Indonesian culture
The culture of Indonesia is the result of the mixture of different civilizations. Being today an Islamic country, India's indigenous beliefs, Hinduism and Buddhism exerted a profound influence and have left a significant imprint on the country's architecture and sculpture. The islands have also been influenced by Polynesian and Southeast Asian cultures, as well as by the Chinese and Dutch. The Arab influence began to gain more importance from the 13th century, especially through the teachings of Islam.
There are about 20 major libraries in Indonesia, mostly located in the cities of Bandung, Bogor, Jakarta and Yogyakarta. In Jakarta are the national archives and the National Museum Library (360,000 volumes), as well as the National Library (750,000 volumes), which houses several special collections. The Bali Museum is located in Denpasar.
Religion and official and spoken languages
The Indonesian Constitution guarantees religion, as long as it is one of the five official religions[citation needed] (Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, Hinduism) and under the creed of Pancasila among other things, it defends equally and gives the same treatment to all beliefs.[citation needed]
Islam in its different manifestations is the faith of approximately 88% of the population. Among the other religious groups, the presence of more than 17 million Christians, mainly Protestants, and more than 1.5 million Buddhists, the majority of Chinese origin, can be noted. Hinduism, once of great importance, is confined to the island of Bali and some remote point in eastern Java.
Islam in Indonesia is similar to Islam in Arab countries. Indonesians are an extremely open and peaceful people, with a very strong Hindu and Buddhist foundation for which Islam was embraced five centuries ago.
In general, there is respect and tolerance among those who profess different religions, although at specific times, always politically motivated, there have been clashes between Muslims and Christians (Central Celebes, Moluccas).
The islands of Java and Sumatra are dominated by Islam, home to almost 200 million people. Bali, for its part, is the last place where Hinduism is practiced, and in Eastern Indonesia (Flores, Timor, Moluccas, North Sulawesi) we find Christianity (Catholics and Protestants); between 15 and 20 million people live in these provinces.
More than 100 languages are spoken in Indonesia, but the official and most widely spoken language is Bahasa Indonesia. Of Malay origin, it was for a long time the language of the merchants of the coastal cities, and has elements of Chinese, Indian, Dutch and English.
Education
Under Indonesian law, education is compulsory from the age of six. The country's education system follows the Dutch system with a secondary education program divided into mathematics, language and economics. Approximately 74% of Indonesians aged 15 and over are literate.
In the late 1980s, 26.7 million Indonesian children attended public primary schools and more than 8.9 million students enrolled in secondary schools. In addition, more than 1.4 million Indonesian students attended teacher training colleges.
In the late 1980s, almost 1.2 million students attended institutions of higher education each year. The institutions with the largest number of students are the University of Indonesia (1950) in Jakarta, Pajajaran State University (1957) in Bandung and Gajah Mada University (1949) in Yogyakarta. For the academic year of 2008/2009, the Ministry of National Education will grant 1000 people to participate in Regular Scholarship, and Short Course (short course). The programs will be awarded by the Government of the Republic of Indonesia for foreign students who are interested in studying art, traditional dance, traditional music, Indonesian language (Bahasa Indonesia) and Indonesian dialects at 54 universities and schools in Indonesia.
Media
In the late 1980s, more than 890,000 telephones were in operation in Indonesia. The state broadcaster, Radio Republic Indonesia, operates 49 stations reaching some 32.8 million listeners.
A state-controlled television broadcasting system, which began operating in 1962, is estimated to reach 7.1 million viewers; Private commercial television broadcasting began in 1989.
Indonesia's leading mass-circulation newspapers are The Jakarta Post, Kompas, Pos Kota and Berita Buana, and the critical magazine Tempo, all published in Jakarta.
Music
Indonesia's cultural archipelago encompasses 18,000 islands, each with its own unique history and distinct cultural and artistic temperaments. This diversity in the moral fiber of the many islands has given birth to hundreds of different forms of music, which are often accompanied by dance and drama. To know more about the music and dance in Indonesia, it is important to understand the various cultural influences that have ultimately shaped the country. Although in its origins it was influenced by the musical systems of China, India and Indochina, its evolution is independent and totally differentiated. Indonesian music has no meaning apart from poetry or dance and is generally magical and religious in nature, taking forms of theatrical performance. The execution unit is the gamelan, an orchestra made up of various instruments according to the different varieties. Indonesian music comprises three sectors: Java, Bali and Outer Islands.
The music of Java, Sumatra, Bali, Flores and other islands has fascinated many. The "burst" of traditional music in the course of Indonesian popular music and music They were based on the form of dance music that has been popular since the mid-1970s. The modern Qasidah, is a form of religious poetry accompanied by chants and percussion and is very popular with 'pop' audiences. Dancing in Indonesia is performed as in most of the performing arts of the East. Dance in Indonesia is believed to have started as a form of religious worship. Today, although modern influences continue to creep in, the old traditions of dance and drama are still well guarded. They are being preserved by many government organizations or supervised art academies and dance schools, apart from those that thrive in the courts. In past times these musical manifestations were performed in the royal courts to entertain, however, now these dances have reached broad popular strata of the courts included, and have incorporated a more spontaneous form of expression.
Java: Javanese music knows two main tuning systems, the slendro (pentatonic) and the pelog (heptatonic); all current ones derive from them. To each tuning system corresponds a system of theatrical representation based on performances with actors or puppets and, depending on the style, on cycles of the Ramayana and Mahabaratha or on native Javanese cycles. Javanese instruments include the gambang kayu, a kind of xylophone, the bonag panerus, made up of a double row of tubes, the ageng, a type of gong, etc. Each of them has a defined function within the gamelan and in relation to the chosen style and scale. Singing is very important, since poetry is always sung and not recited. There are a wide variety of vowel forms and meters. The number of verses, their meter and the vowel at the end of the verse are strictly prescribed. One variety of gamelan is the kowangan of the mountain herdsmen, which uses stringed instruments, drums, and bamboo instruments.
Bali: The Bali musical system is, in terms of instrumentation and tuning systems, similar to Javanese, but from the point of view of character it is fundamentally different. The basis of Balinese music is given by strong dynamic and tempo contrasts, a great spectacularity and an ornamental richness that contrasts with the normative severity of Javanese music. The original difference is that while the music of Java was court music, or at least favored by the bussy. Modernly, other western musicians have approached the music of Bali.
Outer islands. They are influenced by music from Java and Bali as well as from non-Indonesian cultures. The Balinese influence is most important in the Sunda Islands, especially Lombok. The Celebes Islands have indigenous heroic songs accompanied by the keso-keso, a kind of lute. Borneo belongs to the area of Javanese influence, except in the interior, where there are native songs and an interesting mouth organ, called kledi, originally from Indochina. On the contrary, the island of Sumatra mixes the purely Indonesian influence with that of the Islamic world. The music of Sumatra shows Arabic and even Persian influences, with some instrumental specialties such as the bangsi, a kind of flute, the serunai, a kind of oboe, and the gambus, a seven-stringed lute.