On a humid evening in Pacitan, East Java, the streets are transformed into a vibrant, living stage. Crowds line the sidewalks, cheering as groups of young people dressed in colorful costumes march past, pounding bamboo instruments and modified drums. Each team performs their version of Ronthek, a localized musical procession blending folk rhythms, theatrical spectacle, and modern influences like dangdut koplo. To an outsider, Ronthek may appear simply as a lively festival of community celebration. But for someone like me, an anthropology student currently engaged in rural performing arts community fieldwork, this annual event opens a deeper window into the complexities of rural life, local governance, and the subtle hierarchies embedded in cultural production.
Ronthek: Between Tradition and Transformation
Ronthek is often described by local as a “folk tradition” emerging from the older practice of ronda, nighttime neighborhood watch accompanied by rhythmic bamboo clacking. Over the years, Ronthek has evolved into an official festival sponsored by the regional government and has become a core component of Pacitan’s cultural identity. It mobilizes village youths, unites neighborhood committees, and brings spectators from across the district. Nonetheless, the shift from spontaneous neighborhood expression to state-recognized festival has transformed not only the aesthetics of the performances, but also the politics of participation. Teams are expected to compete, judged based on creativity, discipline, and production quality. Sound systems must be rented, costumes tailored, and performance themes developed in alignment with criteria established by a central committee. It’s customary for a single team to spend over five million rupiah just to appear on stage.
This has led to a growing disparity between teams with access to financial and social capital, those with sponsorships, elite backing, or proximity to power, and those without.
Cultural Expression Under the Shadow of Patronage
This inequality is not unique to Ronthek, but reflects deeper structures within Javanese rural life. As Dutch anthropologist Frans Hüsken noted in his foundational work “Masyarakat Desa di Jawa (1988)”, the Javanese village is far from the harmonious, egalitarian community it is often imagined to be. Instead, it is structured by informal patronage networks, where access to resources like economic, symbolic, or even political, is mediated by social relationships and local elites.
Within this framework, Ronthek becomes more than a cultural festival, it is a stage where symbolic capital is displayed and redistributed. Participation itself becomes a privilege, often dependent on who you know, not just what you create. Cultural production then, is not insulated from power, it’s shaped by it. The emphasis on performance quality also introduces a kind of aesthetic gatekeeping. Village teams are increasingly pressured to conform to standards that align with urban tastes or governmental expectations. Music deemed “too aggressive” or “too unpolished” may be discouraged. This raises important questions about whose culture is being represented, and under what terms.
Rhythms of Development, Dissonance of Inequality
From a development perspective, Ronthek is often touted as a success story, a manifestation of creative economy, youth empowerment, and cultural heritage promotion. Local governments see it as a way to boost tourism, while residents take pride in showcasing their kampung spirit. On the other hand, who benefits most from this cultural economy? As state-sponsored cultural initiatives become more formalized, do they risk excluding the very communities they claim to uplift?
What I observe is a dual reality. On the surface, Ronthek fosters social cohesion and artistic pride, yet underneath, it also reflects the uneven terrains of power within rural Java, where representation is uneven, participation is selective, and symbolic inclusion may obscure material exclusion.
Ethnographic Encounters and the Politics of Cultural Participation
Engaging with Ronthek as both a cultural performance and an object of anthropological inquiry has compelled me to confront the layered tensions between artistic expression, social capital, and rural development agendas. Fieldwork in Pacitan reveals that cultural festivals are not apolitical arenas of celebration. Rather, they serve as dynamic, contested sites in which various actors, for instance youth groups, local elites, cultural committees, and state authorities, negotiate meanings, visibility, and legitimacy.
Through participant observation and informal interviews, it becomes evident that the production of a Ronthek team is not merely a creative endeavor but also a logistical and political one. The ability to perform is often tethered to one’s embeddedness within patron-client networks, echoing Hüsken’s analysis of Javanese rural life as governed by informal hierarchies and symbolic economies. The politics of access, who is able to form a team, who is funded, who is selected, reveals a cultural ecology shaped as much by aesthetics as by stratified resource distribution. In several instances, I encountered youth who articulated a sense of disillusionment. While they cherished the collective spirit and cultural pride embedded in Ronthek, they also recognized the structural barriers that constrained their participation. These narratives point to the ambivalence many rural youths experience: pride in representing their kampung, yet constrained by limited resources, asymmetrical networks, and the aesthetic expectations shaped by urban and institutional standards.
This field experience reinforces the importance of ethnographic research in tracing the unseen infrastructure of cultural performance. It is not enough to analyze cultural festivals at the level of surface representation. We must also attend to the socio-political processes that enable, inhibit, or instrumentalize participation. Ronthek thus becomes not only a medium of expression but also a lens through which we can interrogate broader questions of rural inequality, developmentalism, and cultural hegemony.
Ultimately, my reflections underscore that cultural sustainability cannot be disentangled from questions of access, representation, and voice. Recognizing the affective labor and social negotiations behind each performance is a step toward more inclusive and reflexive models of cultural governance, ones that center not just heritage, but the people who live, contest, and co-create it.
Penulis: Lucia Sekar Kinanti, Mahasiswa Prodi Antropologi Budaya Fakultas Ilmu BudayaUGM, Tim KKN-PPM 2025-JI010 di Tulakan, Kab. Pacitan, Jawa Timur
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