NEW ENGLAND GAMELAN WEEKEND (return to main page) Abstracts Saturday, April 20 Kuwat (STSI Surakarta) Kronologi Peristiwa Musik Bambu Banyumas Tulisan ini bermaksud mengungkap secara komprehensip tentang musik bongkel yang selama ini disebut-sebut sebagai cikal-bakal angklung dan calung Banyumas. Anggapan ini cukup beralasan, sebab bila dimati secara cermat, antara keduanya sebagaian besar mengacu pada bongkel. Hal ini terlihat jelas pada bentuk fisik instrumen, bahan baku, proses pembuatan, system pelarasan, struktur komposisi,dan teknik permainan dari beberapa instrumen. Bongkel adalah salah satu bentuk musik rakyat yang terdapat di desa Gerduren, Banyumas (Jawa Tengah). Musik ini didukung sebuah instrumen perkusi (sejenis angklung bambu), berlaras slendro. Dalam satu bingkai terdapat empat tabung nada berbeda. Cara memainkan digoyang dan digatarkan menggunakan kedua tangan, serta diikuti tutupan jari-jari tertentu untuk menentukan nada. Karakteristik permainan bongkel terletak pada jalinan ritmis antara keempat tabung nada. Dalam perkembangannya bentuk jalinan-jalinan ini mengilhami lahirnya lain yang sejenis yaitu angklung, krumpyung dan calung. Bongkel pada awalnya berfungsi sebagai musik hiburan petani ketika berada di ladang, dan dalam perkembangannya kini bergeser menjadi musik jalanan (ngamen) dan musik ronda (jaga malam). Secara musikal bongkel memiliki teknik permainan tinggi, unik, khas, dan tidak ada duanya baik di Banyumas, maupun di daerah Indonesia. Berdasarkan analisis fisik, musikalitas, dan fungsi dapat diketahui bahwa bongkel termasuk musik bambu tertua di Banyumas. Setelah melalui proses perjalanan panjang genre musik ini diduga mendapat pengaruh gamelan kemagan dan ringgeng yakni perangkat gamelam kecil yang biasa digunakan untuk mengiringi lengger dan ebeg. Dari bongkel berkembang menjadi buncis, dari buncis berkembang menjadi krumpyung, dan dari krumpyung menjadi calung. Marc Perlman (Stanford Humanities Center and Brown University) Cultural Models of Performance: The Balinese Concept of Taksu Ethnomusicologists have long been aware that the concept of "music" varies between cultures. The notion of "performance" is similarly variable: ideas of what performance is and how it is evaluated, of what makes a good performer and a good performance, may differ from one society to another. The idea of performance is in some ways mysterious: a performance can be strangely compelling; musical sounds can move people to dance or weep, and it is not obvious how they do this. Furthermore, some people are better performers than others, and it is not always obvious why. Finally, even a single performer will give performances of varying quality: some days he or she will be inspired, or "in the zone"-and some days not. Again, there may be no obvious reason why. I assume that the idea of performance is culturally constructed, that performers make sense of these mysteries by drawing on conceptual resources and models made available to them by their society. To illustrate this claim, I offer a preliminary analysis of taksu as it is used by several Balinese performers, exploring religious, magical, and psychological interpretations of the concept. I Nyoman Sedana Kawi Dalang: Creativity In Wayang Theatre While wayang theatre has a fixed structure and stock dramatic characters, creativity and improvisation play a major role in the way the dalang puppeteer shapes a performance. The creativity serves as the "soul" of wayang and transmits cultural traditions from one generation to another. This study examines the creativity of the dalang in the performance of Balinese wayang theatre. Due to the dynamic nature of its constituent parts it is possible to consider these innovations within a particular paradigm, that is Trisandi "the interplay of Genre-Scenario-Character." After exploring the interplay within the genre, story, and characters, the study analyzes the creativity in plot construction, recounting the process of selecting a play and transforming narration into dialogue, complemented by the six fundamental principles of constructing a play and originating the story. Then it explores other elements of creativity such as selecting puppets, naming the characters and locale of the action, puppet construction and manipulation, scenery and stage business, jokes and social criticism, creating puns, modifying and creating poetry, and making creative responses to any unexpected and expected happenings during a performance. The study provides two examples of how puppeteers introduce creativity into a performance. One example is taken from a performance of dalang Wija in south Bali, and the other is taken from dalang Sudarma in the north Bali. Ultimately, this study may help to clarify a common misconception among western spectators and scholars alike, that Asian theatre forms are generally strictly codified and lack originality in content and form. Maria Mendonça (Wesleyan University) Javanese Gamelan in Britain What is behind the popularity of gamelan performance outside Indonesia? My doctoral research has attempted to tackle this oft-posed question through considering the development of one type of gamelan, Central Javanese, in one region (Britain). The answer has involved locating gamelan performance in a network of regional and international affiliations, both contemporary and historical, at the same time describing the interplay with supercultural ideologies and a wide range of personal motivations and musical interests on the part of the performers. Certainly, with the diversity of the people involved (even in Britain), no single reason has sufficed. Gamelan has "struck a chord" with a wide variety of people for an equally wide variety of reasons. In the course of this presentation it will be suggested, however, that a significant part of the appeal of Javanese gamelan in Britain (both to individuals, and - on an ideological level - to British music education, which has been a particular nurturer of gamelan activity) is its perceived ability to represent a "utopian musical community" on a number of levels, suggesting parallels to and applications of Turner"s tripartite notion of "communitas". Neil Sorrell (University of York) 20 years of new gamelan in old York, old England I will outline and illustrate some of the ways that England's first Javanese gamelan in a teaching institution, Gamelan Sekar Petak, at the University of York, has been used in the 20 years of its existence. As well as attempting to establish a unique identity--indeed, all gamelans have unique identities--through its adaptation to York's sonic and intellectual environment, the kinds of creativity within the group, and the adaptations of the gamelan to other contexts and art forms, I consider the wayward relationship of the gamelan to its 'parent' culture and pose the questions when a gamelan is not a gamelan, and how is it presented to audiences completely unfamiliar with Javanese music? Sarah Weiss (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) The Enigma of Sameness and the Search for Form in Grimingan for Old-Style Central Javanese Wayang What is grimingan and how does it work? Trying to understand over 200 hours of recorded solo gender accompaniment for old-style Central Javanese wayang performance, the search for answers to these questions lead me to conduct formal analysis on music which is necessarily flexible almost to the point of being "formless". In this paper I present a culturally-contexted analysis of the "process" of grimingan. Advocating a flexible interpretation of the concept of "sameness," I suggest that grimingan in each pathet exist as a kind of "inner melody," realized only by the gender. Michael Tenzer (University of British Columbia) Further Approaches to Musical Periodicity Ethnomusicological studies of the semiotics of periodicity include the Beckers' (1981) depiction of iconicity in Javanese musical time, and Monson's (1999) projection of Afro-American periodicity concepts on to theories of globalization. Both articles extend music structure conventions to higher levels of (cultural) metaphor, asserting that musical concepts can be generalized to support understanding across epistemologies. In this paper I first examine a mid-20th century Balinese composition (Oleg Tumbulilingan) in detail, noting its highly multidimensional and unique periodic construction, which is organized in numerous asymmetrical layers distributed among musical elements skeletal structure, phrasing, tempo, and surface melodic style. I then inquire into the implications of the analysis, in the light of previous scholars' findings as well as my own. How do uniquely detailed individual compositions interact with normative periodic background structures? How can this level of interaction inform our discussions about contemporary cultural interaction? And how shall we interpret and correlate the similarities and differences among complex periodic structures world-wide, especially in light of their equally complex and varied social contexts? Bob Brown (President, Center for World Music, San Diego) The Beginnings of Gamelan in America Part I will be an eye-witness account of the early manifestations of the gamelan movement in this country, including both performance and teaching, as it emerged at UCLA and was further developed at Wesleyan University, California Institute of the Arts, and at the Center for World Music in Berkeley, California. Comments on these programs will be illustrated with a showing of slides, intended to give a sense of the early history and foundations of what has become an ever burgeoning movement throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. Part II will touch on the philosophy behind this early development and speculate as to how it may have changed or been modified over nearly fifty years of continuous growth. Sunday, April 21 Jody Diamond (Dartmouth College) Composing Indonesia Edward Herbst (City College of New York) Circa 1928: Listening to the Oldest New Music of Bali The 1928 Odeon-Beka discs of Balinese gamelan were the first recordings of Balinese music, and chronicle the very beginnings of a major twentieth-century music and dance form, kebyar, as well as nascent innovations in other genres. Selections from this collection have recently been released on CD (World Arbiter). In the 1920s, Gamelan Gong Kebyar and related dances were just starting to be heard from North to South, and the compositions from Belaluan, Pangkung, Busung Biu, and Kuta represented a revolutionary shift in musical and choreographic esthetics. What can we--and contemporary Balinese musicians--learn from these recordings? How did choreographers influence musical innovations and how did the new compositional styles of music accommodate new dramatic forms? Older gamelans were being melted down to provide bronze for new, streamlined orchestras, accommodating new playing techniques to accommodate the modernist sensibility. The recordings offer an aural lens with which to listen back in time to the energy and momentum in the birth of a truly twentieth-century genre, shedding light on strategies of free rhythm, juxtaposition, recombination, group dynamics, and playfulness. My recent opportunity to share these hitherto unavailable recordings with colleagues in Bali, young and old, has startled some and unearthed old memories of others, leading to a few new perspectives on the music and its time. Andy McGraw (Wesleyan University) Forces for Change and Sources of Inspiration in Balinese Musik Kontemporer In this paper I am going to tease out the various meanings of musik kontemporer or musik baru as it is composed and performed in Bali. I identify three strains of new music that inform the development of musik kontemporer on the island: kreasi baru, musik nusantara and kollaborasi. Instead of focusing on the music itself or presenting detailed structural analyses of musik kontenmporer works, I will discuss the compositional processes and cultural conditions involved in their production. Rather than painting a picture of Balinese composers or Balinese music as being the hapless victim of inevitable cultural change primarily through the forces of westernization and globalization, I paint a more nuanced scene in which Balinese artists creatively work in and take inspiration from a changing world where Balinese culture increasingly intersects with other cultures (Indonesian, American, Japanese, Indian, African etc.). Finally, I suggest that the most salient and powerful aspects of Balinese musical experimentalism are, despite an increasingly multicultural influence, mainly a result of developments in and reactions to indigenous Balinese forms. Ann Warde (Cornell University) Social Organization in New Music for Gamelan Composers of new works for Javanese court gamelan have often viewed the ensemble as representing a specific "traditional" orientation. This viewpoint has generally been incorporated into the construction of their works, and is evident in the social configuration of the ensemble as well as ways in which materials from karawitan are (or are not) handled. This study investigates links between the performer configuration and specific aspects of the overall sonic result of pieces by composers who have merged distinct conceptualizations of "contemporary music" with materials and conceptualizations of "traditional music." Gending (1975), by the Dutch composer Ton de Leeuw, applies a western chamber orchestra model to the gamelan ensemble -- players work from notated parts and follow a conductor. The composition makes use of only timbral references to traditional karawitan material. Music for Gamelan Instruments, Microphones, Amplifiers, and Loudspeakers (1994) by the American composer Alvin Lucier, removes individual pencon instruments (bonang and kenong) from their usual physical arrangement in the ensemble and focuses on their acoustic characteristics. Players participate in a contingent performance structure which requires independent judgement concerning when and how to make sounds. Nini Thowok (1970's), by the Javanese composer Ki Nartosabdo, incorporates musical patterns and gestures from several different musical styles found within Indonesia. As in traditional karawitan, the kendang leads the tempo of the ensemble. However, because non-traditional improvisational structures are not present, the structure of the social configuration of the players is altered. Chris Miller (Wesleyan University) The Sound of Stretched Time Discussions of formal and rhythmic aspects of Javanese gamelan music have, for the most part, focused on either technical explanations or symbolic, iconic or epistemological significance. This paper investigates rhythm and form from an experiential perspective. In particular, it is concerned with identifying how Javanese gamelan music gives rise to a sense of stretched time. Gendhing Monggang Ñ a piece which figures prominently in key writings by Judith and Alton Becker, and Stanley Hoffman Ñ is discussed in considerably greater detail, and analyzed in terms of psychological principles of time perception. Hypotheses drawn are related generally to the standard repertoire of Javanese gamelan. Sumarsam (Wesleyan University) Iconic Reading of Gamelan Revisited Judith Becker has argued that "coincidences" in the musical structure of gamelan is iconic with Javanese notions of time and event. This paper is an attempt to expand the discussion of the concept of "iconicity". Particularly, the processual dynamic of the overall, complex stylistic, multi-layered gamelan performance, their iconic with the Javanese social structure and interaction, will be knocked about. Nur Intan Murtadza (University of Toronto) Gamelan: A community music activity that became part of the World Music curriculum for Toronto's schools in Canada This paper will look at a particular case study of gamelan as a community music activity in Toronto, Canada. It will reflect on the experiences of teaching gamelan to students in grades 7 - 8 in Toronto and discuss the ways in which gamelan community music practices co-exist with the Toronto District School Board, one of the main stream educational institutions in Toronto, Canada. Gamelan reflects community music-making practices in the following ways: Music is taught and learned through active participation. There is an emphasis on active musical knowing. The teaching-learning context features multiple student/teacher relationships, roles and processes. Teachers/students recognize that participants' social and personal growth experiences are as important as their musical progress. Teachers/students often believe in the value and use of music to foster inter-cultural acceptance and understanding. The paper will also address the larger issue of the relationship between community music schools/groups and institutions for music education and I will try to answer the following questions: How can the experiences from community music activities feed into main stream institutions? When community music activities become part of a larger institute, how does the co-existence work?