Indonesian Music

Indonesian Music - Gamelan

Gamelan music differs depending on where in Indonesia you are and it is more than just a form of entertainment. It has a lot of spiritual meaning. 

There are two main tuning systems within gamelan music:

·       Pelog

·       Slendro

These two tuning systems do vary drastically throughout all of Indonesia there's some principles that stay the same. There are 7 tones in the pelog scale, however it's rare that they would used all 7 notes. They would usually pick 5 notes and stick to them. If you were to number them 1-7 the most common scale used would be 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6. In Bali they don't number the pitches they would have the selisir names; ding, dong, deng, dung and dang. In slendro tuning there is always 5 different pitches. They are often numbered 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6. These 5 pitches are always spread out evenly within an octave. In Bali the slendro scale is mainly only used for shadow puppetry or some ancient ensembles. It's rare to have gamelan instruments with both pelog and slendro tuning. You would have to have a set of instruments for each tuning.

Their is a collection of 100 islands in Indonesia and gamelans are different depending where you're from. Bali gamelans is a more loud playing style, more intense and in your face, whereas gamelans in Java are more chilled out and use softer playing styles. However it all depends on the setting and environment be it in a home/ceremony environment and unplugged gamelans will also be more quiet and softer. Gamelans can go on for 8-9 hours performing and all ages can take part in the music. The drums drive everything along, they're various different drums. The drums define different tones of sections and identifies when things start, change and end. During performances they will always face towards the audience. The royal family is very important, they all see the salton as he has mystical powers like a god. Performances within the royal court are very formal where performances for shadow puppetry may be slightly less so. Story's for shadow puppetry came from India migrating alongside the Hindu population. Other story's also come from the book "Mahadarata" (Translated to Tale of the Bharata Dynasty). The book is a Indian poetry book which covers a wide variety of tales from history or even entire philosophies on living. The book itself is 1.8 million worlds long across 74,000 verses. For some insight to what a shadow puppetry performance would be like, think of it like olden silent movies where the piano player would match up what he's doing to what's on screen.

References

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ku9iH2pU9g - (Accessed 27th December 2013)
• http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-mahabharata.htm (Accessed 6th January 2014)