Javanese Gamelan Music

The word "gamelan" is a Javanese word meaning "orchestra," referring to the instruments that make up the ensemble. Although we find similar types of music and ensemble all around Southeast Asia, as in Thailand and Cambodia, for example, gamelan music as is known today is particular to four nearby islands: Java, Madura, Bali, and Lombok. There are a large number of different types of gamelan ensembles, as much in terms of instruments used as in sizes, as much in styles of music performed as for occasions when they are performed, as well for whom they perform. These ensembles can range from few portable instruments, played by three or four musicians, to a large ensemble with as many as twenty-five musicians and between ten to fifteen singers. Large gamelan are own by wealthy patrons, shadow play puppeteers or particular institution such as banks, schools or government offices. For their part, musicians own smaller and more portable ensembles. Javanese Gamelan music has been performed for and enjoyed by people of all walks of life, from beggars to kings, although the sizes and types of ensembles, as well as the styles of music differs depending from which social class the audience is and on the occasions.

Most of the times, Gamelan ensembles accompany dance and theater, and especially "wayang kulit", the well-known Javanese (and Balinese) shadow puppet theater. The "dhalang", or puppeteer, and the ensemble sits behind a white screen generally lit up by a coconut oil lamp. (The audience may see the show from both sides of the screen.) Another theater is the "wayang wong", in wich the actors sing, dance and act. As for dance accompaniment, Gamelan accompanies a wide range of types of dances, which vary with the social context (e.g., from court dance to performances linked to folk dance). Gamelan, without dance and theater, are heard during particular events such as weddings, circumcisions and birthdays, for example, as well as on radio.

In a typical Javanese Gamelan, the instruments can be divided as follow: time-marking instruments (gongs of different sizes), melodic instruments (the "suling", an end-blown flute; and the rebab, a bowed spike fiddle, which plays the balungan, or fixed melody), elaborating instruments (all other metallophone instruments, which create the sound so typical of Gamelan music; the rebab and suling are also part of these groups). Singers can join in, either to sing solo songs or simply to add to the musical texture, normally during the soft moment of the piece. But there is a lot of variations between different ensembles, depending on their uses and purposes (as well as the wealth of the owner). For example, court ensembles will greatly differ in instrumentation and repertoire from more general ensemble used in weddings, or other social events. Three types of metal are use to make these metallic instruments: bronze, brass and iron, bronze being the most preferred.

Javanese music uses two tuning systems (or "laras"): sléndro and pélog. Sléndro has five pitches to the octave, while pélog has 7 pitches. With sléndro, the octave is divided in more or less 5 equals intervals; while with pélog, the octave is divided in 7 unequal intervals. Although pélog has 7 notes, usually only five are used in a given composition. The tuning can vary from one ensemble to the other, and from one instrument to the other. For our Western ears, this music may sound out-of-tune. These two laras will not be heard together during a performance. Out of these tunings, modes (or "pathet") are used, in a quite complex interrelated system and theoretical system. The Javanese pathet are associated with times of day, moods or theatrical conventions.

One particularity of Javanese music, compare to Balinese, is that the musicians somewhat "improvise". It is not an improvisation in the Western sense of the terms, but more in the sense of being able to develop, embellish and "improve" a piece as it is being performed. Yet, musicians are not allowed to go beyond certain traditional rules, they "do not express personal feelings, but, rather, perform their personal interpretations of the tradition" (Susilo). They even have 5 different types of improvisations. In this sense, musicians do not learn a particular score, but a piece structure plus a traditional way to treat it. For this reason, musicians who never played together can often performed without much practice.