Seloprojo Village

Magelang is town between Yogyakarta and Semarang as the Capital of Central Java. This town is not so famous around the world. People only know well about Borobudur temple as one of the world icons. Actually Borobudur Temple is located in Magelang. In Magelang also, we can find the second active volcano in the world namely Merapi Mountain. A lot of things we found here, the beauty of nature, mountains, rice field, traditional food, and a local culture. That’s all of Java Island the beauty so real and elegant.

The History

There is a village namely Seloprojo, the ancestor from Majapahit lived there. A beautiful village with terracing rice field, mountainous and Andong Mountain as the back view. Isolated village surrounded by hills and trees far from city crowded. Seloprojo (Javanese language) is from the word Selo means stone and Projo means honor. Based on the story, there was a big stone about 3 meters on the land, manifest of Majapahit ancestor namely Mbah Singo (Grand Singo). That stone on every Friday Kliwon (Javanese calendar) always gives a sound. People believe that was a sound from the stoneman. Villagers always pray respect and giving sesaji (offer some foods) in the hope their harvest is always fine and away from bad and disaster. But the stone right now is gone, whatever the atmosphere of its culture still there strongly.

Geography

It is a small village and it has 1682 population with 131.50 ha. Seloprojo is divided by 4 dusun (parts of village), they are Seloprojo, Ngaglik, Pernolo, and Pranten. The area is not flat, up and down and hilly. It is not far from the village, the edge is a spruce-fir (casuarinas) forest about 175 ha. And 1100 meters above the sea level. Most of them are farmer as the main income.

Culture

Going closer to the culture, it has relation to the eastern of Java culture. However it closes to Majapahit considering of the ancestor. We can find the similarities such as Warokan dance. This dance showed by percussion (Jedor/small bedug), the dancers lash each other by whip. Jaranan or Sorengan is a dance when the dancers ride an artificial horse from bamboo and showed with gamelan/Javanese orchestra.

The harvest time is very amusing, they always celebrate for God blessing. For planting the rice takes 6 months. Harvest time is on August or early September. They use ani-ani (traditional cutter for paddy) for harvest. Before the harvest time they make a kind of ritual. First is Tandur (cultivate ceremony), after that harvest ceremony with the cow slaughter, means away form the disaster and succeed in harvest. After slaughter the cow will be cut on the some parts, nose, ears, eyes, legs etc for sesaji (serve the food to ancestor). Finally, the meat is distributed to the people in that village, and then puppet/wayang kulit will be shown for the closing ceremony.