By Eloni Porcher, Communications and International Affairs
The word I would use to describe how I felt when we first arrived to Sanur Beach is exhausted. We had just finished a visit to rice fields and after three hours of traveling through winding roads and mountainous terrain of south Bali, the only thing I wanted to do was crawl into bed and be swept away into dreams of floating in the oceans of sun kissed beaches.
Besides being physically spent, at this point in the dialogue I was also beginning to feel mentally drained. Between academic sessions, lectures and various forms of forced social interaction at any given day of the week, I found myself seeking sleep to escape the constant buzz of chatter and the hum of engines.
The sound of music in the distance interrupted my sleep pursuit. The steady beat of a conga, the blare of a horn playing the steady rhythms from home beckoned me to follow them. I first wandered to the beach in search of the source of the music, where I found a stream of kites dancing in the wind.
I first noticed during our week of travel in Bali, that many people, and mostly locals, fly kites. On bus rides, I spotted flurries of red dotting the skyline or lurking beneath the trees. Kite flying, similar to cultures in the Middle East, revere the activity as a spiritual practice. The Balinese believe the god Indra flew kites during his leisure time and taught cattle herders how to fly them. The practice, ( flying and making the kites) is taught in villages and passed down from generation to generation- and is considered a community activity.
I stood in the sand watching the kites surf gusts of wind and gentle breezes, while the music playing in the background still summoned me. Reluctantly, I left the beach, in search of the sounds that had been passed down to me- rhythms that I danced to at birthday parties, and more recently sought out with friends.
It felt odd to hear bachata rhythms (songs from Prince Royce’s most recent album) blaring at the Balinese resort. It was in stark contrast to the calm and steady bell dings and drum beats of the music that hotels normally played.
Since I only heard Bachata and Salsa songs playing, I knew that people were dancing. (Initially I thought I had found a group of Latinx residents or tourists in Bali, and was excited to meet them). It made me wonder in what ways Latin music and dance had traveled to an island thousands of miles away- and for what reasons people connected to the music. Patterns of global consumption of culture are interesting. Given that I knew very little about Balinese culture (never listened to music, nor did any of the dances), there I was in a place where the Balinese were dancing Bachata as well as some friends back home (if not better than some of my Latinx friends).
The culture of the Balinese feels more exclusive - it has been marketed in such a way to attract visitors to experience it in person on the small island. It gives locals an incentive to carry on the cultural traditions- but it comes at the cost that the traditions be changed or altered to accommodate patrons - culture driven by economic power rather than by the needs or desires of the community. This pattern is what is conesequently happening in many parts of the world- as certain cultural practices (either from the region or transferred, adopted or assimilated from others) dominate, others fade or change, decreasing heterogeneity. In some ways bringing people closer together, but creating divides in others.
Just before the trip I had complained to a friend that the popular Bachata dance spread throughout the US, South America, (and now Bali) was vastly different than the dance from the Dominican Republic. I shared how I wished people knew of the version of Bachata that I knew- a dance with complex fast paced steps that is desexualized and less focused on hip movements.
But while I watched Balinese dance instructors move across the flat wooden board on the sand, swaying in time in front of the ocean, I felt a sense of calm, and comfort in seeing people enjoy the dance and music that I loved.
Looking back, I don't know if it’s necessarily good or bad that the Balinese were teaching Latin dances. While there are various implications for why the form of transculutration came to be- it made me ponder this idea of what it means to be human and what a collective global culture would look like. And as the world becomes more globalized and consequently, homogenized, if Bachata gets to be a part of that narrative, I hope I’ll be able to still enjoy it and share the story of what it once was and what it has become.
