"Finding Religion" in Bali
Indonesian Kite Festival 2007
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| Janggan Kite |
I really didn't expect this, but my visit to the 29th annual Bali National Kite Festival brought me face to face with a kite culture so deeply rooted that at least one of my hosts insisted that "Kite is God!" In a culture where every activity is begun with a ceremony and a prayer, I began to see where my host Bagus was coming from. This is a deeply spiritual community, where ties to God, family and community are readily apparent. Kites here are a direct tie to all three.
In the nights before the three-day festival, neighborhood groups work together 
to prepare sails, spars and hummers for their kites. Each group might have from one to six of the four-or-five meter wide creations, including the subtle pechukan, the bebean, or fish kite, and the janggan, dragon kite. Each has its own peculiarities-the pechukan, favored by professionals to demonstrate their kitemaking prowess, the bebean, for its distinctive flight pattern, and the janggan for its overall majesty. While working, offerings are placed upon the kite frame, that there will be many more ceremonies to come.
The first two days of the festival are spectacular, when over a hundred kites are
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| Team of Kite Fliers |
flown each day but it builds to an amazing final day, when almost two hundred kites are registered and flown. The kites are flown in groups, Pechukan, Bebean, and
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Watching the
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Janggan, for an hour at a time. They are then judged on their beauty, flight, and their launch and retrieval. Each kite is paraded around the field before and after flight by a team that might have 50 to 100 members. Much like Hamamatsu, Japan, older men supervise while teens and twenty-somethings do the bulk of line handling and running; youngsters play in the bands. It is an extremely community-based activity with colorful tee shirts, banners, and obvious pride.
The days there are a complete assault on the senses: sight, sound, smell and taste (dust is kicked up everywhere!). Three traditional colors are used in the kites-red, black and
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| Be-Bean Kite |
white, with a forth, yellow, now frequently used as well, usually in the Pechukan. Simple linear graphics are the norm, and they all have significance. Arrangement of colors, width of stripes, background color - they all are significant and are carefully chosen by
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| Pechukan Kite |
the team and their artists. Bagus explained that the simplicity of the basic kite frame, with its central spine and top cross spar, further re-enforce the kites relationship with God. The spine is a straight vertical line to heaven, while the top horizontal spar demonstrates balance in our lives, with nature, with others.
Photos by Scott Skinner