographer I Gusti Ngurah Agung Bayu Sastra Nagari, 27.
"If I never joined this studio, I wouldn't have known what Bali's traditional games look like," he told Tempo.
Taro traced Kukuruyuk's beginnings to 1973. At the time, he was teaching anthropology at a high school in Denpasar. One afternoon he spotted three children near his home on Jalan Kartini, Denpasar, loitering around for having nothing to do.
"They should be playing or singing," he thought to himself. So Taro invited them to do just that. He also told them stories, made them kites and gave them toys.
It was the beginning of a weekly ritual. Every Saturday at sunset, Taro would invite children in his neighborhood to gather at his living quarters. The kids were between four and 10 years old. Eventually, there were eight of them who came on a regular basis. They played and listened to Taro's stories at his one-room residence. His place became known as 'The House of Fairy Tales'.
After some time, a relative lent a helping hand by allowing a hall adjacent to the Bali Museum to be used for the activities. Taro decided to try to build his wards' characters through games he designed himself.
Taro set forth three prerequisites for children who wanted to come and join in on the fun. They had to have taken a bath, had their meal and done their homework. This worked so well that one mother 'entrusted' him with another request.
"She complained that her child did not want to wear his underwear and asked me to help," he recalled. He added one more prerequisite: children who come to play had to wear their underwear.
One day, a child burst out, "Why don't you open a studio?". This father of four considered the proposal seriously. That question appeared to have triggered the birth of the Kukuruyuk Studio in 1979. The name 'kukuruyuk' was chosen because it is the word in Indonesian for the cock's morning crow.
"The cock's crowing brings new hope for a blessed day," Taro said. In the beginning, Kukuruyuk had some 15 young members.
To promote traditional Balinese games, Taro proposed to Denpasar’s TVRI television station to broadcast the studio's activities as a program. "The proposition was pretty unusual," he said. "Fortunately it received a good response." The first broadcast took place on June 15, 1979. They performed an operetta titled Kaki Cubling. The story was taken from a Bali folktale about a friendship between a man and a monkey.
To promote traditional games, Taro inserted games between the scenes of the play. The studio got Rp10,000 for each performance. Taro used the money to pay for costumes, food and other expenditures.
After the Kaki Cubling broadcast, Kukuruyuk Studio became more popular. Taro received requests for more performances. The operettas they performed, such as Nanang Cangklong and Tuwung Kuning, were based on folktales.
"Some people called to tell me the performances made them remember their childhood," he said.
The schoolmaster of the high school where Made was teaching took an interest in the studio. He asked Taro to teach students at the school. That was when the studio moved its operational base from the museum to the school.
For ideas, Taro visited libraries and bookstores in search of references to other folktales and folk games. He went to elders in various corners of Bali. "From these trips I came to know that in the past children played while singing folk songs," he said.
Taro discovered many games that were fading away. One of them is kelik-kelikan, where one child plays the crow, chasing other children who play kekelik birds that steal water. Another is magandong sambuk, in which players compete in carrying their friends on their backs. There is also marebut bucu, in which five players struggle to reach the four bucu, or columns, located at the four corners of a watilan customary meeting hall.
Taro has also created 12 games of his own. All are based on folktales. So, too, has he recorded the results of his research. There are 200 traditional games and 225 folk songs; he composed 100 of those songs himself. Balai Pustaka has published his five books on children's games. In 2010, the then schoolmaster at Dauh Elementary School in Denpasar, Cokorda Istri Oka, asked Taro to take care of the extracurricular activities for the pupils in the school, a task he still carries. This teacher who loves children wholeheartedly also helps out with extracurricular activities at the Saraswati and Udayana Elementary schools in Denpasar and at the Pandu Batu Bulan Elementary school in Gianyar.
Although Taro is still full of energy, he realizes he is now old. He therefore asked his eldest son, Gede Tarmaja, 45, to help him as part of the regeneration program in the Kukuruyuk Studio.
SADIKA HAMID | SYARI FANI
