Book Description:
Bantengan is a form of cultural expression of the people of East Java. It combines elements of pencak silat, music, dance, and mantra, creating an art form that is both intricate and philosophical. However, the transformation from bantengan to mberot is an unavoidable reality. Gamelan turns into DJ beats. The youth fall into trance. The bull’s head is handled carelessly. As a result, moral values as the balancing point must be firmly upheld so that bantengan can continue to endure in an increasingly modern era.
The Spirit of Bantengan: Malang Raya Edition seeks to preserve the legacy of bantengan from its history and evolution to the spirit embedded within society. Through the stories of performers, observers, and elders, this book invites readers to gain a deeper understanding of bantengan as entertainment, a symbol of struggle, solidarity, an economic driver, and a form of social critique that remains relevant today.
Bantengan Nuswantara Trance Festival, the Lebaran of Bantengan People
“Bantengan Nuswantara Trance Festival, the Lebaran of Bantengan People” is one of the featured stories compiled in the book The Spirit of Bantengan, Malang Raya Edition by Annisa Dyah Novia Arianto, which will be published by Elex Media Komputindo.
“Bantengan parade’s here! Bantengan parade’s here! Come on, folks, let’s watch bantengan at Batu City Square!”
That was more or less the kind of announcement used to promote the bantengan carnival, or the very first Bantengan Nuswantara Trance Festival back in 2008 in Batu, East Java. Simple and straightforward. Mobile phones weren’t yet widespread and renting TV airtime was expensive, so word spread by mouth, carried by enthusiastic youngsters standing on the back of pickup trucks.
They shouted as they walked through the village streets, while the locals cheered with joy. Bantengan, a traditional East Javanese folk art that blends martial arts, music, dance, and chants into something both striking and deeply philosophical, was beginning to rise again
Bantengan Nuswantara Trance Festival, also known as the Carnival of 1.000 Bantengan held every early August, became a gathering ground for bantengan performers from all across Indonesia. Not only from Malang and its surroundings, but also from outside Java.
Every year, now for 17 years, people from Sabang to Merauke come together there, especially Javanese who’ve migrated and formed their own cultural communities far from home. Artists and foreign visitors also join in, coming from places like Malaysia, Japan, India, Australia, Colombia, the United States, New Zealand, and several other countries.
Batu City Square swelled with thousands of spectators, shoulder to shoulder, as the bantengan parade swept through. One by one, the bull figures emerged onto the street, followed closely by tigers and monkeys that leapt in to challenge them. The spectacle was nothing short of fierce.
Cracks of the whip sliced through the air, mingling with the sharp, resonant clang of gamelan music that heightened the charged atmosphere. Then, almost rhythmically, the bantengan performers slipped into trance. Some gnawed at offerings, others rolled across the asphalt, while a few even toyed with fire. Around them, village elders stood guard, keeping a watchful eye to ensure the performance did not spiral out of control.
And yet, how could it not? Possessed bodies staggered and convulsed everywhere, while crowds pressed at the roadside, eyes wide with a mix of awe and exhilaration.
Agus Tubrun, the founder of the Bantengan Nuswantara Trance Festival and chair of Bantengan Agung Jaya Nuswantara, has never stopped standing by the performers. Even as he is surrounded by a sea of people and scorched by the Batu sun, he remains steadfast at the head of the parade.
With a laugh, he quips, “This festival is like the Lebaran for bantengan people!”
To him, the event is not just a spectacle but a celebration of sacred gathering that must go on, preserved with full devotion as an inheritance from the ancestors.
Though revered as an elder figure in the community, Agus Tubrun readily admits he is not, strictly speaking, a bantengan artist. He is a painter, one more at ease in solitude with brushes and canvas. Yet his roots are tied to the tradition. His great-grandfather was a pencak silat master from Ngaglik, Batu, who led a troupe called Cakra Surya Budaya, active during the 1980s and 1990s.
As a boy, Agus Tubrun spent his days tagging along to his grandfather’s pencak silat and bantengan practice sessions at the old padepokan (hermitage). But as he grew older, the connection faded. The troupe slowly dissolved after his grandfather’s passing, just as many silat schools often do once their master is gone. Few dared to carry on, the weight of its spiritual dimension often too heavy to shoulder.
No one could have guessed that decades later, in 2005, the idea of bantengan would suddenly resurface in Agus Tubrun’s mind. Almost instinctively, his whole being was moved to revive the tradition, even though the art form was, by then, considered nearly extinct. Bantengan had fallen silent. At best, it appeared briefly during Independence Day celebrations, only to be forgotten again. Public interest was scarce, nearly absent.
Guided only by memory and the lingering spirit of his great-grandfather’s pencak silat legacy, Agus Tubrun put down his paintbrushes and began seeking out bantengan groups across Malang Raya.
“Whenever I heard word of a bantengan troupe, I went to find them. My only wish was, come on, let’s bring bantengan back to life,” Agus recalls, his voice carrying both nostalgia and resolve.
Between 2005 and 2008, his search led him to nearly seventy bantengan groups. The journey was anything but easy. Without a formal registry, Agus had to wander from place to place, chasing scraps of information passed on by locals. Often, young people from the villages would accompany him, guiding him through backroads and hidden alleys toward his next discovery.
Each time Agus Tubrun visited a group, he would carefully inspect their bantengan inventory. Some had wooden bull heads that had grown fragile with age, though their horns remained intact. Others stored instruments caked in dust, or drums so old they had been eaten through by termites. There were groups whose bantengan props were still neatly preserved in special rooms. And then there were those whose equipment remained complete and untouched yet their members had long disappeared.
Agus understood. Still, he urged each troupe to bring bantengan back into the spotlight.
Was the path always smooth? Of course not.
“Back then, I already had a family. Children and a wife. But some in the bantengan circles thought I was just a youngster chasing fame or whatever. A few looked down on me, and that was fine. I expected it. I understood,” Agus recalls. “I didn’t know them personally at the time, but I didn’t let it bother me. Those who wanted to join, joined. Those who didn’t, well, that was fine too.”
Agus Tubrun did not lose heart. He kept reaching out to other bantengan groups, building connections one by one. Support came not only from the younger generation but also from respected elders.
Among them was Mbah Kasiyan, a pencak silat master from Giripurno Village, Batu, who was already in his nineties. His body remained strong and agile, though his hearing had begun to fade. Still, he stood by Agus with unwavering loyalty. He offers both intellectual guidance and spiritual strength.
There were others too: Mbah Kasemuhi, Mbah Sarjiun, Mbah Jari, Mbah Sanimin, and several more elder figures who quietly shaped the movement.
“I’ve come to regard them as my own parents,” Agus says. “They are the ones who give me the strength to safeguard the name of Bantengan Nuswantara to this day. If I stop, everything stops.”
By 2008, his persistence had borne fruit. Agus succeeded in bringing together 40 to 50 bantengan groups. The challenge then was to find a unifying name, something larger than any one village or region. The word that came to him was “Nusantara”, a name that would place bantengan not as the heritage of a single community, but as a shared tradition belonging to practitioners scattered across the archipelago.
“According to our ancestors, bantengan was born within the circle of Mount Semeru, Bromo, Arjuna, Kawi, and Anjasmara. It lives in Batu, Malang, Tengger, Mojokerto, Pasuruan, and beyond,” explains Agus Tubrun.
Around that time, a cultural figure from Malang regency, Soleh Adi Pramono, offered a refinement. The name Nusantara was powerful, but he suggested a word that reached even deeper, rooted in the language of the ancestors: Sanskrit. His proposal transformed Nusantara into “Nuswantara”, a name that, in his view, encompassed the entire universe. Soleh, an artist and leader of the Padepokan Seni Mangun Dharma, also threw his support behind what would become the Nuswantara Trance Festival.
Agus Tubrun remembers the turning point vividly. “I kept asking myself. How do we bring people together? We have to make a movement, a festival!” he exclaims, his voice brimming with conviction. “If we only make bantengan in small circles, it ends there. But my vision had to be bigger!”
At last, the festival idea began to take shape, driven forward by Agus Tubrun and the bantengan elders who stood beside him. His resolve was unshakable. Jejeg, ajeg, tatag, teteg, as the Javanese saying goes. Whoever holds fast to their conviction, he believed, will harvest courage and strength.
For Agus Tubrun, it was a profound shift. Once content with solitude, living comfortably from his paintings, he suddenly found himself plunged into the chaos of organizing people from all walks of life. It was overwhelming, even. By his own admission, communication was never his strongest skill, least of all when it came to bureaucracy.
“I’ve never had the patience for that kind of thing,” he laughs.
“So the prayer I remember most was: ‘Send me people who will help me.’ And God, along with the ancestors, answered,” Agus recalls.
In 2008, the first grand bantengan festival finally came to life in Batu. By nine in the morning, the streets along the parade route were already lined with crowds. One by one, the bantengan troupes that Agus had painstakingly gathered took their turn to perform. The route has remained the same each year: starting from Gelora Brantas Stadium, winding through Batu City Square, down Panglima Sudirman Street, and ending at the mayor’s residence. A stretch of roughly two kilometers.
The people of East Java embraced the festival with open arms. They lined the streets shoulder to shoulder, unfazed by the burning sun on their skin. Young and old, men and women alike. Everyone gathered to watch bantengan. Some were delighted, others bewildered, a few frightened, and many left inspired.
The ripple effect was just as striking. Hundreds of small businesses thrived, while nearby hotels and guesthouses filled to capacity, booked solid whenever the Bantengan Nuswantara Trance Festival came around.
It was simple in concept, yet not everyone was quick to celebrate.
“The government’s response was very cold at first,” Agus Tubrun recalls. But he understood. After all, this was a people’s art form, performed by villagers, farmers, laborers, ordinary folk. In those early years, bantengan festivals in the city were unconcerned with polish or presentation. What mattered was the performance itself. Period.
Agus lets out a soft chuckle as he remembers that first bantengan festival.
“In 2008, how many of the performers even had uniforms? Hardly any,” Agus Tubrun recalls with a laugh. “If the shirt was black, they wore it. If it wasn’t, they still wore it. Some players came straight from the fields, cutting grass for their cattle, and joined the festival without bathing or changing clothes. They performed in their farming gear. It wasn’t until 2010 that groups started tidying up and buying matching uniforms and dressing properly for the stage.”
The second festival, in 2010, became a milestone for Agus. His long struggle, alongside the bantengan elders, was beginning to bear fruit. He held firmly to his prayers, and slowly they were answered.
Despite limited funding and little media exposure, bantengan began to capture attention beyond local borders. Professors, artists, and students from various corners of the world came not only to watch but also to study the tradition.
Among them was Tony Ding Chai Yap, a multidisciplinary artist from Malaysia. His doctoral research at the University of Melbourne, Australia, focused on trance in Southeast Asian performance art, with bantengan as one of his case studies. Tony first met Agus Tubrun in 2009, and from then on, he became an active participant in the Nuswantara Trance Festival.
In his research, Tony identified three types of spirits that typically animate a bantengan performance. The first are ancestral spirits: a force rooted in belief systems, inherited traditions, and family lineage. The second are animal spirits: a release of pent-up energy that transforms performers into bulls, tigers, or monkeys in their wildest forms. The third are jinn: hidden energies, manifesting as animal or human spirits, capable of taking control of a person’s body.
“In the context of jinn, outsiders can participate in bantengan without needing to follow the local ancestral line. They can immerse themselves in a state of ecstasy with their own ancestral spirits, without having to imitate specific movements,” Tony wrote in his 2021 dissertation, Trance-Forming Dance: the practice of trance from traditional communities to contemporary dance.
For Tony, trance in bantengan is not simply a matter of possession. It is a way of accessing emotions, memories, and the subconscious which forces that shape bodily movement in profound ways. In contemporary art, this opens a new space for expression, one that is both personal and spiritual.
No two “bulls” are ever the same, he argues, because each performer is entered by a different spirit, creating a diversity of trances as unique as the people who embody them.
***
This year marks the 17th anniversary of the Bantengan Nuswantara Trance Festival. What began as a modest gathering has grown into a cultural powerhouse, now embraced by local authorities and communities alike.
From only 40 to 50 bantengan troupes in its early years, the festival today features more than 150 groups. Each troupe typically brings 20 to 30 members to the streets, transforming the city into a living stage of movement, music, and trance.
Groups that once dismissed calls for unity have since changed their minds. Today, they march shoulder to shoulder, contributing to a spectacle so massive that the parade, which once ended by sunset, now stretches deep into the night, even sometimes until three in the morning. Audiences ebb and flow, but the streets never empty. The energy remains electric.
What’s remarkable, says festival founder Agus Tubrun, is the spirit of the performers themselves. “They perform with joy and sincerity,” he notes. “Exhaustion, fatigue—all of it disappears in the face of the people’s enthusiasm!”
For Agus, the heart of bantengan lies in its accessibility. “Bantengan is a people’s art that’s so simple and inexpensive. Anyone can take part. You don’t need elaborate costumes or makeup. Because it comes from the people and is for the people, bantengan is strong,” he says.
“Don’t just see the bulls or the trances. See its soul: the mutual aid, compassion, kinship, and the pride of being a unifying force for the nation,” declared him.
At 58, Agus Tubrun reminds his members to keep their hearts straight. His message is simple: never let money blind them. For him, bantengan must remain a stage for dedication and solidarity, not a craft tainted by worldly temptations. Money, he warns, could easily become the downfall of the tradition. The fear is not of losing the dance, but of losing the spirit.
As a senior figure, Agus knows the quirks of bantengan performers all too well. While the bull mask carries the weight of ancestral wisdom, there is no guarantee that the next generation will carry the same respect.
In recent years, the lawasan (old-style bantengan) has morphed into bantengan mberot, a more raucous version sweeping across East Java. Traditional gamelan has given way to blaring DJ beats; the bull masks come in every shape and color; the ratio of martial art to trance feels skewed, complete with festive saweran (money-throwing). Its popularity is such that even neighborhood associations (RTs) have formed their own groups.
“As an artist, I understand that art must transform,” Agus explained. “Painting has transformed in so many ways. That’s inevitable, and bantengan is no different. In the past, only adults took part. Now children and women join in. They too deserve space to express themselves, but not in ways that break the rules. Wearing improper clothes, for instance. Art must still hold to norms and morals.”
Yet when he looks back, Agus admits to feeling relief. Bantengan has regained its shine. From fewer than a hundred troupes, the numbers have now swelled into the thousands across the region.
In 2014, Batu City even secured a Museum Rekor Indonesia (MURI) award with the “Festival 1000 Banteng Nuswantara” at Brantas Stadium. Other towns followed suit with their own celebrations, such as Kanjuruhan Bantengan Festival, Kedungkandang Bantengan Festival, and countless other local spinoffs.
“All these festivals, in a way, lighten my burden,” Agus chuckled.
“It means many are willing to carry on bantengan, right? So we bantengan people must stand strong and hold firm to the culture of Nuswantara. I myself am determined to guard it until the end,” he declared, clenching his fist toward the sky.
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