inspiring foreigners, ignored by locals

Category : Adventure | Posted On Sep 22, 2017

While hidden in semi-obscurity back home, Indonesia’s gamelan instruments have managed to penetrate the experimental mindsets of Western musicians.

There are several forms of gamelan, depending on the region. There is the Javanese gamelan, the Sundanese gamelan and the Balinese gamelan, among others. Each of them has a different sound, scale, playing method and tools.

A gamelan ensemble can consist of 20 or fewer players playing various bronze bell-like instruments, brass glockenspiels, stringed zithers, wooden flutes or gongs.

The gamelan is largely overlooked as a niche art form in mainstream Indonesian society. However, it has attracted the appreciation of musicians in the West because of its interesting complexities. This is the topic that American PhD candidate and ethnomusicologist Jay M. Arms has chosen to delve deeper into. He feels that the gamelan, with its many forms, details and techniques is worth researching about as a result of its hidden significance in the global music character today.

The first notable exposure of the gamelan to the West can be traced back to the 1889 Paris Expo, during which a then-budding French composer by the name of Claude Debussy came across a Javanese gamelan orchestra and fell in love with its soft dissonant tones and non-rhythmic structure. He then incorporated the sounds of the Javanese gamelan into his piano pieces.

Read also: Siswa Sukra a British gamelan affair

Debussy’s integration of the gamelan’s scale and lack of dominant melodic structure later spread to the works of his fellow Impressionist-era peers, including Erik Satie, who himself had a penchant for composing piano works that lacked time signature and dominating melodies.

In recent decades, the gamelan has made its way

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