10/26 - Indonesian Gamelan (ooooh....)

Caution: heavy reading forecast for today.

Indonesia is a pretty diverse place. They have more than 200 different languages, spoken on a whole lot of islands, with a lot of different cultures from island to island, sometimes a few on the same large island. Why is it such a diverse place? Well, the Dutch had to go colonize that whole region and when they left, they were like "okay, you guys are pretty close, you can be a country now," even though they were not only spread out across a huge body of water, but also had different languages, arts, belief systems and conceptions of the world. Really, Dutch people?

The music of Indonesia certainly reflects this crazy diversity. Most people are familiar with not only Indonesian pop music, but also Western pop (my textbook says "such Western stars as Britney Spears and NSync, haha) and their own regional "classical" music traditions. This reflects both the diversity of the population but also the receptiveness, probably because of centuries of outside influences. The city of Jakarta at night overflows with the sounds of nightclubs and discos, gamelan percussion ensembles of all sizes, traveling theatre troupes and even ridiculous 8-hour puppet theatre shows. I'll explain later.

Outside of Jakarta, in Yogyakarta, a smaller city, is where the indigenous, uninfluenced classical music is predominant; home to the gamelan, the ultimate percussion ensemble.

Gamelan refers to a set of instruments unified by their tuning and usually their decoration. The gamelan usually consists of metallophones, which are kinda similar to vibraphones, and tuned knobbed gongs, often with at least one drum and sometimes including wind, string, or wooden percussion instruments (think xylophone).

Gong is truly an Indonesian word.
Trivia real fast: what are the other two English words derived from Indonesian?
ketchup and amok.

Gongs in the gamelan are large, always hung. Not like a little tam-tam or the "gongs" we'll talk about later.

The two scale systems used in the Javanese gamelan are "slendro" and "pelog". Most ensembles have enough instruments to have a full sound on either scale.

             Do - Re - Mi Fa - So - La - Ti Do
Slendro: 1    2 | 3    |     | 4 5| 6   | 7    |    1
Pelog:    1       |2     |  3 |      |5    |   6  |    1

So slendro is essentially C, sharp C#, D~D#, F~F#, flat G, flat G#, A~Bb, C
And pelog is 5 equally spaced notes, C, sharp D, flat F, sharp G, flat Bb, C
Sharp D is not D#, it's just barely off, maybe a quarter of a semitone, and D~D# is the quarter tone between D and D#.

It sounds like it would hurt, but it's actually kind of cool. The scale systems were most likely developed this way because no one knew about the 12 tone scale or the Pythagorean method, they hadn't heard of anything like it yet.

Instruments:
Gong ageng: big gong, hanging
Siyem: middle gong, hanging
Kempul: smaller gong, hanging
Kenong: largest kettle gong, in sets of 2 to 12 (kettle gongs are smaller than hanging gongs)
Kethuk: small kettle gong, one for each scale system
Kempyang: two small kettle gongs for pelog.
Bonang barung: 10, 12, or 14 kettle gongs in two parallel rows, one set for each scale system.
Bonang panerus: Same as bonang barung but tuned an octave higher.
Saron demung: 6 or 7 metal keys resting over a resonator
Saron barung: "" an octave higher
Saron panerus: "" another octave higher
Gender slenthem: 6 or 7 metal keys strung over cylindrical resonators, like a vibraphone.
Gender barung: 13 or 14 keys, more octaves available.
Gender panerus: "" an octave higher
Gambang: A an extended range version of the gender.
Celempung: a zither, with 20-26 strings playing 10-13 notes (two strings per note)
Siter: smaller zither, 10-26 strings
Suling: bamboo flute
Rebab: two-stringed fiddle.
Kendhang: hand drums of various sizes
Bedhug: Stick-beaten drum.

These instruments require a great deal of work to produce; large gongs can take a month to make and can be ruined with just one poor strike.

Wow.

There's no standard arrangement of all of these on stage, but players almost always sit at right angles. The ensembles often perform with singers, like a men's chorus or female soloists, and they sing tunes to Javanese poetry. Most everything is sung instead of read in Java, even letters to nobles were written poetry style and sung.

Each gamelan has its own unique sound, since all of the instruments are handmade and probably aren't tuned exactly the same. It's not that the craftsmen are lazy though; they just have their own sense of the sound they want to produce, and tune precisely to it. The great gamelan are highly respected, given a proper name, and given offerings every Thursday evening, the beginning of the Muslim holy day.

Performances of the gamelan are traditionally not focused on the gamelan. The ensemble usually accompanies other performers (dancers, puppet shows, etc.) or plays at a social setting, like a funeral or a wedding, or to mark important events like birth.

Shadow puppet theatre is the bee's knees in Java. In the early evening, the gamelan plays an overture, and afterwards they accompany the puppeteer (yes, just one) in an 8 hour performance. The puppeteer controls the puppets, provides all of the narration and the dialogue, and "conducts" the gamelan with various signals for a third of an entire day with no intermission. Dang. The play the puppeteer produces is his own rendition of a basic story, so it's related to versions from other puppeteers, but with its own quirks. The music performed by the gamelan during the show is drawn from a repertoire of hundreds of songs, none of which are specific to a single play, and many of which are not fixed to a specific rhythm or precise melody.

I'm not even going to go into the actual written out music. It would probably take me into the wee hours of the night, and I don't really get it yet anyways.

I hope this was a little mind opening. UNT has a Gamelan and I think I'll join it next year.

M