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December 7, 1995

The coming of the GAMELAN

The scene in 309 Bellefield Hall looked like an ethno- musicologist's dream of Christmas morning, as Pitt assistant professor Rene Lysloff, his wife Deborah Wong of the University of Pennsylvania, and several Pitt music department graduate students excitedly unwrapped 84 packages containing a Javanese gamelan — an ensemble of tuned gongs, drums and xylophone-like keyed instruments.

The ensembles are common throughout Southeast Asia. Between a dozen and 40 musicians (including vocalists) perform simultaneously on a gamelan, often to accompany dance drama and shadow puppet theatre. But despite the burgeoning world music movement, the gamelans remain rare in the West. Including Pitt, only about 15 U.S. universities own such ensembles, according to Lysloff.

One reason for the scarcity is cost, Lysloff said. Pitt's gamelan was crafted in Java, mainly of hand-carved wood and beaten iron, and cost more than $12,000, including shipping. Funding came from the music department, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences dean's office and the Friends of Music at Pitt, an organization of music department alumni and University community members.

"Playing a gamelan is a very social activity," said Lysloff, a Javanese music specialist who arranged the purchase of Pitt's gamelan while doing research in Java in summer 1994. "Musicians often dine together before playing, and entire villages turn out for concerts." In keeping with that tradition, Pitt's gamelan will not be hidden away for use by a handful of professors and grad students, he vowed (although the ensemble will remain locked in a music department classroom for safekeeping).

A new undergraduate course in the music department, "Javanese Gamelan Ensemble," will be open to the community. So will membership in a group to be called the University of Pittsburgh Javanese Gamelan Ensemble. "We hope to put together a performing ensemble this spring," Lysloff said. "Pitt faculty, staff and students will be welcome to join. We'll have weekly rehearsals and, hopefully, we'll perform at least one concert per year. It's also possible that we could accompany some theatre and dance performances. And we would hope to bring in soloists from Java occasionally.

"When I can get a Javanese musician to come to Pitt and play our gamelan, I'll ask him to name it," Lysloff added. Traditionally, gamelans are seen as living entities. Each is given a name, which is painted inside a gong. Often, such a name will come to a musician in a dream. A feast is held to celebrate the naming.

"Java is an animistic society," Lysloff said. "You see active volcanoes looming over many villages. The sounds of drums and gongs echo the sounds of nature — the rumbling and pounding of the earth, for example, or thunder." Just as the Javanese traditionally ascribe spirits to mountains and trees, so they believe that a spirit inhabits each gamelan, he said.

Pitt's gamelan will provide a hands-on education, literally, to students and others who play it, Lysloff said. "People will learn all of these aspects of Javanese culture. They won't just be learning the music. It's like learning about the culture of a foreign country by studying its language." The Pitt gamelan is actually made up of two sets of instruments: one in the five-pitch slendro tuning, the other in the seven-tone pelog tuning. A common tone links the two sets to make a "complete" gamelan.

The music itself is based on simple, repetitive central melodies played on keyed instruments and punctuated by gongs. Still other keyed and gong-chime instruments (equivalent to horns and keyboards in the hands of jazz musicians) elaborate on the central melody. The total effect, Lysloff said, is a dense texture of musical layering with percussive instrumental parts moving through time at different rates. Over this texture, musicians may sing and perform fiddle and flute parts; these parts sound as if they are floating above the highly rhythmical percussion instruments, Lysloff said.

"Initially, it's easy to play the gamelan at a basic level," he said. "But it can become very difficult and complex depending on the composition and the skills of the players." In Southeast Asia, gamelan music is not "classical" in the Western sense, Lysloff said. "The gamelan epitomizes the high art of Java, but it's just as much folk music as it is classical. You hear it in villages as well as in palaces," he said.

— Bruce Steele

Filed under: Feature,Volume 28 Issue 8

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