Lindsey Macchiarella
9/24/10
Seminar in World Music
Lecture: Balinese Gamelan in Religion and Ritual
Objective: at the end of the lecture, students should be have a basic understanding of Balinese gamelan instruments and theory. They should know about Balinese cosmology, religion, and gamelan in rituals.
Sections:
I. Balinese Gamelan – The Breakdown
a. Bali
b. what is gamelan/instruments
c. theory
d. structure
d. tuning
II. Balinese Religion and Cosmology
a. 3 worlds
b. tripartite nature of society
c. tripartite nature of gamelan
d. religious reflections in music
III. Musical Ritual and Function
a. Karya
b. 3 sets of rituals
c. ritual musical style
I. Balinese Gamelan – The Breakdown
a. Bali
-Indonesia is a country in Southeast Asia compromised of approximately 17000 islands
-Bali is on e of these islands
-neighboring islands are Java and Lombok
-SEE MAP OF INDONESIA IN PACKET
-though it is a small island, it has a high population of app. 3 million
-It is the largest tour destination in the country
-Bali is known for it’s great diversity, and is known to be extremely community minded
-national slogan “unity in diversity”
-economy used to centered around rice farming
-lately, tourism market has grown so much, its taken over
-fortunately, this has created a government movement to consciously preserve Balinese arts
b. What is gamelan/ instruments
-the type of music played in Bali is called Gamelan
-it has been around for hundreds of years
-was originally music mostly reserved for high courts, but when Indonesia was colonized by the Dutch in the early 20th century, court gamelan sets were sold to villages
-lead to shift in patronism, and became more of the “people’s music”
-Gamelan ensemble organization reflects community mindedness of Bali
-one set made up of many different types of instruments
-thought of as one instrument
-Gamelan cannot function without all types of instruments present
-Most Gamelan ensembles consist of:
-gongs, metallophones, kettle gongs, drums, wooden flutes
-SEE PACKET – pictures of instruments
-usually performed by only boys and men
-recently women allowed, but lots of debate
-there are about 30 distinct types of ensembles
-distinguished by size, musical instruments, tuning, types of repertoire, and context and function
a few examples:
-Gambuh: dance-drama. very percussive and usually include suling – wooden flute
-gong kebyar: mostly metallophones, little percussion
-beleganjur: made for marching, mostly made of ceng-ceng players
-kecak: all vocal gamelan!
WATCH – gong kebyar and kecak
c. Gamelan music theory
-western term for gamelan type music is Stratified Polyphony
-means the texture is composed by many individual lines of music superimposed in a seemingly unrelated fashion
-when all put together, forms unified sound
-they do not have a concept of independent melodic line like we do in the west
-Pokok – means trunk
-the melodic subject of a piece
-figurations are played of the pokok through majority of piece
-figurations: embellishments stemming from melody
-eg. Think of contrapuntal inversios, alaborations, expansions of subject, etc.
-major distinguishing characteristic is the Kotekan
-when multiple musicians play parts of a single line.
-listen/watch for the kotekan
-the part with the most flexibility is the drummer
-rhythmic leader, and sort of conductor
-pengual or trompong – both metallophones – is melodic equivalent
-this part sticks to pokok
-because gamelan is usually performed to accompany dance and theater, it has to be flexible, and the drummer gives the ensemble cues
-Angsel Is employed most especially for theater
-it is a dramatic rhythmic break wher everyone but the `pokok stops playing
-used for emphasis
e. Structure
-in the west, we call their structure Colotomic
-cyclical in nature.
Sections are orgainized and metered by several gongs
SEE IN PACKET – figure of gamelan cyclical form
-a gong count can last anywhere from 8 to 128 beats
-each gong cycle is divided in a pattern by smaller gongs such as the kempur, kemong or kempli
e. Tuning
-Most Balinese music is pentatonic
-the two tonal systems are pelog and slendro
-slendro: 5 tones to octave, tones nearly equidistant
-pelog: 7 tones, has large and small intervals
-theoretically 5 pentatonic scales that can come out of pelog
WATCH – examples of slendro and pelog scales
-Gamelans are not tuned to absolute pitch
-created to suit owner
-they are tuned to themselves, but not to other sets, so it is difficult for more than one gamelan to play at once
-Instruments themselves are tuned in pairs, one slightly higher, one lower
-gives tones shimmering quality
-known as male and female or inhaler and exhaler, depending on who you ask
-gamelan rarely notated, mostly passed orally
-orally, pitches of pentatonic usually called: ding deng dong dung dang
SEE PACKET – keckak notation – make sweet kecak music
II. BALINESE RELIGION AND COSMOLOGY
a. worlds
-though Indonesia has a vast array of religion, 90% of Bali practices Hindu – Dharma Bali
-also called holy-water religion
-a synthesis of local traditions and Indian Buddhism
-The Hindu - Balinese Worldview is religiously based in 3s
-Upper world – domain of gods, middle world domain of men, lower world bad spirits
-The Balinese idea of the body is separated into head, torso and feet
b. tripartite nature of society
-their physical villages and social structure are also tripartite
-many believe that the instrumentation reflects the village order
-gongs- respected elders
-drums – political leaders
-metallophones – younger people
-their music is tied inseparably to their religion.
-in 1971, Balinese religious leaders divided music, theater and dance into 3 categories
-categories follow the hierarchy of world series as well as the head to feet series in going from most to least sacred
-wali – performed in the inner sanctum of temples
-bebali – middle courtyard
-Bali-Balihan – outer courtyar
-of course, these only apply to sacred applications of music. Not the type of stuff tourist see
c. tripartite nature of music
-music most often contains 3 sections
-in instances of long gong cycles, 3 cycles
-3 different speeds in various orders
-in my experience, usually medium, slow, fast
d. religious reflections in music
-some scholars say that the cyclic nature of gamelan is meant to suspend time
-when music slows, smaller instruments speed up and detail pokok
-faster tempo – parts more unified
-Ancient Balinese manuscript – Prakempa
-states that Pelog and Slendro together form 10 tone system called Genta Pinara Pitu
-tones correspond to direfctions, their subdivisiona dn two center tones being gods Siwa and Buddha
-mode associations
-pelog with masculinity, the god Semara and water
-slendro – femininity, god Ratih and fire
III. Musical Ritual and Function
a. Karya
-Music and art are so ingrained into religion and daily life that until recently, they had no word to separate music/art and religion.
-defined as ritual work. Karya
-Balinese are saturated with Karya.
-a few examples: music at birth, death, festivals, offerings, cremations, historical reenactments, even tooth fillings! (according to grove)
b. 3 sets of rituals
-First ritual set are life-cycle rituals
-everyone has several in their lifetime
-includes: birthdays, name giving, marriage, teeth filling and cremations
-how elaboratie they are – as in, if they include dance and theater – is determined by the family’s wealth
-Second set are temple festivals, called Odalan
-there are app. 20 thousand temples in Bali
-main temple rituals are called Panca Yadnya – means “five Sacrificial Offerings
-happen only 5 times a year
-Every village has 3 main temples
-Pura Puseh – temple of origins
-Pura Desa – central village temple
-Pura Dalem – temple of the dead
-Odalan happen often, and most Balinese go to these
-all villagers are obligated to attend one odalan at least every 210 days
-Third set is informal
-political functions, national holidays, fund raisers and tourist performances
c. Ritual styles
-Certain gamelan sets are made particularly for ritual work
-these gamelans are made in sacred scales and used only for powerful rituals, such as temple festivals or purifications
-Saih Pitu scale is the most sacred and purifying
-Saih Gong scale is considered most powerful
-used for temple festivals
-said to evoke imagery of past and bring together divine and human world
-Saih Angklung – used for life-cycle rites, sometimes temple festivals
-if a village owns only one gamelan, it will be used for everything, however.
-Major rituals in any of the 3 sets use multiple gamelan simultaneously.
-Music that includes theater is meant used to tell stories of the past or mythological stories
-for large functions, shadow puppetry or choirs are used to connect the entire audience
-again, this tells of the uniting mindset of the Indonesian, unity through diversity
WATCH – temple festival
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bakan, Michael B. World Music: Traditions and Transformations. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2007. Print.
Nettl, Bruno, Ruth M. Stone, James Porter, and Timothy Rice. The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. New York: Garland Pub, 1998. Print.
Randel, Don M. The Harvard Dictionary of Music. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003. Print.
Sadie, Stanley, and John Tyrrell. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. New York: Grove, 2001. Print.
Schaareman, Danker. Balinese Music in Context: A Sixty-Fifth Birthday Tribute to Hans Oesch. Forum ethnomusicologicum, Bd. 4. Winterthur/Schweiz: Amadeus, 1992. Print.
Tenzer, Michael. Balinese Music. Hong Kong: Periplus Eds. (HK) Ltd, 1998. Print.