Balinese gamelan music goes global

Ni Komang Erviani, The Jakarta Post, Denpasar | Thu, 02/10/2011

There are 300 groups of international students and artists who are now learning Balinese traditional gamelan music in schools, universities and non-profit organizations across the world, an official said Wednesday.

Ketut Suastika, head of the Bali Cultural Agency, told The Jakarta Post that many universities in Australia, the United States, Germany, Italy, France, Britain and Japan have established sekaa (groups) of gamelan orchestras.

“Indonesian Embassies in countries overseas also have sekaa ga-melan,” said Suastika.

He went on to say that the international interest in learning gamelan music has greatly benefitted Bali in terms of the cultural preservation of gamelan music and in promoting tourism.

“Gamelan music has an enchanting power that mesmerizes so many of the people who hear the beauty of its sounds,” Suastika said.

In Bali, the once-male dominated gamelan groups are now reaching out to wider players — women and children. Almost every banjar (traditional customary village) across Bali has male and female sekaa gamelan as well as children’s and teen sekaa gamelan.

Amid the deluge of MTV music shows, gamelan music and traditional dance performances played by teen artists are still alive and kicking on the island of Bali.

“We are not too worried about the current musical and entertainment trends entering households in Bali.

Gamelan will remain our valuable heritage and I am glad that young people are now playing them enthusiastically,” he said.

To prevent any possible claims of gamelan ownership from other countries, the Cultural Agency will soon obtain gamelan music’s intellectual property rights as part of Bali’s cultural wealth.

“Everybody in the world knows that Bali is the home of gamelan music. It belongs to the people of Bali,” he said.

I Wayan Rai, rector of the Institute of the Arts (ISI) Denpasar, added that his institution has conducted a study since 1983 on gamelan practices in overseas countries.

“There are 17 types of Balinese gamelan that are currently played by international artists,” the rector said.

Among the gamelan types are gong kebyar, pelegongan, angklung, bleganjur, joged bumbung, jegog, gender wayang, selonding and many others.

“In Japan alone, there are 52 groups of Javanese and Balinese sekaa gamelan,” he said.

Many major universities in the United States have established Balinese gamelan groups.

He cited as examples Tunas Mekar sekaa gamelan in Denver, Colorado, Gamelan Sekaa Anyar from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA); Gamelan Sekar Jaya in San Fransisco, California, and Gamelan Galak Tika from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Masschusetts.

He also said many foreigners come to Bali to learn gamelan music directly from its masters.

“There are numerous masters of gamelan music in Bali who are willing to share their musical talents with local and foreign students.

There are also many Balinese traditional musicians who are now staying abroad as artists in residence in various universities,” said Wayan Rai.

The flourishing of gamelan music should encourage Indonesian youth to love their music tradition in addition to appreciating other types of Western music, the rector said.

The Sounds of Bali Find an Audience in the United States

Jakarta Globe, Lara Pellegrinelli | December 12, 2010

The floors of New York City’s music halls attain various states of cleanliness. Few ensembles are in a better position to observe them up close than the Balinese ensemble Gamelan Dharma Swara.

Gamelan Dharma Swara, an ensemble based out of the
Indonesian Consulate in New York City, just released
it first album, a two-disc set. (Photo courtesy
of www.dharmaswara.org)

In an October performance at a West Village club, its musicians sat cross-legged behind an array of glittering bronze percussion instruments on the black basement floor, a linoleum surface one suspects began as some other color.

Pool-playing patrons sat next to more sober listeners on beer-stained sofas.

It might seem far from Bali in spirit, but the music’s spectacular brightness attracted a rogue dog, something you might encounter in any temple courtyard.

Home for Dharma Swara is not Indonesia itself, but rather its consulate in New York.

That converted town house has a basketball court’s worth of hardwood on which to rehearse. Membership in the group is open to anyone.

The set of instruments — gongs, xylophones, drums and flutes — accommodates about 20 players.

Some are Balinese, but most are not.

The ensemble serves both to promote Balinese music and dance and, in a practical sense, to support diplomatic events.

The performers are roving diplomats themselves.

In addition to sundry clubs and concert halls, they have performed on the carpets of the United Nations, in the lobbies of museums, at college auditoriums and in the gardens of private patrons.

A flurry of dates last year helped raise money for a summer tour of Bali.

Last Sunday the group celebrated the release of its first album, a double CD set titled “Gamelan Dharma Swara,” with a concert in Greenwich Village.

An offering dance, a traditional form of temple worship performed with a nimble trio of women, honored the audience in a shower of flower petals.

The program also featured Pan Wandres’s Kebyar Legong (1914), a 30-minute tour de force with such explosive shifts of mood and tempo that few groups try to perform it — even in Bali.

The sound of gamelan ensembles, which have distinct Javanese and Balinese forms, became known to Western classical music connoisseurs through Debussy, Ravel and other composers who found its tonalities novel and inspiring.

In the 1930s, a young Canadian named Colin McPhee (1900-64) began drawing on gamelan’s interlocking melodic patterns in his own music, and his works and a later book of research became reference points for Balinese music in the West.

“In some ways Colin McPhee had the wrong impression of Balinese music,” said Pak I Nyoman Saptanyana, Dharma Swara’s artistic director since 2001.

“He preserved the older forms at the expense of all the new 20th-century styles. He didn’t see this as a living tradition that should continue to evolve.”

As in McPhee’s time, Balinese music continues to be swept up in romantic fantasies of the primitive and exotic, which Westerners frequently confuse with authenticity.

“Bali still serves as an icon of the mysterious premodern East,” said Andrew McGraw, the executive director of Dharma Swara.

“It satisfies a neo-liberal nostalgia for community and spirituality.

“Gamelan in the US is as much, if not more, a story about us than an accurate representation of Indonesian culture.”

It’s a story told by scores of gamelan ensembles across North America, many of which trace their roots to Mantle Hood, a pioneering ethnomusicologist who believed that scholars should learn to perform the traditions that they study.

In 1958 he started the first US-based gamelan at the University of California, Los Angeles, and trained the leaders of a hundred more.

At least that many ensembles exist today, on college campuses and as community groups like Dharma Swara.

Although the roster changes from year to year, Dharma Swara tends to include both emerging and established talents on the new music scene.

Recent members include the bagpiper Matt Welch (Blarvuster), the trombonist and instrument builder Richard Marriott (Club Foot Orchestra) and the percussionist Michael Lipsey (Talujon), who starts his own gamelan ensemble at Queens College in January.

“The learning process makes you use your brain in a completely different way,” said flutist Jessica Schmitz, co-director of the Asphalt Orchestra.

New pieces are taught by rote without notation, which requires deep understanding of musical structure as well as attention to detail. Because multiple parts combine to create a single melody, players depend on one another to rehearse as well as perform.

Saptanyana also notes that half the members are composers, some of whom have contributed to Dharma Swara’s repertory.

During Dharma Swara’s Balinese tour, audiences applauded wildly for an original work by McGraw, “Sikut Sanga,” which appropriates swaths of melody from “New York, New York” and “A Night in Tunisia.”

Next week one work will be a world premiere, by Saptanyana’s 18-year-old son, Putu, who performs on multiple instruments.

“I brainstormed using all the music I’ve ever heard and picked some ideas that I liked,” said Putu Saptanyana, who has spent as much time around New York City as in his Balinese village, Ubud.

As the audience ponders its intricately layered pulse and shimmer, few would suspect that the young composer does his most intensive listening to gamelan while he plays his Xbox 360.

The New York Times

Related Article:

Why Not Feed Indonesia to the World?

Balinese gamelan shakes Russian music

Antara News, Monday, August 30, 2010 20:51 WIB | Entertainment

Jakarta  (ANTARA News) - The clink of Balinese traditional music, Gamelan, performed by a team from Indonesian Fine Arts Institute of Denpasar shook Russian music community, a release from the Secretary of the Indonesia Embassy in Moscow, Johannes O S Manginsela, said Monday.

The Indonesian team initiated their performance in the Philharmonic in Tula, 200 Km from Moscow.

With the theme "The color of Indonesia", the performance was part of the 60th anniversary of Indonesia-Russia diplomatic relations at the Indonesia Embassy, the Indonesian Fine Arts Institute of Denpasar, and supported by the Indonesia Education Ministry.

The Gamelan and Indonesian dance performances dazzled about 750 spectators at the theater in the hometown of the great Russian writer, Leo Tolstoy.

At the end of the performance, the spectators applauded and exclaimed `malajet...malajet,` which means great.

The Indonesia Fine Art Institute`s team also managed to mesmerize the Moscow art community in Rachmaninov Hall, Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory.

Some 200 spectators crammed the concert hall of the most prestigious school of classical music in Russia.

At the end of the show, the spectators kept applauding continuously that the Balinese artists had to drag themselves back to the main stage to perform an encore of additional Gamelan play for at least another 3 minutes as the final performance which was applauded by the spectators with a standing ovation.

The Gamelan play served as a background music of Indonesian dances such as Selat Segara from Bali, Padang Bulan from E Java, Oleg Tambulingan from Bali, Pakerana of Sulawesi, Mandau, Garuda, and Berburu from Papua.

Saman dance from Aceh, however, was accompanied by live traditional music relying the prime acoustic design of the concert hall without speakers or sound system.

Indonesia Ambassador to Moscow, Hamid Awaludin said the Indonesian art and culture exhibition and performance, which was artistic and cultural diplomacy, can encourage the development of Indonesian tourism sector.

The Russians who had known Bali as one of the tourism objects were expected to know Indonesia entirely through Bali.

The 60th anniversary of Indonesia-Russia diplomatic relations was a great momentum to improve the relations between the two countries.

Meanwhile, Margaritha Karatygina of the Moscow International relations department Tchaikovsky Conservatory appreciated and welcomed the success of Indonesia Fine Art Institute of Denpasar, and believed that the success will encourage Russian students to study Eastern music, especially Gamelan.

Indonesia has a very rich cultures, assistant rector of the Indonesia Fine Art Institute of Denpasar, I Wayan Suweca said, adding that the Institute presented a `Nusantara Package`.

Russia was one of the countries rich in arts and cultures with high appreciations, he said.

Both countries had potentials to develop cooperation in art and culture and the Art Institute of Denpasar was willing and ready to establish cooperation with the Russian Art institute, he said.

  

Indonesia's Gamelan Music Finds Ears Overseas

Jakarta Globe, Report Candra Malik | July 29, 2010

When Joko Sutrisno first started working at the Minnesota State University Moorhead, the gamelan set was unused because nobody knew how to play it. (JG Photos/Candra Malik)

Related articles

• American Academic Bangs the Drum for Javanese Gamelan 10:09am Dec 1, 2009
• World’s First Robotic Gamelan Orchestra Gaining Fans in US 5:13pm Aug 5, 2009
• A Maestro of Many Cultures 6:23pm May 13, 2010
• Sounds of Archipelago Create Unique Harmony 4:44pm May 10, 2010
• A Flower in The Eve of Her Bloom 6:25pm Jul 22, 2010

Joko Sutrisno made a bold decision to uproot his family from New Zealand, leave a secure and well-paying job at the Indonesian Embassy and move halfway across the world in 1995 to Minnesota, all for the love of Indonesian gamelan music.

At the time, Joko was working at the Indonesian Embassy in New Zealand. He also occasionally taught how to play the traditional Javanese musical instrument set — comprising of percussion instruments such as bamboo xylophones and wooden or bronze chimes — at the University of Victoria in Wellington.

But he could not resist the temptation of a job posting from the Minnesota State University Moorhead for what Joko said was someone to “babysit the gamelan.”

“I started a new life with a meager salary of only $500 in Minnesota,” Joko told the Jakarta Globe in Solo last week. “The amount was $1,000 less than what I earned before in New Zealand, in addition to the income I got from teaching gamelan at the university.”

But the man was on a mission — to make the rich sound of gamelan music come to life and acquaint an audience with its ancient philosophy in a country far away from home.

“Personally, I felt challenged about bringing gamelan music to America. [The university] already had a gamelan set, but it wasn’t being played,” he said.

Joko made the move to the United States with his wife, Tri Supartini, and his children Irma Hapsari Ahadiah, Nanda Sutrisno and Ratih Sutrisno after living in New Zealand for eight years.

“My wife supported the decision although she knew it would not be easy for us,” Joko said.

Born in Sragen, Central Java, on March 6, 1963, Joko was brought up in an environment where gamelan was a big part of everyday life. His mother is a pesinden , a singer of classical Javanese songs.

However, Joko’s father did not approve of his musical aspirations, and Joko did not get a chance to study the instrument formally until after he finished his first degree.

“He wanted me to be a teacher like him. Now I can say that I am very thankful for having them as my parents because they were the first people to introduce me to the gamelan,” he said.

Joko studied at a teacher’s college for three years before attending the Surakarta Institute of Arts in Solo, where he learned composition and performing arts.

Upon his graduation in 1987, Joko took the opportunity to work at the Indonesian Embassy in New Zealand.

When Joko first started out at Minnesota State University Moorhead, the gamelan set had been gathering dust because nobody knew how to play it.

The university bought the instruments from a remote town in Bekonang near Solo to be displayed at its school of music, where Asian music was taught.

Joko decided to take matters into his own hands and established a program for students interested in learning to play the instruments.

The Schubert Club — a nonprofit organization founded in 1882 in St. Paul, Minnesota, that seeks to promote music — sponsored the extracurricular program.

As more students took up the course, the university gradually provided Joko with more facilities.

With gamelan experiencing a surge in popularity, Joko decided to form an orchestra and the Sumunar Gamelan and Dance Ensemble was born in 1996.

“It was my idea to have a gamelan ensemble that could illuminate and give warmth to people who listen to it, like how gamelan sounds can do to me,” Jako said, adding that in Javanese sumunar means glowing.

To promote the ensemble and to encourage better appreciation of gamelan among Americans, Joko tirelessly organized programs and events. He even held a gamelan camp where people of all ages could learn how to play the instruments.

His hard work bore fruit and in 2000, gamelan became a formal subject of study at the university.

“It’s no longer a mere extracurricular activity,” Joko said, adding that the instrument’s surge in popularity at the institution also indirectly boosted the gamelan-making industry in Bekonang.

Joko’s persistent effort to share the Javanese cultural treasure of gamelan with the people of Minnesota has been a success.

The Sumunar Ensemble has performed at concert halls, museums, public libraries, schools and even in interstates.

Joko also won numerous awards from the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Jerome Foundation, the Young Audiences of Minnesota and the American Composers Forum.

Joko’s projects even include creating gospel song rearrangements on gamelan for songs such as “The Holy Mana,” “The Foundation,” “Shady Grove” and “Wondrous Love.”

He also released two gamelan albums with the Sumunar Ensemble, “Sumunar” (2001) and “Sayuk” (“Togetherness” in 2008).

Some of Jako’s students have even become instructors at other schools and universities and gamelan is now a formal subject at the University of South Dakota’s school of music.

Joko was in Indonesia last week with his American gamelan students on a study tour.

The group, who were invited by the Ministry of National Education, performed at the 15th Yogyakarta Gamelan Festival on July 18, as well as in Jakarta, Bandung and Solo.

Aaron Victorin-Vangerud, 18, a member of the Sumunar Ensemble who came to Indonesia as part of the study tour group, said that he fell in love with gamelan after he inspired by Joko in 2008.

“I saw him playing the kempul and gong [both part of the gamelan orchestra] in my class. I thought it would be nice to play it. Since then, I opted for a career as a gamelan musician,” said Vangerud, who is majoring in percussion study.

“To come to Indonesia and play gamelan in front of Javanese people was exciting, frightening and mostly a great honor,” he said.

Neal Hines, a lake and water pollution researcher, said that playing the Javanese instruments was for him a unique spiritual experience.

“Gamelan teaches us how to listen and to synchronize our beat with one another,” he said. “Joko played a huge role in helping us understand this music.”