Few weeks ago, I went to another Jathilan show. It was in Turi, not that far from my house. Every important moment in a village's life is most of the time celebrated with a Jathilan.
Difficult to realy know how much it is just a show, and how much it's a ritual.
Normaly, it's a collective ritual where trance takes dancers and some people of the audience. In this trance, the demons that hang around enter the physical body of the dancer... And the Pawang (kind of man with some "mystic" power ) expulses the demon and so, frees the village from his bad influence...
This trance drive some people to have very spectacular act, like eating broken glass, walking on hot ashes, eating ball of rice filled with razor blade... Hum... Can't say if there is a trick or not...
Is there some "drugs" involved? I can't say. But I saw some strange stuff given to some of the dancer...
One thing for sure is the music that always comes with this dance... Same little 3 notes played on small gong (Bonang ) and percusions, the singing can vary but not the music. Sometimes one song can last for 30 minutes.
I can tell you that's really "trance music"...
Well, half way between folklore and real mystic, it's a real particular moment in the Javanese tradition, espacialy around the Merapi mountain, where the mystic is powerfully present...
