<![CDATA[This study examines the ambivalent position of Banyumasan female sinden—valued as guardians of a living musical tradition yet constrained by patriarchal and Islamic-Javanese normative expectations—and the forms of agency they mobilize to negotiate voice, body, and artistic decision-making. Framed by the cablaka (direct, egalitarian) ethos that distinguishes Banyumasan performance culture from the more hierarchical Mataraman courtly tradition, the study employs a qualitative phenomenological casestudy design enriched by ethnographic sensibilities. Data were generated through in-depth interviews with six purposively and snowball-sampled informants—a senior karawitan trainer, two junior sinden, a dalang, a cultural observer, and an audience member—together with four months (February–May 2025) of participatory observation and documentation in Karanglewas, Banyumas Regency. Thematic analysis, triangulated across sources and techniques, reveals that aesthetic standards, stage structure, and social perception constrain creative space. In response, sinden exercise agency through vocal improvisation, repertoire curation blending classical gendhing with campursari and dangdut, stage-aesthetic adaptation, and interpersonal negotiation with dalang and musicians. Verbatim testimony indicates that vocal acoustics—volume, timbre, and cengkok ornamentation—and the spatial arrangement of the gamelan/wayang stage function simultaneously as disciplinary technologies and as resources sinden use to resignify gendered norms, thereby extending Judith Butler's concept of gender performativity beyond its predominantly visual applications. The findings underscore agency as a negotiated practice within intersecting patriarchal and religio-cultural structures, and support culturalpreservation policy that formally involves sinden in artistic decisionmaking.]]>
