The Between Ritual and Market: The Dadak Merak and the Night-Market Circuit in the Transformation of Reog Ponorogo, 1920–1940

Abstract

Studies of the dadak merak have treated its visual form in isolation from the economics of performance, while studies of the social history of Reog Ponorogo have concentrated on the post independence period. This article aims to explain how the codification of the dadak merak and the circulation of Reog Ponorogo through the colonial night market circuit unfolded in Java between 1920 and 1940. Using the critical historical method (heuristics, source criticism, interpretation, and historiography), it reads together the documented stages of the form of the dadak merak (the 1920s, 1930, and 1939) and seven colonial press reports (1926–1940) on night markets (pasar malam) and charity fairs (pasar derma), supplemented by Pigeaud's ethnography and an interview with a heritage custodian. The results show that the dadak merak was standardised through small, cumulative decisions: the removal of the jegol around 1930, the addition of decorative elements, and the immobilisation of the caplokan in 1939. Over the same years, Reog Ponorogo moved from the charity fair at Tuban in 1926 to the Sriwedari pleasure garden in Solo and the fairs of Purwodadi and Tegal by the mid 1930s, listed alongside other hired entertainments. The rain summoning barongan Embah Dubruk shows that ritual use persisted alongside this commercial circulation. The article concludes that the two processes formed a single historical conjuncture rather than a causal chain, and that the commercialisation of Reog Ponorogo in this period did not amount to its secularisation.