Culture
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Main article: Culture of Indonesia
See also: National Intangible Cultural Heritage of Indonesia and Public holidays in Indonesia
Indonesia's cultures differ across islands, languages, and communities. Older populations and later Austronesian migrations contributed to this diversity, with Papuan and Melanesian populations prominent in the east. Sea trade and migration linked the islands with India, Arabia, Persia, China, mainland Southeast Asia, and later Europe; these contacts brought religions, scripts, court arts, and colonial rule, often first through ports and trading towns.
Indonesia has no single uniform cultural tradition. Regional arts and customs vary by local history, language, and community, while national forms use Indonesian and reach audiences across the country. These traditions include performance, visual art, ritual, clothing, food, and literature. Modern popular culture includes cinema, television drama, music, celebrity media, and reality shows, along with imported Asian dramas and global formats adapted for Indonesian audiences.
Indonesia has 16 items on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists, including wayang puppet theatre, batik, angklung, the saman dance, and pencak silat. Recent joint nominations have added pantun, kebaya, and kolintang to the list.
Art and architecture[edit]
Main articles: Indonesian art and Architecture of Indonesia
Further information: Indonesian painting
The Arrest of Pangeran Diponegoro (1857) by Raden Saleh
Indonesian visual arts include textiles, puppetry, masks, carving, temple painting, and modern painting. Many are part of ritual and court life, mark status or regional identity, and have changed with trade, colonial rule, nationalism, tourism, and urban art communities.
Among regional traditions, Balinese painting includes classical Kamasan and Wayang-style narrative forms. Indonesian architecture ranges from everyday houses to ritual houses (rumah adat), whose layout, posts, roofs, heirlooms, and construction rites can mark ancestry, status, and local belief. Regional forms include the Javanese pendapa, Dayak longhouses, Minangkabau Rumah Gadang, and Toraja Tongkonan.
Sculptural traditions include megalithic monuments in parts of Java, Sumatra, Sulawesi, Nias, Sumba, Flores, and other regions. Ngaju Dayak hampatong figures have commemorative and protective functions, while Asmat artefacts are made for aesthetic and spiritual purposes. Ancient Indonesian sculpture from the 8th to 15th centuries includes Hindu and Buddhist stone, bronze, and gold works. Surviving temple architecture from the same period includes Borobudur and Prambanan.
Music, dance and clothing[edit]
Main articles: Music of Indonesia, Dance in Indonesia, and National costume of Indonesia
An Indonesian batik
Indonesian music and dance include court, village, ritual, and popular forms. Gamelan traditions are centred especially in Java and Bali, while angklung and other bamboo ensembles are used in western Java, Banyumas, and other regions. Drums, gongs, lutes, singing, and dance music also appear across the archipelago. Islamic musical forms include gambus and qasida, while popular genres include keroncong and dangdut, which grew from Melayu music and draws on Indian, Arabic, and Western pop and rock elements.
Dance traditions serve different uses across regions. Mask dances appear in Javanese court drama and Balinese ritual performance, while Dayak mask dances are performed in agricultural rituals and community ceremonies. Javanese court dance includes forms such as bedhaya and serimpi, while other local dances accompany theatre, music, trance, healing, harvest, and rites of passage. Younger performers also adapt global forms, including K-pop cover dance in Bali and hip-hop communities in Yogyakarta.
Clothing traditions differ by region and are used in ceremonies, weddings, formal occasions, and markers of local identity. Batik and kebaya are widely used in national and formal dress and are especially prominent in Javanese culture. Other regional textiles and clothing traditions include the Batak ulos, Malay and Minangkabau songket, and Sasak ikat, which are used in ceremonies, weddings, exchange, and formal events.
Theatre and cinema[edit]
Main articles: Cinema of Indonesia and Theatre of Indonesia
Further information: List of highest-grossing films in Indonesia
The Pandavas and Krishna in an act of the Wayang Wong performance
Traditional Indonesian theatre uses storytelling, music, movement, puppetry, masks, and actor-dance. Wayang is a major puppet-theatre tradition in Java and Bali; many performances draw on the Ramayana and Mahabharata, are led by a dalang, and are accompanied by music. Wayang has been used for ritual, moral instruction, comedy, political comment, and public messaging.
Other theatrical traditions include Ludruk, Ketoprak, Sandiwara, and Lenong. The Minangkabau Randai uses music, dance, drama, and martial arts (silat) to perform legends and historical narratives. Balinese masked dance theatre, including topeng, has also been staged with modern stories and contemporary performance. In the modern period, theatre groups and networks, including Teater Koma, staged social criticism and political opposition during the late New Order period.
Indonesian cinema began during the Dutch colonial period with Loetoeng Kasaroeng (1926), and post-independence filmmaking developed through figures such as Usmar Ismail and Djamaluddin Malik. During the Sukarno era, film became part of nationalist and anti-colonial politics, while New Order cinema was subject to censorship, state regulation, and official histories. The large film industry of the 1970s and 1980s declined in the early 1990s.
After 1998, low-budget independent films, film communities, festivals, and returning commercial producers revived the industry. Kuldesak (1999) helped launch this independent film movement, while Ada Apa dengan Cinta? (2002) showed the commercial reach of post-Suharto cinema. Filmmakers addressed sexuality, city life, corruption, religion, and political memory, but state censorship, self-censorship, and pressure from non-state groups still limited expression. The Indonesian Film Festival (Festival Film Indonesia), first held in 1955, is the country's main national film-awards event.
Literature and mass media[edit]
Main articles: Indonesian literature and Mass media in Indonesia
Pramoedya Ananta Toer
Indonesian literature includes oral storytelling, inscriptions, court chronicles, religious texts, poetry, prose, and modern writing in Indonesian and regional languages. Early writing used Indian-derived scripts and later Malay and Islamic literary forms, including Kawi, Jawi, syair, pantun, hikayat, and babad. Well-known examples include Hikayat Hang Tuah in the Malay tradition and Babad Tanah Jawi in the Javanese tradition.
Modern Indonesian writing grew in the early 20th century through newspapers, Malay/Indonesian-language publishing, and the colonial publishing house Balai Pustaka. Sumatran, especially Minangkabau, writers were prominent in early modern literature, while later figures such as Chairil Anwar, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, and Ayu Utami became prominent at different points in modern Indonesian literature.
Indonesian mass media has operated under state rules, commercial ownership, and changing communications technology. During the New Order, newspapers and broadcasters worked under licensing, censorship, and television policies that promoted development and official ideas of national culture. In the Reformasi era, the 1999 Press Law forbade censorship, press bans, and publication permits, but criminal and civil cases, political pressure, and attacks by private groups continued.
Internet use began in the early 1990s and grew quickly after 2000; by 2023, Indonesia had over 210 million internet users, helped by affordable smartphones and wider mobile-broadband coverage. Mainstream outlets now use social-media distribution, shared newsrooms, shorter online formats, and cost-cutting.
Cuisine[edit]
Main article: Indonesian cuisine
Nasi Padang with rendang, gulai, and vegetables, an example of Minangkabau cuisine
Indonesian cuisine differs by island and region. Local crops, fish, spices, religion, trade, and migration all affect what people cook and eat. Food traditions use older local ingredients and techniques, along with later Indian, Chinese, Middle Eastern, Portuguese, Dutch, and other foreign influences.
Rice is the main staple food across much of the archipelago, usually consumed with side dishes of meat, fish, vegetables, and condiments. Common ingredients and seasonings include chilli, coconut milk, shrimp paste, peanuts, garlic, shallots, tamarind, fish, and chicken. Soy-based foods such as tempeh and tahu are also common, especially in Java and Bali.
Dishes such as nasi goreng, gado-gado, mie, and sate are consumed in many parts of the country. Regional cuisines include Minangkabau dishes such as rendang. Tumpeng, a Javanese ceremonial rice dish, is used in rites of passage, thanksgiving, and public celebrations.
Sports[edit]
Main articles: Sports in Indonesia and Indonesian martial arts
A demonstration of pencak silat, a form of martial arts
Indonesia has international sports such as football, badminton, weightlifting, and basketball, alongside local games and martial arts. Football is one of the country's most followed sports, with active club supporters and public screenings of major matches. Indonesia was the first Asian representative to appear at the FIFA World Cup, taking part in the 1938 tournament as the Dutch East Indies.
Badminton is one of Indonesia's most successful international sports. Indonesia has won both the Thomas and Uber Cups, the world team championships of men's and women's badminton. Most of Indonesia's Olympic medals have come from badminton and weightlifting. Basketball also has a long organised history in the country, having appeared at the first National Sports Week in 1948 before the national basketball association was founded in 1951.
Local sports and games are used in ceremonies, harvest events, contests, and public entertainment. Examples include sepak takraw, bull racing (karapan sapi) in Madura, and ritual combat traditions such as caci in Flores and pasola in Sumba. Pencak silat is an Indonesian martial art and was included as an official event at the 2018 Asian Games, where Indonesia won all fourteen gold medals contested in the sport.