(b Wedi, Central Java, 25 Aug 1925; d Central Java, 1985). Javanese gamelan musician, composer and dhalang (shadow puppeteer). He was born the youngest of eight children in a poor family; after several years at an Islamic school and then at a Roman Catholic school, he left home to perform music with various itinerant kethoprak (folk theatre) troupes. He specialized in drumming and in 1945 his skills gained him the position of musical director with one of the most prestigious wayang orang (dance-drama) troupes in Java, Ngesti Pandowo, based in Semarang on the north coast of Java. There he began to compose light gamelan pieces, often with humorous content and introduced by the popular punakawan (clown-servants) of the wayang orang. At Ngesti Pandowo he sometimes also took the role of dhalang (narrator/singer of mood songs in wayang orang) and soon began performing as dhalang (shadow puppeteer) for performances of wayang kulit (shadow play). His first public performance as a dhalang of wayang kulit took place in 1955 in Yogyakarta; in 1958 he began to perform for broadcasts on the national radio station, Radio Republik Indonesia (RRI). In addition to his activities as shadow-play dhalang, involving numerous live engagements and commercial cassette recordings of all-night (eight-hour) shadow plays, he maintained an active musical career until his death, composing many pieces, arranging pieces from various regional traditions of Java and playing drum for commercial gamelan music recordings. In 1969 he formed the gamelan group Condhong Raos, which for more than 15 years was widely recognized as one of the top gamelan groups in all of Java.
