Rumput plays traditional and experimental music driven by keroncong, a string-band tradition of Indonesia, paired with shadow theater that blends Indonesian wayang (shadow puppetry) and crankies (scrolling panoramas).
Our Spring 2020 tour Nicotiana premieres a new crankie (scrolling panorama) on the ongoing deadly colonial history of tobacco. This tour features visiting artist Balinese dalang (shadow master) Gusti Sudarta, who will also be on a parallel tour of traditional wayang (Indonesian shadow theater) with gamelan accompaniment.
When the American tobacco industry was hit with lawsuits in the late 90's, companies re-branded and reoriented towards international markets such as Southeast Asia. In Indonesia, tobacco is poorly regulated, ads regularly target children (remember the smoking baby on Youtube?), and lung cancer deaths have gone through the roof. Cigarette taxes are now an important source of national income and politicians receive regular kickbacks from the industry. The story of tobacco is a tale of global exploitation in which American capitalists have benefited wildly from the suffering of Native Americans, African American slaves, blue-collar labor, and the engineered addiction of billions of smokers across the globe. We will be performing a new crankie and shadow play about the story of tobacco, in which Richmond Virginia and, today, Indonesia are two of the most important chapters.
