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Gamelan music of Indonesia
Margaret Bradley (Dip. Mus. Ed. M. Mus. Cert. TESOL) writes about the influence of the gamelan on a range of musical styles. Her article makes specific reference to the Indonesian group Krakatau.
Gamelan music
In answer to the question "What is Indonesian music?", most people will mention gamelan. This traditional music, which is well-known outside Indonesia, is generally a large ensemble and is often referred to as an orchestra. It features a range of metal percussion instruments including metallophones, gongs, drums, bamboo flute and strings such as rebab (two-stringed spiked fiddle) and zither. Ensembles of various sizes are found throughout Java, Bali, Sumatra and Nusa Tenggara, including the islands of Lombok and Flores where some gongs have travelled from Java. Both Central Javanese and Balinese ensembles along with the smaller Sundanese gamelan degung have made their way abroad and are housed in Indonesian Embassies and Consulates as well as many universities from America to Singapore.
One of the first times gamelan was heard in Europe was in 1889 at the Grand Exposition in Paris. The composer Claude Debussy happened to be in the audience and the profound influence of the dulcet tones of the gamelan can be heard in his solo piano works Masques and Estampes. The gamelan has influenced the work of many western composers including the Americans Colin McPhee and Steve Reich and the Australians Anne Boyd, Peter Sculthorpe, Paul Grabowsky and Robert Lloyd. Some western composers have also written for the gamelan ensemble itself, with works such as Lou Harrison's Double Concerto for Cello and Javanese Gamelan, Jon Siddall's compositions for the Evergreen Club Gamelan Ensemble in Canada, or those of a generation of New Zealand composers (under the tutorship of composer Jack Body) such as Ross Carey and Megan Collins. They continue to develop repertoire for the local Gamelan Padhang Moncar in the University of Wellington which celebrated 25 years of gamelan in New Zealand in 1999 with the Beat! International Gamelan Festival.
Within Indonesia, various gamelan groups have developed new approaches to a traditional style, including Gamelan Kyai Kanjeng from East Java and its work with the well-known Indonesian poet Emha Ainun Najib; or Sambasunda from West Java led by Ismet Ruchimat, playing compositions which explore various instrumental ensembles including both Sundanese and Balinese gamelan together.
Ismet Ruchimat established Sambasunda in 1996, with seventeen other musicians. The name of this
ensemble comes from two sources: the samba, which is usually associated
with the Latin-American samba dance rhythm, but also a style of mask
performance from Cirebon in Jakarta. In the mask performance from Cirebon,
the character Samba describes the younger generation who always
yearn to know and try.
Sunda is a name for the region of West Java where the Sundanese
people live. Sambasunda look for various performance possibilities for
the younger generation. Their first explorations were with gamelan degung
and bamboo instruments, secondly Balinese gamelan and then Balinese
gamelan together with Sundanese salendro gamelan. Their next experiments
were with various percussion instruments including kendang, bedug and
dog dog. Their fifth exploration is with bamboo gamelan including calung
(suspended vertical lengths of bamboo) and angklung (bamboo rattles).
They also use electric bass and flute in their music to play extra notes
outside the usual scale.
With the annual Yogyakarta International Gamelan Festival held in July each year, Sapto Raharjo has assured a place for the appreciation and development of a vital contemporary role for all kinds of gamelan music. "Gamelan is a spirit, not an object, the instruments are just the medium". He expands the usual definition of the ensemble of gong chimes found in Java and Bali, and through the annual festival has showcased groups from Australia, Singapore, The Netherlands, France and the United States, as well as various cities in Indonesia: Medan and Padang Panjang in North Sumatra; Jakarta, Bandung, Surakarta, Yogyakarta and Surabaya on the island of Java; and Palu in Central Sulawesi.
Useful websites
http://surf.to/sambasunda 
The Sambasunda website.
www.gamelan.org/AGI/YGF.html
The Yogyakarta Gamelan Festival website.
www.gamelan.org
The American Gamelan Institute's website which includes a lot of useful
information and links to other relevant sites.
www.krakatau2000.com
The Krakatau website, Indonesia's leading jazz fusion group.
http://danny.oz.au/gamelan/index.html
A website about gamelan in Australia and New Zealand.
www.geocities.com/warogus2000
The website of the Australian-Indonesian group Warogus.
www.asialink.unimelb.edu.au/arts/residencies/ProRonRee.html
R on Reeve and the Earth Music project website
http://home.iprimus.com.au/wot
Website of the Sydney-based group GengGong.
Krakatau
Krakatau's background
Originating
in West Java, Indonesia's leading jazz fusion group Krakatau chose to
add traditional instruments to their lineup in 1993. Up until then Krakatau
had played mainly jazz-pop fusion. Their music's new format uses the
microtonal system of the ancient gamelan tradition, the salendro scale,
and was recorded and released in 1994 on the album Mystical Mist.
During the following years the band continued to evolve with three additional
young talented players from STSI, the traditional arts college in Bandung,
joining the gamelan section.
Krakatau in the studio
Krakatau's lineup combines modern and traditional instruments including bass, keyboard, bonang, saron peking, saron panerus, kendang, drumkit, suling, rebab, tarompet, bangsing, bedug, rebana and vocals. They purposefully use the traditional Sundanese salendro scale in order to keep the Sundanese tradition alive. In this pentatonic scale all the notes are equidistant from each other, i.e. the octave is divided into five equal parts. To those trained in hearing equal temperament, it can sound quite bent.
Krakatau also feature beluk, a calling vocal style. The Sundanese lived in mountainous areas where they sang out across the mountains so that others would know the area was inhabited.
Krakatau have adapted their instruments so they can play the Sundanese scales of pelog (134571), madenda or sorog (134671) and salendro as well as the diatonic scale. The saron peking, saron panerus and bonang have all had notes added to broaden their ranges to enable the musicians to play more than one scale.
A
similar technique was adopted in the Australian Indonesian shadow puppet
collaboration The Theft of Sita, where the Balinese composer,
I Wayan Yudane had the Balinese gender wayang custom-built to include
extra keys to enable the Balinese musicians to play the same scales
as the Australian musicians. See Sydney Morning Herald interview with
Paul Grabowsky 27/9/01 and visit the website www.performinglines.org.au under Touring 2001 for background on The Theft of Sita.)
Modified saron with keys added
Modified bonang with extra gongs
The keyboard has been especially programmed to play the salendro scale
along with the other instruments' tunings. The keyboard player must
also learn new fingerings to successfully master the new technique required.
The use of a fretless bass makes it possible to play these tunings.
Bonang and saron have extra keys and are adjusted to include several
scales used by Krakatau. In this way Krakatau employ new musical technologies
to accommodate new ideas and contemporary sounds and rhythms.
Today Krakatau has taken another step farther from their roots in West
Java to explore and adopt Indonesia's multicultural diversity to further
enrich their sounds and compositions. Their latest repertoire includes
arrangements of songs influenced by styles of music from other regions
of Indonesia (apart from Sunda, West Java) including Banyuwangi, East
Java; Makassar, Sulawesi and Padang, West Sumatra. They are continually
exploring new ideas and pushing boundaries to challenge themselves as
their tradition evolves.
Ipin playing bedug, Agus playing dogdog (back),
Yoyon playing rebana and Oseng playing kendang
Krakatau's instruments
Tarompet
The tarompet is an Indonesian (Sundanese) double-reed instrument.
Its sound resembles a clarinet or oboe but is more brittle and harsh.
In Sumatra and Malaysia this instrument is called the serunai.
Consisting of a pipe with six holes, the tarompet can produce the same
pitches as the suling (bamboo flute). The playing of the tarompet
in West Java is commonly associated with the traditional Sundanese martial
art known as pencak silat, as the instrument is used to accompany
the pencak dance. The tarompet is played by circular breathing, a blowing
technique that produces long continuous notes without pauses or gaps.
Yoyon with tarompet
Margaret playing tarompet
Suling
The suling is a Sundanese end-blown flute. It is a bamboo pipe with
six holes. Another type of suling, called suling degung, has
four holes. The suling produces soft, middle-to-low pitched sounds.
Skillful solo players are able to play long bending notes and impressive,
drawn-out melodic contours. Suling come in different lengths which determine
their key or pitch range.
suling
Margaret playing suling
Rebab
The rebab is the Indonesian (Sundanese, Javanese or Balinese)
fiddle. This two-stringed bowed instrument resembles a member of the
violin family and is the most important stringed instrument in Karawitan
(traditional music from the islands of Java and Bali) ensembles. The
rebab in gamelan music embellishes the vocal melody and serves as a
melodic guide for the composition. The sound of the rebab can be abrasive
or smooth, depending on the player's taste and the type of song being
played. Its sound can be harsh and strident or as melancholy as a Western
violin. Conventional rebabs have resonating chambers made from stretched
snake or thin goat skin, while the tarawangsa, a special type
of rebab, has a larger body made of wood. The distinctive sound of tarawangsa
fiddles is characteristic of the traditional music of Baduy, a remote
area of West Java.
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| Yoyon with rebab, suling and tarompet | Pepen playing tarawangsa |
Side
view of tarawangsa
Kendang
A set of kendang consists of one large drum and an additional two small drums. The kendang is a hand drum made of wood shaped into a tapering cylinder and is played while seated on the floor. One side of the big drum is smaller than the other, and produces high-pitched tak and plak sounds. The bigger drum head has a sound similar to a bass drum or floor tom; its size is about 30 cm in diameter and it can also produce tones with variable pitches controlled by the heel of the player's foot. The two small drums are placed on each side of the large kendang. These two small kendang are called kulanter and produce sounds like toong and poong.
kendang set
Ade playing kendang at Manly Jazz Festival 1997
Rebana
Rebana are similar to tambourines but have a thicker skin cover and only two
or three pair of metal disks fitted into slots parallel to the head.
Rebana come in different sizes; the smallest can be as small as 12 cm
in diameter and the biggest rebana can have a diameter of 45 cm. Larger
instruments sometimes lack metal disks. Rebana are usually played by
a group of 4 to 8 percussionists who play counter-rhythms or in unison.
Sometimes rattan sticks are used to strike the drum heads in order to
create louder, more percussive sounds.
Oseng with rebana
Krakatau playing rebana at Sydney University 2000
Bangsing
The bangsing is a Sundanese transverse bamboo flute. While suling is the general name for different types of flute, the bangsing is the name of a specific variety of flute used by musicians in the West Javanese city of Cirebon. It produces louder and higher pitched sounds than the Sundanese suling. Bangsing are used for dangdut music, Indonesia's most popular commercial music genre.
Efiq playing bangsing
Saron I & II
These keyed metallophone instruments consist of iron, steel or bronze keys laid across a wooden trough and held in place with posts. The keys are padded slightly with rubber or cotton rope where the metal keys come into contact with the wood. The sound is crisp and brittle. The saron is a standard instrument of Javanese and Sundanese gamelan but is fairly uncommon in Bali. The tonal range of the saron I is higher than saron II and it is struck by wooden hammer sticks instead of mallets.
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| Arif playing saron | Efiq playing saron |
Bedug
The bedung is an Indonesian bass drum played with mallets. Known
as bedug in West Java, this instrument can also be found in China,
Korea and Japan where it is used mostly for religious purposes. In Indonesia
bedug can be found in mosques, where they are traditionally used to
announce the call to prayer and the end of the fasting period. The size
of bedug varies from 48 cm to 125 cm in diameter or bigger.
Ipin playing bedug
Bonang
Bonang are Indonesian (Javanese or Sundanese) gong chimes. They are important instruments in the traditional gamelan. The bonang is a set of small knobbed gongs which are placed horizontally on a rack in one or two rows. They are a part of a family of similar rack gong sets that differ in the number and sizes of gongs used as well as in the number of rows. The bonang does not usually play the main tune; instead it plays patterns of rapidly struck notes that complement the melody. Its timbre is softer and lower than saron and has a longer sustain envelope. Bonang are played with mallets.
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| Arif playing bonang | Ipin playing bonang at Manly Jazz Festival 1997 |
Krakatau's music
These pieces are found on Krakatau's Magical Match CD available from Arimba Culture Exchange. arimbace@dot.net.au . It is Krakatau's second CD and like their earlier CD, Mystical Mist, merges eastern and western musical traditions.
Magical Match CD
cover
'Pukul Pitu'
The first excerpt is from the beginning of 'Pukul Pitu' where the kendang and bonang introduce the seven-beat motif which occurs throughout most of the piece. When the drum kit and two saron enter, the saron doubles the bonang melody. The rebab then joins them, improvising over this melody.
Throughout 'Pukul Pitu', the rebab and keyboard alternate roles, taking it in turn to improvise over the bonang melody. In the second excerpt, the keyboard has taken over from the rebab.
Krakatau punctuate the piece with rhythmic interludes in which the gamelan instruments, keyboard and drum kit, introduce a contrasting rhythmic and melodic motif. This contrasting motif occurs several times throughout the piece.
'Genjring Party'
'Genjiring Party' opens with tarompet solo before the kendang, bedug, dogdog and rebana enter. The percussionists perform their own solo, featuring interlocking rhythm patterns across the percussion instruments, before the tarompet re-enters.
When the bass guitar enters, the song moves into a contrasting section featuring a solo female vocalist and answering male chorus who are accompanied by bonang as well as bass, keyboard and drums.
The contrasting vocal section includes a solo male voice rising above the chorus, singing in the Sundanese beluk style.
Sound files from Krakatau's CD Magical Match, are reproduced with kind permission of Krakatau and Arimba Cultural Exchange.
Krakatau plays Rhythm Reformation in Sydney October
2000
Reference List
Bradley, Margaret Kacapi Siter and Kacapi Perahu, Unpublished Thesis, UNSW, 1993. Budidharma, Pra Krakatau brochure notes. Dibia, I Wayan Kecak: The Vocal Chant of Bali, Hartanto Art Books, Bali, 1996. Herbst, Edward Voices In Bali, Wesleyan University Press, New England, US, 1997. Kunst, Jaap Music in Java, 3rd edition, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1973. Lindsay, Jennifer Javanese Gamelan, Oxford University Press, 1979. Mack, Dieter Sejarah Musik, Jilid 4, Pusat Liturgi, Yogyakarta, 1991. Prier sj, Karl-Edmund Sejarah Musik, Jilid 1, Pusat Liturgi, Yogyakarta, 1991. Sedyawati, Edi. ed. Performing Arts Indonesian Heritage, Archipelago Press, 1998. Tenzer, Michael Balinese Music,Periplus Editions, 1998. Tjarmadi, E. ed. Penuntun Pengajaran Degung, Pelita Masa, Bandung, 1974. Williams, Sean
"Current Developments in Sundanese Popular Music" in Asian Music, Vol 21, No 1: 105–136. 1990a.
Williams, Sean The Urbanisation of Tembang Sunda, an Aristocratic Musical Genre of West Java, Indonesia. PhD dissertation, University of Washington. 1990b.
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