Gamelan Music of Bali/Indonesia
by Jonathan Marbach
Linked images courtesy of Bali & Beyond

         "It sounds like a bunch of kids banging around," my mother said in response to her initial exposure to Indonesian music. In fact, when I had told her that I was researching Indonesian music she was surprised to find that such a thing existed and so to satisfy her curiosities on what it sounded like, I played her a sample, thus illiciting the aforementioned response. That kind of reaction to Gamelan music is not uncommon. To most "western" ears, the sounds are, machine-like - comparable to a "frenetic music-box set to twice its normal speed."(Vitale) Even my own first reaction was along these lines; sitting in the classroom, entirely taken aback, I said to myself, "This is the sound of insanity". Contrary to what is first perceived though, gamelan music is highly organized and performed by quite virtuosic musicians.

          A Gamelan is probably best described as an Indonesian gong-chime orchestra, made up of mostly metallophones - vibraphone-like percussion instruments and gongs, but also including drums and occasionally flutes. From there the differences begin. There are many different styles of gamelan music which vary greatly from island to island and from event to event. We will be focusing on the music of Bali, specifically that of gamelan gong kebyar - a relatively modern style.

          Gamelan gong kebyar began to emerge at the turn of the century with the Dutch invasion and takeover of the Indonesian islands. Previously gamelans were maintained by the royal courts and played in a more sedate and majestic style: gamelan gong gede. In Bali, the Dutch dissolved the courts and so the gamelan were disbanded. Some villages formed gamelan clubs, bought the old gamelan instruments, and melted them down, forging new ones that would be more appropriate for the new musical style they weredeveloping. Gong kebyar was "virtuosic, mercurial, flashy, and unpredictable"(Capwell) with pieces that started out with everyone playing together faster and louder than ever before:

Instead of the classical elegance and refinement of former times, it displays a willful exuberance, progressing in fits and starts with stunning contrasts, jerky syncopations, and breathtakingly rapid figuration. No wonder many older connoisseurs found kebyar a disturbing phenomenon when it first took Bali by storm around the time of World War I.(Capwell)

          Although it may have been a few decades ahead of its North American parallel, it seems as though rock 'n roll hit Bali. The true source of this new style was not as glamorous though. The dissolving of the Balinese courts was brought on by a mass suicide among the royalty, called Puputan, which was directed by the Dutch colonialists. One source theorizes that the militarism and chaos of that era led to the explosiveness of the music: "Kebyar is a definitive expression of trouble in Paradise. Drums rumble, fierce melodies charge from nowhere, [and] whirling ornaments twist and tangle as is caught by the wind."(Bali & Beyond)

          It is important to note that gamelan gong kebyar is just one of many different types of music on Bali. It is the most well known, especially throughout the U.S., but doesn't represent Balinese music as a whole. Kebyar is essentially, "a secular music on an island immersed in religion", and is the exception to the rule, having no ceremonial affiliation other than the dance that often accompanies it.(Bali & Beyond)  The dance associated with kebyar was first created around 1925 by a young dancer named Mario. His dance cast away the traditional movements and gestures of temple offerings and court dancers. Instead, he developed a style of dance that "mirrored the fleeting moods and unpredictable contrasts" of the music through rapidly changing facial expressions, bobbing up and down, squatting, kneeling, and interacting directly with the musicians - teasing, cajoling, and sometimes soloing or playing along with them.(Capwell)

            A typical gamelan gong kebyar usually has up to twenty-five members, which fall into three basic sections of the orchestra: the gangsa, reong, and the kendang. The gangsa is the largest section, consisting of eight to twelve bronze metallophones, each having ten keys suspended over a bamboo tube, which allows the sound to resonate. They are played with hard wooden mallets and carry the main melody. Half of the gangsa(kantilan) are tuned one octave higher than the others(pemade) so that the melody is doubled, enriching the sound. Also, to even further enhance the metallophones' sound, a "paired tuning" system is involved where each "in tune" instrument has a partner that is tuned slightly higher or lower, creating a shimmering tremolo, or beating sound, between the two pitches.(Vitale)

          The Reong is a row of twelve small horizontal gongs that is played by three or four players at a time. Like a bell choir, each player is responsible for fitting his own his three or four gongs into a seamless musical flow. This technique of interlocking rhythms, which is also employed by the gangsa and by the orchestra as a whole, is called Kotekan. In his essay on Kotekan, Vitale conveys the concept this way:

One might imagine, as an analogy, the text on this page being read by two narrators, one of whom pronouncing only the letters athrough m, and the other n through z, yet fitting those sounds together so perfectly that we hear them as one speaker.

This allows the performance of compositions that seem to be superhuman in speed and complexity.

click image to hear this notated excerpt of the composition "Permas"(10k midi file)

          The entire group is led by two drummers (kendang) and there is a central bronze metallophone, called Ugal, which is played "one handed with a small hammer in a flashy style".(Bali & Beyond) The music is stratified: the highest pitched instruments provide ornamentation and variation, and mid-range instruments carry the melody, while a lower instrument such as the gong keeps a simple, steady pulse. Kebyar uses five-note (pentatonic) variations of the Pelog scale which in Java is normally heptatonic (seven-note), in which the intervals range from half-steps to major thirds. Furthermore, each gamelan has its own tuning making it impossible to trade instruments from gamelan to gamelan.

click image to hear Selesir form of Pelog Scale(1k midi file)

         An important point to be made is that the interlocking rhythms and complexities of the Gamelan represent people cooperating and working together toward a common goal. This is a valuable concept that can be taught through music. As Francis Kofee, a Master Drummer of the Ewe tribe of Ghana once said, "One day, music will bring us all together."

Below are some images of Balinese Gamelan instruments
that are associated with styles other than Gamelan Gong Kebyar:

Regarding the world-wide web research involved in compiling this project, I

expected to find very little material, and at first that was the case. "Great," I thought after

running into quite a few pages that had been left vacant after having their contents

referenced by the larger search engines. "Some paper I'll be writing." Then, bit by bit (no

pun intended) I began to run into a few sites here and there that eventually, by the time

my mother had returned from work, snowballed into a massive pile of printouts scattered

all over the dining room floor. To maintain clarity and focus, I have only skimmed the

surface of the project's subject matter, and so therefore the bibliography page should be

thought of as a "For more information..." page as well.

-jon-