Those lovely ladies are singers in shadow puppet performance. We call them sinden or pesinden. They sing all night long since the performance usually starts at 7pm and will be ended at around 5am in the morning.

The one wearing jasmine arrangement on her hair is the primadona, and she’s the youngest among them.

Some of them looks shy when I took their picture. Guess what.. there are 7 Abdi Magangan on the picture, and 5 of them have the same initial name “Yudo”. There are Mr. Yudoraharjo, Yudopradoto, Yudosaronto, Yudodinomo, Yudosarono, Mujiyono and Parjono.

Abdi dalem are people who voluntarily subjugate their services to the Kraton (palace) and Sultan and his extended family. They prepare almost all of Sultan’s daily necessities and perform Javanese traditional ceremonies, inside and outside Kraton. Abdi dalems are organized based on functional services, where they inherited such title of service prior to Sultan’s official entitling.

But most of all, abdi dalems are the true believers as well as guardians of Javanese tradition.

Hundreds of people are coming at Godean Street at Suran Javanese month. People are celebrating “Mbah Demang Suran Ceremony” with various kinds of art performance.