Three students of Social Anthropology undergraduate program, namely Elang Ade Erlangga, Idah Sri Wahyuni and Ayyi Imana Auliaamafaza who are members of the Student Creativity Program of Humanities Social Research (PKM-RSH) with accompanying lecturer, Dr. Amirudin, M.Si, introduced Truthuk Semarang at the International Conference on Economics, Business, Tourism and Social Sciences (ICEBTS) which was held in Surabaya (online) on August 22nd, 2021. This conference was attended by participants from various countries, such as Spain, China and Indonesia.
At the conference, Elang and his team presented cultural values, symbol systems and performance patterns of Truthuk Semarang. According to Elang, head of the PKM-RSH team, the uniqueness of the art is that it tells stories about contemporary issues, such as pandemics, corruption, social problems and many more. The musical instruments used are quite simple, like saron, demung, drums, gender, gong and violin. The language used is not only Javanese krama but also Javanese ngoko, and even Indonesian basic language, so that all people can understand it.
Unfortunately, Truthuk Semarang is not well known by many people, even the local people of Semarang themselves. Therefore, Elang and his team not only presented it at international conferences, but also tried to introduce Truthuk Semarang through ethnovideography uploaded on social medias.
Elang and the team hope that by introducing this art through international conferences and ethnovideography uploaded to social medias, the local people of Semarang will know more about their own regional art, namely Truthuk Semarang. If not us, the younger generation who preserve it, then who?
(by Idah Sri Wahyuni and Vania P. Hanjani, M.Si.)