A Brief Reviews On Indonesia Culture

Indonesia culture is extremely unique; perhaps it is one o a kind in all over the world since this particular Indonesia culture has been formed by extensive interaction between Indonesia’s indigenous customs and multiple influences from foreigners such as India, Arab, China and Western countries. If we looked back from ancient times, we can find out that Indonesia becomes the ancient trading routes between Middle East and Far East that involves a lot of interactions here. Sooner or later, such interactions as well as the religions they bring such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Confucianism bring a strong influence into the native customs and Indonesia culture practices that resulted in a cultural mixture. Many of the cultural mixtures as the result of the above interactions are totally different from the original cultures.

Here are few examples of Indonesia culture that are strongly influenced by certain religion from hundreds of years ago, they are:

1. Wayang or traditional puppet shows that is performed theatrically were used to spread Islam and Hinduism in Java villagers.

2. Stories about ancient Buddhism and Hindu kingdoms are explicitly expressed on Balinese and Javanese dances.

3. The Islamic art forms as well as architecture can be widely found in Sumatra. In fact, Aceh and Minangkabau are the two areas that clearly present such Islamic influence as a part of the Indonesia culture.

3. Pencak Silat is the combination of traditional music, art as well as martial art.

4. Dangdut which is a popular type of music in Indonesia culture has an Indian rhythmic; it often mixed with Malay and Arab folk music.

5. The influence of western culture in Indonesia culture is generally in modern entertainment and also in political issues and systems.

Although Indonesia culture in certain parts of the archipelago country has been influenced by foreign culture that resulted in mix culture as mentioned before, there are still a lot of native residents that still preserve their distinguish indigenous culture which attract countless numbers of tourists to view themselves such native culture of Indonesia culture. Commonly, the particular tribes that still strictly preserved their native culture as what has been preserved by their ancestors are living in remote areas. Generally, they are still performing their ethnic customs, rituals, and traditional clothes such as ethnic groups of Asmat and Dhani in Papua, Dayak in Kalimantan, Toraja in South Sulawesi and many others. All of those rituals, customs, traditional music, dances as well as traditional clothes have formed a sophisticated Indonesia culture that should be preserved as the unique identity of this archipelago country.