The Southeast Asia Club hopes students will get a taste of Indonesian culture today at its annual Indonesian Culture Night.

The entertainment includes traditional music, dance and a shadow-puppet show.

“We’re having a man come in from the Indonesian consulate who is going to be performing a shadow-puppet play called ‘Wayang,’” SEA President Jessica Rinehart said. “It’s very traditional, very fun. And he’s also doing a traditional Indonesian dance performance.”

The visiting performer will have pre-recorded music for his show, but the SEA club has live music lined up as well.

“We are going to have a Balinese gamelan orchestra,” Rinehart said. “It’s an Indonesian orchestra. It’s pretty, but they have different kinds of instruments than western societies do.”

Music professor Kuo-Huang Han will perform with the orchestra.

“It’s a type of percussion-dominated orchestra … with gongs and metallophones,” he said. “We will be doing two kinds of gamelan music. One is a marching gamelan. … And then we will do three regular gamelan pieces.”

Tonight’s orchestra is Balinese, but that’s not the only form of gamelan that exists. Balinese gamelan is similar to other versions of the music, but it is faster and includes frequent changes in tempo.

“I also teach Javanese,” Han said. “But those instruments are, like, 50 pounds. They’re too heavy. The Balinese instruments we have are a little lighter, a little smaller, easier to carry. And they are very beautiful. They are beautifully carved and decorated.”

“It’s very nice,” Rinehart said. “They’ll have a whole processional entrance and everything. It’s a lot of fun. They wind up getting people dancing at the end.”

The club also is preparing food for the occasion. For those who haven’t reserved their meal, it may be too late.

“It’ll be Indonesian food prepared by an Indonesian cook,” said Nancy Schuneman, secretary for the Center for Southeast Asia Studies.

The $5 meal will include either a white or yellow rice dish with chicken and peanut sauce, as well as dessert. The food will be slightly changed to cater to the American palette, though.

“We told the chef not to make it too spicy,” Rinehart said. “Because in the past, you know, Indonesian food tends to be very spicy, and a lot of Americans can’t really handle it.”

For those interested in learning more, cultural information, such as sample gamelan music, is available in the Indonesian arts and culture section of the Southeast Asian Studies Web site, at www.seasite.niu.edu.