Lauren Sonnabend ’08 had never heard of the Javanese gamelan when she first came to the University, but decided to take Beginners Javanese Gamelan as a way to explore non-classical music.
“It’s very meditative and soothing for an ensemble,” she said. “That’s usually not the case when playing with an orchestra.”
Without question, the chance to take part in a traditional Javanese gamelan ensemble is one of the more exceptional opportunities the University offers its students.
A traditional gamelan ensemble is comprised of metallophones, several types of different sized gongs (gongan, kenong, kempul, and kethuk-kempyang), two-headed drums (kendhang), a xylophone (gambang), bowed and plucked strings (rebab and celempung), and a bamboo flute (suling). Typically, there is vocal accompaniment.
The gamelan has a long history in Indonesia, dating back as far as the fourth century. Sumarsam explains that there are two main styles of gamelan: Balinese and Javanese. Today, the Javanese gamelan is more commonly played, due in part to Java’s long history as the governmental center of Indonesia.
According to Adjunct Pro-fessor of Music Sumarsam’s book, “Introduction to Javanese Gamelan,” the instrument is often considered to possess supernatural powers.
Although gamelans were exhibited in various Western exhibitions in the late 19th century, only within the last 50 years has gamelan study and performance appeared at American universities.
The history of the gamelan in the United States is closely tied to the rise of ethnomusicology as an academic discipline in the 1950s. From Java to Wesleyan.“ The Institute for Ethnomusicology was founded at UCLA in 1954.
It is thus no accident that the University’s gamelan program was founded under the direction of a UCLA ethnomusicology graduate, Robert Brown, in 1962. With the completion of the CFA in the early 1970s, the gamelan was given a permanent home in the World Music Hall.
Sumarsam first began teaching at the University in 1972 as a visiting artist.
In the early 1980s, it was determined by an external review committee that a number of artists-in-residence were doing much more than just teaching musical performance. To remedy this, a number of artists-in-residence were given adjunct professorships, a testament to the growth of the program and a further legitimization of ethnomusicology. In 1992, Sumarsam was himself promoted to this status.
”As far as I know, Wesleyan is the only place where an adjunct professorship was created to accommodate the status of performing artists and was available to non-Western performing artists,“ Sumarsam said.
Last Thursday was the last formal event for the University’s visiting gamelan instructor, Mas Darsono, who will return to Indonesia at the conclusion of this semester. He co-directed a Javanese gamelan and dance performance in the World Music Hall on Thursday, April 26.
The students in the Univer-sity’s gamelan program are aware of how fortunate they are to participate in such a pioneering, well-established gamelan program.
”The music is unlike most I had been exposed up to that point, and learning to play it was a great way to understand its structure,“ said Advanced Gamelan student Rod O’Connor ’08.
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