jwilzewske: South Asian Chamber Music: Gamelan Galak Tika

Gamelan Galak Tika, Copley Square, Boston

G amelan presents reality in musical form: it is cyclical yet linear, constantly alternating between event-overload and waktu kosong—‘empty time’. A person’s role within the ensemble is strictly defined and limited, only becoming meaningful in relation to the whole through kotekan. Culture is what we make of the world, both in creating cultural artifacts as well as in making sense of the world around us. Culture-making is an individual and collective civic duty.”
— Evan Ziporyn, MIT.

As non-Western chamber musics go, none, I think, is more beautiful than gamelan.

A gamelan is usually comprised of two metal percussion sets of bells—metallic drones, basically, plus some bronze or brass gongs—and each set is tuned to a different pitch-interval structure (‘laras’). One set is tuned to laras ‘sléndro’ (a pentatonic five-tone tuning system made up of approximately equidistant intervals), and the other set is tuned to laras ‘pélog’ (a heptatonic seven-tone tuning system with larger and smaller intervals). The gamelan’s elements are bulky and some of them are heavy, so the logistics and expense of touring with them are difficult. The MIT-based group, Gamelan Galak Tika, is one of a few gamelan ensembles touring regularly. Gamelan Galak Tika was founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1993 by Evan and Balinese artists Nyoman Catra and Desak Made Suarti Laksmi. A part of the MIT Music and Theater Arts program, its membership is comprised of both students and members of the Cambridge community.

Gamelan tonality is not the only distinctive aspect of gamelan music; the rhythms are characteristic, too. The precise inter-relationship of the gamelan percussionists’ parts is known as ‘kotekan’. Difficult for Western ears and minds to recognize—kotekan can, like Indian carnatic music, be mistaken as aleatoric, random, concrète.

Gamelan is a visceral, physical chamber music. The word ‘gamelan’ means nothing more grand than ‘to hammer’. The percussion ensembles of Java and Bali often involve 10 to 30 members, but smaller gamelan ensembles exist as well. The word ‘gamelan’ implies a collectivism or ‘social’ hammering; in general, ‘gamelan’ doesn’t denote solo hammering by one individual. Besides the gongs and metallophones, a gamelan ensemble often includes hand drums, cymbals, bamboo flutes, and violin-like stringed instruments. For some gamelan pieces, vocal or ambient sounds are added.

P revailing scholarly analyses of international relations pay virtually no attention to music. And yet the political dimensions of music are all too evident. The terrifying realities of conflict and the search for peace have inspired composers throughout history, from Haydn’s anti-war message in Missa in Tempore Belli to the astonishing outpouring of musical creativity following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Few would question the political content of explicit musical texts, such as protest songs. The more difficult challenge, however, is to locate the significance not only of titles or sung passages (where references to the political are easy to find), but also of purely instrumental music.”
— Roland Bleiker, Of Things We Hear but Cannot See, in Resounding International Relations (Franklin, ed.), p. 179.

In follow-up to the previous CMT post on separation of Music and State, I should mention that gamelan is the ethnic chamber music of Java and Bali, and is historically both a religion-sponsored sacred chamber music and a State-sponsored courtly and secular chamber music. The Balinese form of Hinduism prescribes gamelan for all ceremonial and liturgical events.

T he present Lao government is ideologically committed to the promotion of ethnic equality. The nominal equality of the state-constructed ethnic categories of Lao Lum, Lao Theung, and Lao Sung is officially celebrated in political rhetoric and administrative decrees. [But there is a] paradox that these official practices nevertheless result in the implicit affirmation of ethnic Lao political and cultural superiority. A popular restaurant features traditional Laotian live music. ... [But] the dance itself, as well as the musical accompaniment, contains no ethnic minority elements; instead, it is unmistakably ethnic Lao.”
— Jan Oveson, in Civilizing the Margins (ed., C. Duncan), p. 214.

If you would like to experience a concert of contemporary gamelan music, you can do that next Saturday, 18-OCT-2008, at 14:30 at the brilliant, new EMPAC at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Gamelan Galak Tika and Ensemble Robot will perform at the opening of RPI’s new Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center in Troy, New York. Or you can catch them in Boston later this month (Thursday, 30-OCT-2008, 19:30) in the intimate Berklee David Friend Recital Hall at 921 Boylston Street. Gamelan Galak Tika will be performing new music by composers including Ramon Castillo, Midori Matsuo, Sachi Sato, Christine Southworth, and Po-Chun Wang.

Or, if you are in Kansas City this weekend, you can hear Gamelan Genta Kasturi at the Urban Culture Project, La Esquina, 1000 West 25th St, Kansas City, MO, 18-OCT-2008, at 19:30, and 19-OCT-2008, at 14:00.

David Friend Recital Hall, Berklee College of Music

Gamelan Galak Tika play on two complete gamelans, both ‘sléndro’ and ‘pélog’. [Incidentally, Galak Tika is not a cute, spacey corruption of ‘galactica’. ‘Galak Tika’ in Bahasa Kawi (classical Javanese, a dialect of Sanskrit) means ‘intense togetherness.’ And intense togetherness is surely the unabashed effect that listening to and performing gamelan chamber music has.] Have a listen to a clip from one of their recent recordings:

[50-sec clip, Evan Ziporyn, Gamelan Galak Tika, ‘Ngaben’, 1.2MB MP3]

With gamelan, there is, not surprisingly, an ‘historically-informed performance’ (‘HIP’) and historically-informed composition movement, not unlike HIP for Early Music in the Western tradition. Some composers who have written new music for gamelan—Györgi Ligeti, Michael Nyman, Lydia Ayers, Howard Skempton, David Parsons, and others—have been primarily interested in the gamelan for its interesting, atmospheric timbre. They have not been fastidious about Javanese sléndro/pélog tuning, except where it happenstantially suits their own compositional goals. They have not been fastidious about inter-part ‘kotekan’ rhythmic historicity either, except where it somehow supports the rhythmic complexity and authenticity that they were aiming at. A traditional gamelan ensemble learns aurally, typically without any notation. But that does not mean that the pieces are somehow imprecise or ad hoc improvised. Historically, they were not. It takes many, many hours of rehearsal to achieve the collective kotekan and learn a piece without notated sheetmusic. (It takes many hours even when you do have a written score!)

[50-sec clip, David Parsons, ‘Urartu to Ubud’, 1.2MB MP3]

[50-sec clip, Lydia Ayers, ‘Prime Gongs’, 1.2MB MP3]

[50-sec clip, Jan Michiels, Györgi Ligeti, ‘Ouverture-Jaya Semara’, 1.2MB MP3]

Lou Harrison (1917-2003) was a notable exception insofar as he did not merely coopt the instrument and leave its idioms behind. His gamelan compositions pushed the boundary in terms of rhythmic and harmonic innovation in gamelan, but he also concerned himself deeply with traditional, authentic gamelan composition and performance. Harrison was a student of Henry Cowell, Arnold Schoenberg, and K.R.T. Wasitodiningrat (Pak Cokro). He is noted for incorporating elements of the music of non-Western cultures into his work, and he is one of the most prominent composers to have extensively used microtonality in his pieces. Harrison’s music is often constructed around so-called ‘melodicles’, short motifs that he reverses (palindromes) and inverts upside-down in pitch-space: minimalist but melodic, giving rhythm a role equal to that of melody; sensual, corporeal, physical.

[50-sec clip, Lou Harrison, ‘Jhala III’, 1.2MB MP3]

[50-sec clip, Lou Harrison, ‘Chaconne for Gamelan and Violin’, 1.2MB MP3]

I ’d long thought that I would love a time when musicians were numerate as well as literate. I’d love to be a conductor and be able to say, ‘Now, cellos, you gave me 10:9 there, please give me a 9:8 instead.’ I’d love to get that!”
— Lou Harrison.

Gamelan Galak Tika founder and director is Evan Ziporyn, Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Music at MIT. Recently he completed a work for Yo Yo Ma’s ‘Silk Road Project’, co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall, and a concerto for gamelan and strings for Galak Tika and the Philadelphia Classical Orchestra, commissioned by the Pew Foundation, premiered in 2007. His compositions have been performed by the Kronos Quartet, Bang On A Can, Nederlands Blazer Ensemble, master pipaist Wu Man, Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), and Gamelan Sekar Jaya. In addition to writing for Gamelan Galak Tika, he has arranged for the group works by Brian Eno, Conlon Nancarrow, Hermeto Pascoal, and Kurt Cobain. He also regularly performs and records as a featured soloist with Steve Reich and Musicians, and shared in their 1999 Grammy for “Music for 18 Musicians”. Born in Chicago in 1959, Ziporyn received degrees from Yale University and the University of California, Berkeley, where his teachers included John Blacking, Martin Bresnick, Gerard Grisey, and David Lewin. Upon completing a Fullbright Fellowship in Indonesia, he became Musical Coordinator of San Francisco’s Gamelan Sekar Jaya in 1988. He collaborated with Balinese composer I Nyoman Windha on ‘Kekembangan’, a unique work for full gamelan and saxophone quartet. He has been on the faculty of MIT since 1990.

G amelan ensemble interactions are like fish swimming in a school. Like birds flying in a flock. There are individuals, but the interlocking kotekan makes them express themselves as a collective, a synchronized, composite organism.”
— Jeffrey Ruckman, Gamelan Genta Kasturi, KCUR interview.

Gamelan Galak Tika, Boston Museum of Science, 2006

D hek jaman berjuang njur kelingan anak lanang
Biyen tak openi ning saiki ana ngendi
Jarene wis menang keturutan sing digadhang
Biyen nate janji ning saiki apa lali
Neng nggunung tak cadhongi sega jagung
Yen mendhung tak silihi caping nggunung
Sokur bisa nyawang nggunung desa dadi reja
Dene ora ilang nggone padha lara lapa.
[Since the war, I remember my son—
Long ago I cared for him, but now where is he?
I hear he has prospered. His dreams have now come true.
Long ago he made a promise, but now has he forgotten?
In the days on our mountain, I fed him corn and rice;
When it was rainy, I lent him my hat.
I hope he and his generation will come to their senses [and grasp the collective significance of those kindly gestures so long ago].
I hope to see this remote village become [with their financial and political help] a better place,
So that our own unselfish efforts will not have been without consequence.]”
— RumahKiri.

jwilzewske

Sunday, October 12, 2008

South Asian Chamber Music: Gamelan Galak Tika

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