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The Music of Java

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Page 1: The Music of Java. Java’s Gamelan Two types of gamelan: Loud playing: outside, festivals, parades, noisy events (cd set :Kembang Pacar”) Soft playing:

The Music of Java

Page 2: The Music of Java. Java’s Gamelan Two types of gamelan: Loud playing: outside, festivals, parades, noisy events (cd set :Kembang Pacar”) Soft playing:
Page 3: The Music of Java. Java’s Gamelan Two types of gamelan: Loud playing: outside, festivals, parades, noisy events (cd set :Kembang Pacar”) Soft playing:

Java’s Gamelan

• Two types of gamelan:

• Loud playing: outside, festivals, parades, noisy events (cd set :Kembang Pacar”)

• Soft playing: inside, often with singing (cd set: “Wilujeng”)

Page 4: The Music of Java. Java’s Gamelan Two types of gamelan: Loud playing: outside, festivals, parades, noisy events (cd set :Kembang Pacar”) Soft playing:

Which instruments are used?

• There is no standard selection of instruments. All of those chosen, however, are placed at right angles to one another.

• Photos…from Javanese Gamelan by Jennifer Lindsay (ML1251.I53L56)

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Melodic Instruments of the gamelan

celempung: metal-stringed zither with a box resonator.

Strings are paired in double courses and plucked with the performer’s

long thumbnails.

Page 8: The Music of Java. Java’s Gamelan Two types of gamelan: Loud playing: outside, festivals, parades, noisy events (cd set :Kembang Pacar”) Soft playing:

Rebab

A bowed lute with a long and delicately turned neck that runs through a

triangular-shape resonator. The top face is covered with a thin membrane.

Page 9: The Music of Java. Java’s Gamelan Two types of gamelan: Loud playing: outside, festivals, parades, noisy events (cd set :Kembang Pacar”) Soft playing:

Gambang

Gambang: 20 to 22 wood bars resting on top of a wood box resonator.

The bars are struck with two long beaters.

Page 10: The Music of Java. Java’s Gamelan Two types of gamelan: Loud playing: outside, festivals, parades, noisy events (cd set :Kembang Pacar”) Soft playing:

Gamelan instrument makers

• In Java, the metal worker is held in very high esteem.

• The process is infused with mystical significance.

• “Transforming molten copper and tin into sound-producing instruments is believed to make one especially vulnerable to dangerous forces in the spirit world.”

Page 11: The Music of Java. Java’s Gamelan Two types of gamelan: Loud playing: outside, festivals, parades, noisy events (cd set :Kembang Pacar”) Soft playing:

• Smiths make ritual preparation and may actually assume mythical identities during the forging process.

• The chief smith is ritually transformed into Panji, a powerful mythical hero, and the smith’s assistants become Panji’s family and servants.

Page 12: The Music of Java. Java’s Gamelan Two types of gamelan: Loud playing: outside, festivals, parades, noisy events (cd set :Kembang Pacar”) Soft playing:

• Meditation, prayer and fasting get one ready to do this work.

• If the forging of the instruments is successful, they become in turn the abode of spirits

• The gong ageng, the most difficult instrument to make, contains the greatest spiritual power. Gamelan in the making, brief example

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• Proper etiquette means when entering the gamelan that you remove your shoes and avoid the rudeness of stepping over an instrument.

• Further, the spirit of the gamelan, embodied in the gong ageng, is paid homage with offerings of food, flowers, and incense.

Page 14: The Music of Java. Java’s Gamelan Two types of gamelan: Loud playing: outside, festivals, parades, noisy events (cd set :Kembang Pacar”) Soft playing:

The gong ageng is a large, vertically-suspended bronze gong with turned-back rims and a raised central boss which is struck with a thickly-padded beater. It produces a deep,

resonant low pitch.

Page 15: The Music of Java. Java’s Gamelan Two types of gamelan: Loud playing: outside, festivals, parades, noisy events (cd set :Kembang Pacar”) Soft playing:

It takes time...

• It takes a full month or so to make a large gong.

• The molten metal is pounded, heated, pounded, heated, etc. until the gong is former.

• It may take a truckload of coal to heat the fire for only one gong.

The Rhythm of the Gamelan I

Page 16: The Music of Java. Java’s Gamelan Two types of gamelan: Loud playing: outside, festivals, parades, noisy events (cd set :Kembang Pacar”) Soft playing:

Small court ensemble from JVC(Vol.10, #3)

• Gamelan degung (small ensemble)

• highly refined style from the courts of West Java

• Recording shows a solo for suling (flute) with great virtuosic finger movements

• Bonang: in front of suling, set of gong kettles in a 3 sided frame and struck with beaters

• Left rear shows jenglong (suspended gongs) where the central melody happens

• Saron are keyed percussion on either side of the bonang (hit with right hand, dampened with left hand)

• double headed drum is the kendang

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Tembeng: a type of Javanese music

• means “poem” or “song”

• genre of music in Java

• serves as a major vehicle for Javanese poetry

• Even important letters between members of the nobility were (until this century) composed as tembang and delivered as song. The postal system has stopped doing this…too bad.

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Tembang Sunda Cianjuran (JVC Vol. 10, #4

• Song with instrumental ensemble

• Origin in a “macapat”, which is a poem sung to a child, sort of like a nursery rhyme, but it requires intellectual effort, like a complicated riddle.

• Non-metered song

• Example shows a suling, followed by a male singer, then a female singer

• Instrument is a kacapi

• Kacapi are a family of zithers which are to gamelan as the

piano is to the orchestra

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BatIk

shop

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Tarawangsa and kacapi siter JVC (Vol. 10, #7)

• Tarawangsa: bowed lute like rebab but the tuning is significantly different

• sitting on the left

• Kacapi siter: plucked zither… on the right

• Song is a Kidung, usually sung after a rice harvest to give thanks

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Wayang Kulit: Shadow Puppetry

• "Wayang" means "shadow" , and "Kulit" means "skin" in the Indonesian language

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