For the last few weeks I have been having a little holiday in Bali, and I thought I would write a post about balinese gamelan music because it’s something that I really love and I have nothing but time because I am stuck here because of a volcanic eruption.
This is not a made up thing. I know. It’s like something Homer Simpson would say to get out of working.
But anyway, I did some playing with a gamelan teacher, and unlike in the past where i’ve just played stuff and thought I was the most masterful Ceng Ceng virtuoso in human history, I grilled my teacher about as much as I possibly could. This post will also include things that I understand from past research when I was that weirdo in university who would spend all his time writing papers on the influence of Baka music on contemporary composers instead of proclaiming that Schubert Lieder is the only music that should be played like most of the other people.
So today we are going to get a brief, brief, super brief introduction into a style of traditional Balinese composition, as well as a little treat of a more modern style of gamelan which is pretty amazing.
First of all, let me clear up a common misconception. “Gamelan” refers to the ensemble. The different instruments are not all “gamelans” or something, they all have different names as they are really different. In fact, gamelan doesn’t even refer exclusively to the bronze keyed instruments that most people would know. There is also Gamelan Angklung (bamboo shaky things) and Gamelan Jegog (bamboo hitty things) just to name two others. Basically, gamelan means ensemble. Now you can go and use that to be obnoxious at parties, trust me, people find it delightful.
If you’re not familiar with what balinese gamelan sounds like, you should really check out some recordings of whole pieces, particularly the gamelan gong kebyar which I will be talking about. I really love it for it’s rhythmic complexity, and it has some of the most intricate counterpoint you can find. As I will try to show later, a lot of what occurs compositionally stems from ideas that are really simple, but are used in really creative and interesting ways, that seem so simple, but then you try and use them and come up with some half-baked imitative poop.
While I have been here, I have been taught by a guy called Ketut, and all of what he showed me was to do with gamelan gong kebyar (the super cool bronze one) and was played on a gangsa pemadé. Gangsa refers to a group within the gamelan itself, made up of the recognisable keyed instruments.The pemadé is a specific instrument within that group. To say something that would probably make most gamelan players spew, the gangsa are sort of like the workhorse of the gamelan gong kebyar. There isn’t a melody in the same way that we think of in western music, but for western ears, what the gangsa is playing is probably what we are focusing on most of the time. The pemadé is the larger of the two gangsa instruments, the other being the kantilan. In terms of the range of the ensemble, gangsa are sort of in the middle, can go sort of high and sort of low, and they both have a range of 2 octaves with ten whole notes!
Music now.
I kind of want to focus on just one thing for today, because all of this stuff is really complicated. So we are mostly going to talk about the rhythmic style of Kotekan. Kotekan is a style of playing that involves usually two interlocking parts. The higher part is called sangsih, and the lower part is polos. What cool names. As in a lot of Balinese gamelan, it’s usually pretty fast (unlike the vastly inferior Javanese gamelan for slowpokes), and it acts as the meaty rhythmic stuff over the top of the slower moving melodies that are the compositional basis of the piece.
This particular pattern is used in the Barong dance, which is a really popular dance based on a story about the Barong, a protective spirit from Indonesian animist tradition. I would really recommend checking it out as well, it has crazy masks and witches and also there’s a pig. Like really what more do you people want from me?
Have a listen to Ketut and I playing this:
I am playing the starting pattern, and Ketut then plays the main “melody”, which is slower, and would be played on different, lower instrument. This melody is actually the basis for the composition and the faster gangsa patterns. Don’t worry about this, it’s really complicated. When Ketut switches to the higher pattern around 0:26, this is where we hear the kotekan pattern and the really interesting stuff starts to happen. If you listen closely, you can here that both patterns are rhythmically the same, but displaced so that there are no gaps in the cumulative rhythm (I love that term it makes me sound so smart). This higher pattern would be played on the kantilan, and they both start on different points in the 5-note scale that is used in this particular gamelan. Once again, wikipedia has provided us with a good photo example, although this pattern is different by one semiquaver from the one in my recording. No I wasn’t playing it incorrectly it’s just a different kotekan, okay?!?
An example of Kotekan Telu.
You can see from this example the idea behind the way kotekan works. If we take the first note of the lower line as note 1 in our basic pattern, we can see that the upper line actually begins on note 2 of this pattern. Everyone understand? Steve Reich definitely does. This is pretty much the basis of Clapping Music, see look.
First few patterns of clapping music
There are lots of different types of kotekan, with slightly different approaches but the basic idea of interlocking patterns with similar/identical rhythms that create a badass cumulative rhythm.
This is a really interesting compositional technique that can be used very effectively AND IT’S ALL MINE NOBODY ELSE USE IT OKAY!?!?! But seriously, it’s the area of percussion composition that i really enjoy, and find really interesting. The kotekan technique is even used in the vocal music of the balinese kecak dance. This is a dance from the 1930’s which uses a chorus of people instead of gamelan instruments. You see these same kotekan patterns but instead of pitched noted they use a kind of cak syllable. Even with indefinite pitch instruments, such as drums, woodblocks, and unpitched metals, we can get some really melodic sorts of patterns. Similar affects occur in conga groups and taiko groups. Although the patterns in those are not identical, they still use that idea of a cumulative rhythm between people playing simple patterns.
Another thing that is interesting about the way the gamelan instruments work is the arrangement of the keys in a left-to-right linear way, instead of a design that has a clear start/end point, like the layered design that we have in western equal tempered keyboards. Because of this, it is really easy to just shift the pattern you are playing. This is used to create harmonic interest, by playing the same pattern displaced rhythmically and starting at a different point in the scale. No way. Really. For example, (from memory) the pemadé pattern was between notes 3 and 4 in the scale and the kantilan was between 5 and 1.
Science time!
“Woahey,” I hear you exclaim. “It would appear that many instruments within the gamelan gong kebyar are grouped in pairs.”
Why yes dear reader, you are correct. This is another thing that is unique and the best about indonesian gong makers. They have become masters of time and space. These instruments are put into pairs of the same instrument, so two gangsa pemadé are together, and two gangsa kantilan, and so forth.
The reason for this is that those clever gong makers tune the corresponding bars so that they are different by fractions of a Hertz. These are known as Cents, and they are 1/100th of an equal tempered semitone. So one note on one instrument will be slightly sharper than the same note on it’s pair. What happens when they do this is that you can actually hear the “beating” of the very close frequency sound waves that are produced simultaneously, and it’s freakin’ incredible. The can actually do it to get the beats to be the exact speed that they want. It creates another level of rhythmic complexity in this already busy music. They are just that good uh-huh.
Special Treat!
So I promised a cool thing and I think this is a cool thing. Ketut taught me the main gangsa pemadé part for a dance called the Cendrawasih Dance, which is a dance that was created in the über arty schools in the 1990’s. I like to think of it as their version of grunge music. That’s a joke.
Cendrawasih is the Bird of Paradise, and it’s performed by two ladies, who imitate the movements of the Bird of Paradise. It’s pretty hardcore and the music is really good.
So here is a recording of Ketut playing the gangsa part by himself. I have a recording of me playing it with him but I’m slow and make mistakes and it’s kind of poots. I’m human and white.
Ketut was one of those great Bali finds, where you’ll find this funny guy who’s hanging out, and then turns out to be a super legit musician/woodcarver/dancer/traditional craftsman who does really beautiful stuff and will show it all to you. They still have such a great connection with their traditional culture in Bali and you can find some pretty incredible art/music/dance here, despite the image that Bali has as a place for sunburnt Australians to be dumb.
If people dig this kind of thing I have some more recordings of what I have learnt here and I can fumble my way through explaining that as well. But hopefully this basic introduction into one aspect of balinese gamelan has sort of piqued your interest. I encourage you to check out the full thing because it’s pretty amazing music. If you want to, just contact me and I can point you in some sort of direction. Trust me it’s worth it.
So hopefully I’ll be back in Australia soon. Please Volcano, Please. Hit me up if you want to make music together, or just tell me you liked/hated reading this.
Love love love,
J.
jgpercussion 