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TRADITIONAL DANCE AND MUSIC |
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Given the enormous cultural and ethnic mix that makes up Indonesia,
it's hardly surprising that the range of traditional music and dance
across the archipelago is so vast. Best-known are the highly stylized
and mannered classical dance performances in Java and Bali, accompanied
by the gamelan orchestra. Every step of these dances is minutely
orchestrated, and the merest wink of an eye, arch of an eyebrow and
angle of a finger has meaning and significance. The tradition remains
vibrant, passed down by experts to often very young pupils. Ubud on Bali
and Yogyakarta on Java are the centres for these dances, with shortened
performances staged in several venues every night for Western visitors.
Yogya is also the main place in Indonesia to catch a performance of
shadow puppet plays, wayang kulit .
Gamelan
A gamelan is an ensemble of tuned percussion, consisting mainly of gongs,
metallophones and drums. Gamelan instruments may be made of bronze, iron,
brass, wood or bamboo, with wooden frames, which are often intricately
carved and painted.
The largest bronze gamelans in Indonesia are found in Central Java . A
complete Javanese gamelan is made up of two sets of instruments, one in
each of two scales - the five-note laras slendro and the seven-note
laras pelog. The two sets are laid out with the corresponding
instruments at right angles to each other. Various hanging and mounted
gongs are arranged at the back and provide the structure and form of the
music. In the middle, the metallophones play the central melody. At the
front are the more complex instruments, which lead and elaborate the
melody. These include metallophones, a wooden xylophone, spike fiddle,
bamboo flute and zither. The full ensemble also includes vocalists - a
male chorus and female solo singers - and is led by the drummer in the
centre of the gamelan. Although a large gamelan may be played by as many
as thirty musicians , there is neither a conductor nor any visual cues,
as the players all sit facing the same way. Gamelan musicians learn all
the instruments and so develop a deep understanding of the music plus
great flexibility in ensemble playing. It is a communal form of music-making
- there are no soloists or virtuosos. Most village halls and
neighbourhoods in Central Java have a gamelan for use by the local
community, and the majority of schoolchildren learn basic gamelan pieces.
Most villages in Bali boast several gamelans owned by the local music
club. The club members meet in the evenings to rehearse, after earning
their living as farmers, craftsmen or civil servants. Gamelan playing is
traditionally considered a part of every man's education, as important
as the art of rice growing or cooking ceremonial food. When the Dutch
took control of Bali in the early twentieth century, the island's courts
all but disappeared. The court gamelans were sold or taken to the
villages where they were melted down to make new gamelans for the latest
style that was taking Bali by storm: kebyar , a fast, dynamic music,
full of dramatic contrasts, changes of tempo and sudden loud outbursts.
It is this dynamic new virtuoso style that makes much Balinese gamelan
music today sound so different from the Javanese form. The rhythmic
vitality of Balinese music comes from lively interlocking patterns
played on the bronze gangsas (similar to the Javanese gender but struck
with hard wooden mallets), a pair of drums and the reong (a row of small
kettle-gongs in a frame, played by four people). The various pairs of
instruments are tuned slightly "out" with each other, so that when two
instruments are played together, there is a "harmonic beating". This
gives the sound of the Balinese gamelan its characteristic shimmering
quality.
The sound of Sundanese (West Javanese) degung is arguably the most
accessible of all gamelan music to Western ears. Its musical structures
are clear and well-defined, and the timbres of the instruments blend
delicately with one another without losing any of their integrity or
individuality. The ensemble is small, consisting only of a few
instruments, but includes the usual range of gongs and metallophones
found in all gamelan.
By Jenny Heaton and Simon Stepto
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