Salt making in Madura in 1948
On the whole, Madura is one of the poorest regions of the East Java province. Unlike
Java, the soil is not fertile enough to make it a major agricultural producer. Limited other economic opportunities have led to chronic unemployment and poverty. These factors have led to long-term emigration from the island, such that most ethnically Madurese people do not now live on Madura. People from Madura were some of the most numerous participants in government
transmigration programs, moving to other parts of Indonesia.
Subsistence
agriculture is a mainstay of the economy.
Maize is a key subsistence crop, on island's many small landholdings.
Cattle-raising is also a critical part of the agricultural economy, providing extra income to peasant farmer families, in addition to being the basis for Madura's famous bull-racing competitions. Small-scale fishing is also important to the subsistence economy.
Among export industries,
tobacco farming is a major contributor to the island's economy. Madura's soil, while unable to support many food crops, helps make the island an important producer of tobacco and
cloves for the domestic
kretek (clove cigarette) industry. Since the
Dutch era, the island has also been a major producer and exporter of
salt.
Bangkalan, on the western end of the island, has
industrialized substantially since the 1980s. This region is within a short ferry ride of Surabaya, Indonesia's second-largest city, and hence has gained a role as a suburb for commuters to Surabaya, and as a location for industry and services that need to be near the city.
The
Surabaya-Madura (Suramadu) Bridge, opened 2009, is expected to further increase the Bangkalan area's interaction with the regional economy.
[edit] Culture
[edit] Bull racing
Madura is famous for is bull-racing competitions, where a
jockey, usually a young boy, rides a simple wooden sled pulled by a pair of
bulls over a course of about 100 meters in ten to fifteen seconds. Several towns on the island hold races in August and September of each year, with a large final for the Presidential Trophy held in
Pamekasan in late September or October.
[edit] Music and theater
Several forms of music and theater are popular on Madura, particularly among poorer people for whom they provide an inexpensive form of entertainment and community-building. The
topeng theater, which involves
masked performances of classical stories such as the
Ramayana and
Mahabharata, is the Madurese performance art best known outside the island, due to its role as a representative Madurese art form at exhibitions of regional cultures from all over Indonesia. However, performances of it are rare on Madura, and are generally restricted to entertainment at large official functions. The less formal
loddrok theater, where performers do not wear masks and perform a wider range of themes, is more popular on the island.
The
gamelan orchestra, best known as a classical Javanese instrument, is also played on Madura, where several of the former royal courts, such as at Bangkalan and Sumenep, possess elaborate gamelans.
Tongtong music, more exclusive to Madura, is played on several wooden or bamboo drums, and often accompanies bull-racing competitions.
[edit] Vessels
The Madurese used to be excellent sailors. Madurese vessels loaded with cargoes of wood from other islands, like
Borneo, used to ply their trade between Indonesia and
Singapore. Among the traditional vessels of Madura, the
golekan and the
leti-leti (or leteh-leteh), are worth mentioning.
[1]
[edit] Further reading
- Bouvier, Hélène (1994) La matière des émotions. Les arts du temps et du spectacle dans la société madouraise (Indonésie). Publications de l'École Française d'Extrême-Orient, vol. 172. Paris : EFEO. ISBN 2-85539-772-3.
- Farjon, I.(1980) Madura and surrounding islands : an annotated bibliography, 1860-1942 The Hague: M. Nijhoff. Bibliographical series (Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (Netherlands)) ; 9.
- Kees van Dijk, Huub de Jonge, and Elly Touwen-Bouswsma, eds. (1995). Across Madura Strait: the dynamics of an insular society. Leiden: KITLV Press. ISBN 90-6718-091-2.
- Smith, Glenn (1995) Time Allocation Among the Madurese of Gedang-Gedang. Cross-Cultural Studies in Time Allocation, Volume XIII. New Haven, Connecticut: Human Relations Area Files Press.
- Smith, Glenn (2002) Bibliography of Madura (including Bawean, Sapudi and Kangean). [1]
[edit] External links