I used to be in a gamelan ensemble at CSU Sacramento, but was quite poor at it so I quit after the semester was up. Nonetheless, I continue to be interested in gamelan music. While recordings of gamelan are readily available, in my opinion, hearing and seeing it live is the only way to experience its complexity and trance-like effect. One of the largest and best gamelan ensembles in the U.S. is Gamelan Sekar Jaya, based in El Cerrito, California.
Gamelan is a kind of traditional musical ensemble found in Indonesia. I first heard a live gamelan when I saw one accompanying a silat (Indonesian martial art) demonstration in Indonesia. The ensembles also accompany rituals, wayang and other theatrical performances.
Most of the instruments used in a gamelan are bronze or brass, so the effect is incredibly loud. When I was in the gamelan at Sac State, I learned that if you don’t use earplugs during practice, you’ll cause yourself an awful headache. However, there is one type of gamelan, called gamelan jegog, which uses bamboo instruments. The effect is very ethereal, and the instruments resonate in your chest when you hear it in person. Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead apparently purchased the jegog instruments and “loaned” them indefinitely to Gamelan Sekar Jaya in an effort to preserve this art form.
Although it is like an orchestra in the obvious sense of having multiple musicians performing a piece of music together, it is different than a Western orchestra because gamelan doesn’t have a “conductor” in the same sense. Each instrument plays a slightly different melody, all of which interlock to create the overall musical piece. Also, the musicians don’t have any music sheets to read; rather, they memorize everything, even though one gamelan piece can be over an hour long. I know little about the technical aspects of music, so I can’t describe this in precise terms, but I hope I’ve conveyed some of the complexity of the gamelan. Some good audio/visual are below.
Suggested recordings:
“Indonesia – Jegog: The Rhythmic Power of Bamboo” (this album can be downloaded in mp3 format from Amazon)
“Java – Javanese Court Gamelan”
Suggested DVD:
