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Identifier
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Joining the Gamelan JVMC
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Title
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Joining the Gamelan in Theory and Practice
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Date
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2016
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Creator
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Sean Williams
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extracted text
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Joining the Gamelan in Theory and Practice
Sean Williams
The first time the deck of cards appeared in the gamelan room at The Evergreen State
College, the deck was met with silence and looks of shock. The cards landed on the small table,
around which at least a dozen students were clustered while the rest of their classmates sat at the
instruments of the gamelan degung, a small Sundanese ensemble of West Java. “If I don’t hear
some noise and the sound of cards,” I warned, “I will be quite disappointed.” I then returned my
attention to the students at the instruments, who looked equally alarmed. Within a few minutes,
however, they were lost in the sounds of the gamelan and struggling to learn their parts,
apprentices at their sides. Several minutes later, chatter, shouts of triumph, and cards slapping
against the table were added to the sounds in the room.
During my time of doing fieldwork with musicians in the Sundanese region of West Java,
Indonesia, I studied the local genre of tembang Sunda, an aristocratic genre that had as its
instrumentarium the large zither (kacapi), small zither (rincik), and bamboo flute (suling). I lived
in the capital city of Bandung at a compound with the members of a performing arts organization
– Jugala – and heard a variety of musical genres on a weekly basis. From gamelan degung to
tembang Sunda to the comedy routines of calung, the place was lively with music and dance
both day and night. A recording studio on the premises brought in outside performers: pop stars,
experimental artists, musicians from remote villages on their first visit to the big city, recording
engineers, politicians, and hangers-on of all stripes. It was a hothouse environment.
A key adjective – ramai – was in operation most days at Jugala. The concept of ramai
represents a life that is busy, fun, lively, noisy, and just chaotic enough to be exciting. For a
place to be ramai, it requires a critical mass of people from different class levels, different
families of origin, different musical training, and different perspectives to be present at the same
time. It requires a number of distractions, both musical and social. In a context that is suitably
ramai, musicians and dancers are at ease to focus on their music or their movements, knowing
that what they practice in that context is being simultaneously judged and held in a low-stakes
environment. While traffic jams may also be characterized as ramai because of the noise and
potential to socialize with other drivers, the use of this word in the context of a performing arts
organization is critical in locating Sundanese pedagogy within the confines of a small liberal arts
college in the Pacific Northwest.
The Evergreen State College is celebrated for its interdisciplinary work within the context
of full-time, year-long “programs.” Over four years, a student might join only four programs but
receive 180 diverse credits in (for example) ethnomusicology, forest ecology, marine science,
postcolonial literature in translation, Asian dance, and Irish studies. Rather than employing the
use of departments, majors, and grades, the professors instead work on small teaching teams and
develop a narrative evaluation for each student at the end of each year. Within any given
program, the professors are able to create virtually any pedagogical model with which to
experiment, particularly through experiential learning, and the curriculum is created anew each
year.
As the sole ethnomusicologist at this intensely creative and experimental place, it has
been my goal to bring my students into playing gamelan degung through the use of Sundanese
pedagogy. Living in West Java for several years, and absorbing the sounds of the gamelan
slowly – through osmosis, as it were – is not an option for my American college students. Their
work in an interdisciplinary program, however, requires that they combine their gamelan work
with reading Indonesian literature in translation, watching films, learning to speak Bahasa
Indonesia, and exploring history, religion, and politics through lectures and readings. The luxury
of working with these students for a full year, sixteen hours a week, is unparalleled. Since we all
work on teams, the norm would be to work with professors who specialize in Asian dance and
theater, so the students develop a broader sense of Asian performing arts culture.
It is the responsibility of each faculty member to work with approximately 25 students.
The college’s Sundanese gamelan degung seats students for just six instruments: the bonang
(gong chime), go-ong (large hanging gong), jenglong (set of six small hanging gongs), panerus
(large metallophone), peking (small metallophone), and kendang (set of one large and two small
barrel drums). The suling (bamboo flute) is too challenging to teach to beginning students, so it
is the one reserved for me. The disparity between the six players and the 25 students is solved by
developing a system of players, apprentices, and listeners. After a short lecture in which the
students learn about the ensemble and the basic etiquette for playing (e.g., not stepping over the
instruments), the first brave souls come forward to play, and six more come forward to be
apprentices. The rest have to wait, and listen. Within a few minutes, the cell phones appear and
the listeners are lost to the allure of the internet.
After the deck of cards comes out, a marked difference settles in the room without fail.
While the room itself is bright and cheerful – with windows opening onto an evergreen forest on
two sides – it remains a classroom with a chalkboard. The sounds grow in volume from the card
players, which takes the pressure away from those struggling to learn their parts on the musical
instruments. Cell phones slip back into pockets and backpacks, completely forgotten. The
instrumentalists physically relax and begin to make light of their mistakes, shrugging them off
and simply learning from them rather than wishing they could sink through the floor in shame.
Their apprentices, who hover next to them ready to assist with pointing out the right notes or
phrases, or remind them of where they are, also tend to lighten up and occasionally make lighthearted comments of support and encouragement. Most importantly, laughter and teasing form
the bulk of the conversation. Indonesian ginger candy is shared and remarked over, as is tea from
West Java. Students learn to help prepare the flowers that stand near the gong, and come to
respect the gong by playing just firmly enough to release the specific sound waves at the right
speed.
In a traditional Sundanese pedagogical context, teaching at home through actually
playing together while being welcoming, light-hearted, and humorous is the gold standard.
Students slip up, learn from their mistakes, gain very specific skills, and develop an
understanding of performance practice through layers of practicing, apprenticing, and listening
through conversations, card (or domino) games, dancing, eating, drinking tea, and hearing
occasional admonitions to play better from those nearby. An otherwise debilitating mistake is
simply released and replaced by better practice. A missed gong or the failure to repeat a specific
line results in shrieks of laughter rather than silent mortification. The group is favored over the
individual musician, and every student learns to play every piece on every instrument.
By using this ramai pedagogy, the result is that students come to understand that they are
not receiving credit for playing cards and telling jokes; they are receiving credit for acquiring
skills through a very different form of teaching and learning. Performances, when they do
happen, are assured and relaxed, with neither the ponderous sense of grinding through a
repeating gong cycle (again and again), nor the panicked anxiety of being onstage for the first
time. During one performance for approximately 800 people at the Seattle Folklife Festival, one
student forgot what he was supposed to play, and another one calmly went up to him from her
place on the sidelines, lightly cuffed him on the shoulder with a smile, and took over his part
without missing a beat. The audience saw what happened, and chuckled, then applauded. The
acclaim for both students backstage was warm and heartfelt.
In Sundanese contexts for gamelan degung, participation is essential in ensuring a
successful performance. Having audience members step in to play (or sing) adds to the pleasure
of the players and audience members alike (most of whom are wrapped up in conversation, just
as one might experience during a rehearsal). To join a gamelan rehearsal is to agree to be casual
and (somewhat) noisy, to cheer and laugh at mistakes and successes alike, and to stop taking
oneself as seriously as in those ensembles in which a single mistake is enough to send a student
out in tears. Whether it is a deck of cards, shared ginger candy, or working with apprentices and
listeners, the noisy, communitas-building sense of ramai Sundanese pedagogy works almost
below the threshold. Before they even realize it, students who had never even heard of gamelan,
let alone gamelan degung, are playing, socializing, and being more Sundanese than they could
possibly have imagined six weeks before.
