Music of Bali: Gamelan Gender Wayang

Wayan Loceng and Ketut Balik - Music of Bali: Gamelan Gender Wayang

recorded in Sukawati, Bali

Bali, one of the over thirteen thousand islands in the Republic of Indonesia, is a tiny island paradise that celebrates daily life through the arts. The Balinese calendar is packed with one occasion after another for festivity. The village of Sukawati, where this recording was made, is typical. Almost every night the sounds of the large gamelan orchestra can be heard, sweeping through the air like an intoxicating fragrance. Either in performance, with dancers or actors, or rehearsing for some celebration soon to come, the local gamelan is likely to be heard late into the night. The men of each neighborhood within a village form a club around the large ensemble of metallophones and gongs that is the Gamelan Gong most familiar to Western listeners. Not necessarily specialized musicians, the players come from all walks of life, rice farmer to village prince.

Additionally, in Sukawati one is likely to hear the sounds of a quite different, more specialized small gamelan ensemble, the gender wayang, which consists of either one or two pairs of instruments. Sukawati is famous for its tradition of the wayang, or shadow play, and its music. The two musicians recorded here are acclaimed masters of their instruments, musical specialists and teachers that are widely sought after by students of the gender in Bali and around the world.

Typically, a shadow play begins long after the sun has set, perhaps as late as ten or eleven o'clock, and often lasts for four or more hours. The dalang, or shadow-puppet master, weaves an intricate story derived from various parts of the great Hindu epics, the Mahabhrarata or Ramayana. Most likely capable of presenting one of over fifty stories from memory, he will mix jokes about local events into the ongoing tale of the forces of Good and Evil.

As the dalang skillfully moves the flat leather puppets, the shadows they project onto the screen appear to move as if alive, and the well-known characters dance, clown around, plot against one another, get swept away in romances, run about and fight fierce battles as the forces of Good ultimately defeat Evil.

Sitting behind the screen with the dalang is the gamelan gender wayang. Although one of the smallest gamelans in Bali, the two or four players are able to produce music equal in richness and complexity to the much larger gamelans. The music of the gender wayang is melodically and rhythmically complicated and intricate, and the gender is acclaimed to be one of the most demanding instruments on the island.

Each player must play a separate melody in each hand, and these two melodies can be very synchopated and rhythmically independent. Melodies are often distributed between two players so each performer has to precisely fit small melodic fragments into the complementary, interlocking and sometimes overlapping fragments that are played by the other performer. The high degree of skill that gender players are respected for is especially demonstrated when the melodic fragments exist in both hands at once, quite independent of one another.

The instrument gender wayang is very portable, consisting of a modest frame, ten bronze bars and bamboo resonators. The bars are struck with stylized wooden hammers, round disks placed on the ends of thin tapered handles. Each instrument has two octaves of the five-note slendro scale, and each set of instruments seems to have a unique version of slendro tuning, different from any other set of instruments. Either one or two pairs of gender form an ensemble, with the second pair an octave higher. Corresponding notes from the different instruments are systematically mistuned, to create the pulsating, shimmering sound of this gamelan. (liner notes)

Tracklisting:

Side One

1. Pemungkah {20:31}

Side Two

1. Sekar Ginot {8:14}

2. Pena Kawan Malen Merdah {4:08}

3. Sekar Sungsang, tua {4:45}

4. Sekati {7:19}

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