TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - As many as 2,000 debus artists in Banten, West Java, Indonesia will participate in the “2014 Banten Debus Festival” that is held by the Cultural and Tourism Department of Banten Province on August 23 2014.
Head of Cultural and Tourism Department of Banten Province, Endrawati, in Serang, on Friday said that the festival aimed to break the record in the Museum Record of Indonesia (MURI). The event will be participated by six districts in the whole Banten. Two other regions, Tangerang and South Tangerang districts, will not be participating in the event.
“The 2014 Banten Debus Festival will be held on August 23, 2014 in Mercusuar, Anyar, Serang district. As much as 6 districts/cities will be sending debus artists from several studios to display Banten’s debus creation in front of MURI team members,” Endrawati said in a statement.
She said, each district will be sending their representative to display their debus creation which will be witnessed directly by the Vice Minister of Education and Cultural and representatives from the Ministry of Toursim and Creative Economy.
According to Endrawati, the 2,000 artists from Banten participating in the festival consist of 500 people from Serang District, 500 from Lebak District, 400 from Cilegon City and 300 from Pandeglang District. Meanwhile Tangerang City and Serang City have not confirmed the number of participants who will be participating in the festival.
Every representative of the participating districts should display their debus creation differently from other participants so the people seeing the event will know the martial art of debus with all of its richness.
“Debus has different levels of difficulty from light, medium to extreme. But we are only giving tolerance for light and medium levels. We worry that if its too extreme, we’ll encounter things that we don’t want,” Endrawati said.
This Debus festival will only be held for one night. The festival is considered to be important because debus has been official in becoming Banten Province’s art and culture heritage.
ANTARA | TASRIEF TARMIZI