1978-82

The Madra Homestay becomes a destination for musicians, artists, and writers

By 1978, with four cottages in place, the homestay had acquired a word-of-mouth reputation as a place not only to study Balinese culure, but also learning to perform within it.

Andy Toth, one of several American musicians and serious gamelan scholars who lived and worked there in the 1970s, became a close friend of Ketut Madra and a deep admirer of his paintings. By the 1980s, he had become the American consular officer in Sanur and frequently recommended the homestay as the place for visiting scholars to begin their stay in Bali.

Michel Picard spent almost three years living at the Madra Homestay during its early pondok era. In a March 2021 email, he wrote: 

“Unfortunately, I had not heard of Ketut’s pondok when I first came to Bali in 1974. In 1978, on my second trip I settled in for about nine months, first in the cottage to the west and then the one to the northeast. One of my neighbors that year was [the American anthropologist and friend of Margaret Mead] Hildred Geertz, who had returned to do further research in Bali. Another was [the American composer and musicologist] Michael Tenzer. It was only on my third trip, beginning in late 1979 that I moved into THE legendary first pondok, which I proudly occupied until late 1982. These years in Bali were certainly the most beautiful and interesting of my life.”

Michel’s are the only currently known photos that capture the interior living space of Pondok Number One. The textiles on the walls and desk–all purchased in Bali–inspired, in part, his later travels in the mid-1980s throughout Nusa Tenggara Timur. 

Left: Michel Picard in 1981 at the front steps to the pondok. Right: Michel in the SW corner working on his doctoral dissertation, published in English in 1996 as Bali: Cultural Tourism and Touristic Culture. The window behind his head is part of the front door. He faces the window above the desk looking to the west.
Left: The view from the west window across the rice fields toward Pengosekan just beyond the trees in the distance. The textiles on the wall are a woman’s sarong from eastern Sumba (left) and a man’s cloth from West Timor, as is the cloth on the desk, which is more visible in the previous photo. Right: The bed in the northeast corner of the pondok’s living room, guest room, and office also served for guest seating and as a generally useful surface for all tasks. The textiles on the wall are, left to right, a ceremonial cloth from Toraja in South Sulawesi, a woman’s sarong from Savu, and a man’s shoulder wrap from Roti.
  • Ketut Madra Homestay
Left: The eastern window next to the bed and the adjacent small forest of bamboo, with Balinese shadow puppets [name to come, left] and Bima above. To the right a woman’s sarong from the island that was then called West Timor hangs in the southeast corner. Right: Looking north to the pondok from the rice fields. The boys are using the long stick to catch dragonflies, which may be fried as a crispy snack or used as bait to catch frogs for a family dinner.