Bali Travel News

The term gamelan refers not only to the instruments but also to the groups of musicians who play them. People participate in these groups from a very young age, and one is often surprised to hear intricate pieces being performed by children’s groups in which the average age is only 12 years. In the villages, such groups may be formed for special festivals only to be disbanded as soon as the festival is over. Most groups play together for a long time, however  some for as long as 40 or 50 years with unchanged membership. Some groups even outlive their original membership and continue to exist as autonomous village institutions for hundreds of years.

Organizationally, music and dance troupes in Bali are deeply rooted in the banjar — the fundamental unit of community within the Balinese village or town. Its guiding principle and philosophy is that any group must strive to exist as a coherent unit rather than as a collection of individuals. In Balinese music, this attitude of cooperation is essential, and individual virtuosity is always far overshadowed by the ideal of unity and perfect synchronization of the various parts. Much more so than in Western music, a single part or musician cannot stand alone, but is integral to the whole. For this reason, solo performance is nonexistent in Bali.

Anyone with sufficient interest may join a gamelan, and groups are composed of farmers, merchants, civil servants, etc. Although the academy in Denpasar is giving birth to a new generation of professionals, music remains by and large a non-professional, village endeavor.While the immediate motivation to form a new group may vary — an upcoming celebra
tion,a festival competition with another banjar, or a specially commissioned hotel performance, for example — in general the Balinese simply love to play, and a first rehearsal often finds more players ready to join in than there are postions in the orchestra. In typical cooperative banjar fashion, even the extras take part in the sekaha (club), however. They will become helpers (for moving or maintaining the instruments) or alternate players.

With the exception of large hotel or other tourist performances, little money is made from the performances. All proceeds are put into a common fund for tuning and maintenance or acquisition of new instruments, as well as for dance costumes or an occasional dinner for the se/ia/ia members. Excess funds are divided among the members just before Galungan.

Instruments and tuning

There is an amazing diversity of musical ensembles and genres found on Bali. Some 15 to 20 different forms have been documented, and the list grows longer as a younger generation of composers experiments with new combinations and types of instruments. The ensembles range in size from the small gender wayang, a quartet of musicians who play the demanding accompaniment to the wayang kulit shadow play, all the way up to the massive gamelan gong, whose 35 or 40 members perform the ancient and stately ceremonial pieces required for village rituals.

A variety of materials are used in the production of instruments. Most gamelan consist of bronze keys in carved wooden frames suspended over bamboo resonators, together with a number of bronze gongs, drums, cymbals, flutes and an assortment of smaller percussion instruments. But there are bamboo gamelan ensembles as well — entire orchestras composed of bamboo marimbas or flutes.

Perhaps the most impressive of these is the gamelan jegog, found exclusively in the western district of Jembrana. In a jegog ensemble, the largest bass intruments are made from bamboo tubes measuring up to 12 inches in diameter and 10 feet in length. When struck with a large, padded mallet, they produce low tones of incredible purity and depth that can often be heard for miles around.

The gamelan selunding is a rare and sacred ensemble, with keys made of iron and simple trough resonators. Special ceremonies and offerings surround its use, as the keys are thought to possess spiritual powers. Some selunding melodies are considered extremely sacred, and may not be played or even hummed except on certain ritual occasions.
In fact, however, all gamelan instruments, no matter how or where they are played, are believed to contain a spiritual power which must be respected with proper offerings and rituals, depending on the occasion and the date within the Balinese calendar. No Balinese would ever think of stepping over an instrument, for example, for fear that the spirit that inhabits it might be insulted.

By far the most common type of gamelan is the gong kebyar — a bronze orchestra consisting of a number of metallophones, tuned gongs, cymbals, flutes and drums. As in a Western orchestra, these instrument families are further subdivided depending on the range, musical function and playing technique of the instruments.

For example, the highest-pitched metallophones (gangsa) are used to play rapid interlocking figurations and melodies. The midrange metallophones (calung or jublag) play the pokok or core melody, while the bass instruments (jegogan) reinforce the stressed pokok tones and mark the longer phrases.

A row of tuned gongs played by four musicians called the reong executes another form of figuration and rhythmic accentuation. The kempli, a small gong, keeps the beat — a difficult task in this syncopated and rhythmically complex music. The larger gong and the medium-sized kempur and kemong provide punctuation of the phrases at important junctures. Leading them all is a pair of drummers (accompanied by the cymbal or cengceng player), who direct the entire group with changes in tempo, accents and dynamics.

Bronze gamelan instruments are all hand- forged in Bali by highly respected gong smiths using age-old techniques. Each orchestra is laboriously tuned by filing and hammering the keys and gongs to match a pentatonic or 5-tone scale (and more rarely a septatonic or 7-tone scale) that is unique to that particular set of instruments. While all ensembles of a similar type will be tuned to approximately the same scale, there is no uniform standard of reference. This is a clear expression of the Balinese belief in each gamelan’s individual spirit. Every ensemble, in other words, has a unique character which must be allowed to emerge from the metal.

Each tone in this Balinese tuning system, which may follow either the so-called pelog or sendro scales found also in Java, has a corresponding tone tuned slightly higher or lower, so that when struck together the two notes produce a pulsating, tremolo effect. This “paired tuning” is responsible for the shimmering quality so characteristic of the Balinese gamelan.