Far-Flung Postcards is a weekly series in which NPR’s international team shares moments from their lives and work around the world.
The kecak is a 20th-century adaptation of Bali’s trance-inducing Hindu ceremonies and a theatrical retelling of an episode from the Ramayana, the ancient Hindu epic. There are no instruments: roughly three dozen men sit or stand in concentric rows and chant in syncopated patterns. The rise and fall of their interlocking voices becomes the entire soundscape for the drama.
At the story’s climax the performance erupts into flames. The chanters ignite tufts of dried coconut husk, and the steady rhythm breaks. The men scatter, daringly kicking and playing with the burning husks as embers fly, while the audience — including me — holds its breath.
The chaos is short-lived. The fire quickly subsides, the men regroup into neat rows and avoid the last dying embers, and the a cappella rhythm resumes. The plot, too, tidily resolves: the forces of good prevail over evil.
I left feeling soothed, briefly transported by the human voice into a mythic world where good wins and a little theatrical magic can feel like salvation.
See more Far-Flung Postcards from around the world, including dispatches from Seville, a fishing village in Indonesia, postwar olive harvests in Syria, and a peaceful park in Islamabad.