Gamelan

Gamelan is the Balinese word for both the music and the collection of musical instruments that play the indigenous music of Bali. Closely related to Javanese gamelan, an older form, scholars speculate that the music of bronze gongs, bamboo flutes and tuned keys has been played for at least a millennium in the islands now known as Indonesia.

The fall of the Majapahit Empire at the close of the 15th century brought the high courts of Java to their new home in exile, the island of Bali. There the refined traditional arts of those courts blended and dispersed throughout the island and integrated with pre-existing forms to create the vital, exuberant living culture that is still actively developed on the island to this day.

While the Jazz era was raging in New York City in the teens and twenties of the 20th Century, Bali developed its own new form of music and dance renowned for its dynamic, virtuosic group performance techniques, complexity and expression, called kebyar ("explosion"). This particular form became very popular, with hundreds of villages developing their own Gamelan Gong Kebyar ensembles, and competitions between these ensembles occur frequently even now.

Gamelan Dharma Swara's Gong Kebyar ensemble is owned and graciously hosted by the Consulate General of the Republic of Indonesia, and directed by I Nyoman Saptanyana, a graduate of the Conservatory of Fine Arts in Denpasar, Bali.

Current Gong Kebyar repertoire includes:

Teruna Jaya - a powerhouse music and dance Kebyar piece composed by Pan Wandres of North Bali.

Pendet Peliatan - a refined welcoming dance from the village of Peliatan, particularly well-known for its musicians and ensembles.

Baris - a traditional young warrior dance.

Tabuh Pisan - an instrumental composition in the lelambatan style, regarded as a classic in the repertoire.

Cenderawasih - composed by I Nyoman Windha, this piece features inventive melodies and colorful dancers.

Legong Kuntul - a court dance with lovely melodies depicting the movements of white herons in the rice fields.

Telek - a masked dance depicting temple guardian statues coming to life to battle intruding demons.

Gamelan Dharma Swara's new Semara Dana ensemble uses a recently developed (1986) gamelan format which blends the scales of the Semar Pegulingan ensemble with those of a Gong Kebyar ensemble thus enabling access to repertoire of both sorts of gamelan along with melodies from Anklung, Jegog and Gender Wayang. Favored by contemporary composers due the wider latitude of modal variation, this ensemble is currently exploring pieces such as:

Suara Sandi - composed by I Nyoman Windha for his Bachelors degree ensemble, this piece features mode changes in the pengawak as well as an acknowledgement of the older Gambuh forms in its melodies.

Pengastung Kara - composed by I Dewa Alit of the renowned Cudamani ensemble, this complex piece features melodies from Gong Luang and Anklung styles.

Lengker - from the classic Semar Pegulingan repertoire, this meditative piece was performed for kings as a sort of lullaby in the evening as they went to sleep.

Bhima Swarga - composed by member Matt Welch in collaboration with famous downtown laptop artist Ikue Mori, this soundtrack to a DVD of the same name featuring Ikue's animated retelling of the Bhima Swarga myth blends gamelan forms with pibrogh melodies from the Scottish bagpipe repertoire.