Kecak is nothing but a Balinese form of dance and music drama. It originated in Bali in 1930. It is mostly or generally and primarily performed by men. Although very few women Kecak dancers do exists. It is commonly referred as Ramayana Monkey Chant. It is the piece, which is performed by a circle of around 150 or even more performers, wearing some beautiful checked cloth around their waists, chanting the cak and throwing their arm up in air. This scenario actually depicts a famous battle from Ramayana, where the vanaras similar to monkey helped lord Rama to fight the evil king Ravana. However Kecak has deep roots in sanghyang, which is nothing but, trance inducing exorcism dance.

Kecak was originally a trance ritual, which was ultimately accompanied by male chorus. A rich and famous German musician as well as a painter became deeply interested in this particular ritual, while staying in Bali in 1930 and worked really hard to recreate it into a wonderful drama. This script is generally based upon the Hindu Ramayana including the wonderful dance, presented specially to the respected western tourists’ audiences. This excellent transformation is exactly the same of what Sir James Clifford described as a part of the Modern Art Culture System, in which, particularly the central power adopts, consumes and transforms non western or peripheral cultural elements. The spies worked with the Wayan Limbak, and Limbak popularized the dance in a very well manner. Limbak popularized this dance by travelling throughout the world with the Balinese dance groups. This hard work by Limbak proved to be successful. Travelling all over the world made Kecak dance very famous all over the world. People all over the world came to know about kecak dance. People from every corner of the world became interested in this form dance, known as Kecak dance.

I Wayan Dibia, who is a scholar as well as a performer as well as a choreographer, cited a contrasting and interesting theory that the Balinese were developing the form when spies had already arrived on the island. A very famous dancer I Limbak had incorporated Baris movements into the cak leader role during the 1920s.

Film on Kecak dance

- In the year 1971, a new version of Kenneth Anger's Rabbit's Moon incorporates Kecak into the beautiful soundtrack.

- Footage of a kecak performance is prominently featured in Ron Fricke's 1992 film Baraka.

- A kecak chant can be heard in Federico Fellini's classic 1969 film Satyricon. It was probably sampled from David Lewiston's 1969 LP of Balinese music entitled Golden Rain, released on the Nonesuch Explorer Series.

- Dagger of Kamui, an anime film released in 1985, incorporates kecak in its score, often in action scenes involving shinobi.

- Kecak chanting is incorporated into the soundtrack for the Japanese animated film Akira (1988), which also uses the Indonesian gamelan prominently.

- Kecak is heard in I Never Promised You a Rose Garden during fantasy sequences taking place in the heroine's paracosm.

- A Kecak-style dance and chant can be seen in the fantasy portion of Tarsem Singh's film The Fall (2006), in which the Balinese actors incorporated words to describe the map being drawn.

- The chant is heard during a scene in the Coen Brothers' film Blood Simple (1985).

- A Kecak chant is shown for a few minutes close to the end of the erotic French drama Emmanuelle 2 (1975), when the main characters go to Bali.

Opera involving Kecak dance

- John Adams' "A Flowering Tree," 2006.  Kumudha and the beggar minstrels in Act II are based on the Kecak. (Cincinnati Opera pre-performance interview with the composer, 30 June 2011.)

Pop music involving Kecak dance

- A sample of Kecak chanting kicks off The Pop Group's 1980 album For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder?

- There is a sample of Kecak chanting on "The Wind Chimes" from Mike Oldfield's 1987 album Islands.

- The San Francisco Art Rock band Oxbow's song Daughter from their 1991 album King of the Jews incorporates Kecak-inspired polyrhythmic chanting and clapping throughout.

- Mike Patton performs a Kecak-like chant that is incorporated in the song "Goodbye Sober Day" on the 1999 Mr. Bungle album California. Patton had previously performed a similar passage of rhythmic chanting in the Faith No More song "Got That Feeling," from their 1997 Album of the Year.

- A sort of Kecak chant can be heard in Jade Warrior's Floating World side-B album, called simply "Monkey Chant". It has been mixed including a Jimi Hendrix’s solo guitar.

- A song from the debut album by musical group Hercules and Love Affair has an intro in the style of Kecak chanting.