Saturday 25 July 2009
Thursday 23 July 2009
Two disappointing performances in Yogya
There are two recognised centres of culture in Central Java, Yogya and Solo. Our original idea had been to go to Yogya, but at the last minute we changed our mind and went for Solo. Musically, this seems to have been the right choice. Fetching up at a small homestay frequented by gamelan musicians, we were immediately hooked into all the best classical music and wayang, none of it intended primarily for tourists.
Yogya is a different matter; here there is a well-rehearsed routine for capturing Western tourists and funnelling them into a series of attractions designed to sell Javanese culture. We started at the kraton, where our young tour guide was quick to identify our interest in wayang puppets; soon we were introduced to his father, who in turn put us in a becak to see a puppet maker. The puppet maker in turn encouraged us to meet him at the nightly two-hour tourist wayang held at the Sonobudoyo Museum.
We decided to give it a go, but what a sad and dispiriting event it was. A wayang is usually seven hours long, from nine pm to four in the morning. More crucially perhaps, as I'm now coming to realise, it is as much a social occasion as a performance. The tourist wayang was completely lacking in spirit not because it had been adapted and drastically shortened, but because this aspect was entirely missing. Also, at the risk of sounding like a semi-knowledgeable wayang snob, so many aspects were wrong.
There were chairs set up on both sides of the screen, the majority of them on the shadow side, where most of the audience were encouraged to sit. Not only that, but the sound system for the pesindhen and dalang was set up facing that side, making it very hard to hear from the musician's side. The audience was entirely made up of tourists, about three-quarters Westerners and the others maybe Japanese or Korean. It can be safely assumed that none of these people spoke Javanese, making any intelligible interaction between dalang and audience beyond simply the music and puppetry impossible.
About half-way through the piece I took up an invitation to go and sit in amongst the players onstage; this is not such an uncommon thing to happen. In broken Indonesian I said hello to the pesindhen and a few of the players, and even clapped along in a few places where I knew it was appropriate. With a mixture of trepidation and excitement, I realised that the goro-goro was coming up. This is the major comic interlude in a wayang; and I fully expected to become the butt of the dalang's humour, as commonly happens to Westerners at this point in the show. Nothing; of course there may have been a few sly jokes going on which I couldn't understand, but as far as I could see he completely ignored me.
As did all almost all the players; in fact, sitting in amongst the band, I realised how incredibly bored and jaded they all looked. These poor guys seemed to be serving out a life sentence of playing seven nights a week for uncomprehending audiences, and the music frankly reflected their boredom; lacklustre and sometimes pretty messy. They just couldn't be bothered, and under the circumstances I can't really blame them.
The night before that we had actually managed to find something off the tourist radar to go to, aimed more at a partly Indonesian and partly expat community of... arty types, I guess. This was Vincent McDermott's opera 'Mata Hari'. 'Can you make sure it's not actually... an opera!?', said Mags, and on enquiring it sounded an intriguingly similar kind of set up to Evan Ziporyn's 'A House In Bali', a band made up of half Western instruments and half gamelan instruments, with operatic vocal stylings combined with Javanese dance.
Not really the same kind of thing, though. One can appreciate how hard it must be to put on an event such as this, and I am prepared to make allowances; both bands were made up of capable but not particularly strong student players, while the production values were a bare notch above those of an amateur musical. I'll even forgive the fact that two of the principle singers apparently hadn't learned their parts yet, and were performing from music stands placed strategically and not so strategically onstage. The best aspect of the piece was probably the dance and choreography, particularly a quartet of male dancers who consistently drew the eye with a clever combination of modernistic and Javanese moves.
Opera sets itself up to incorporate all the arts, but in the end must stand or fall on the music, and McDermott's did not convince. The vocal writing was quite good (note to self; Indonesian is a grateful language for singers) but the instrumental material was tentative and lacking in drive and motion, often failing to support or carry forward the efforts of the singers. The programme made overt reference to the history and traditions of opera, so perhaps any criticisms on that ground are out of court, but... I feel more interesting work could have been made using the available forces by ditching any ideas of operatic-ness, or perhaps by being more playful or ironic with that tradition.
Wednesday 15 July 2009
Buying batik in Solo
At home in Scotland, I own one batik shirt. Well, I say batik; actually it is a kind of garish tourist model, short-sleeved polyester cotton with a big Garuda pattern printed on it, probably more suitable for an episode of Miami Vice than playing gamelan. Mags found it in a charity shop on Byre's Road, and lo and behold I found exactly the same shirt at a tourist stall in Ubud. Obvious what happened here, some West-ender on holiday in Ubud; 'Wow, that looks great!', then back to Scotland 'Hmm... maybe not'.
I really like the batik look, though. Around the South Bank Gamelan in London a lot of the players sport these as a kind of nonchalant 'yeah, I just picked this up in the market when I was studying in Solo' kind of look. So, one of my missions here had been to go to an actual batik market and actually haggle for an actual Javanese batik shirt.
Mission accomplished. Over the last week or so I've gradually worked my way down the price scale. At the top of the overpriced tourist scale is a shop like Batik Keris across the road from Cakra. Here you might easily be asked IDR 400,000 (£25) for a short sleeved shirt. A better prospect is a number of small boutiques in the Kauman area near Cakra. The one which was recommended by our Australian friend Melanie was Gunawan Setiawan. This is quite a well-known shop, and if you were to take up one of the five offers a day you get from taxi and becak drivers to take you to a batik shop, this is probably the one they would take you to. Very charming people, fixed prices.
Here I started to learn about the different qualities of batik. At the top end is purely hand-made batik, batik tulis, which means 'drawn', in other words the design is actually drawn by hand by an artisan in wax. Prices here can go way up! I went in with Mags to look at some kain sarong, basically just an oblong of material which men and women wrap around themselves to make a variety of skirt-like garments. Mags had picked out about eight or ten, but we got a bit of a shock when we went to the counter, somehow our order was north of £500! It turned out that one of these items alone, a beautiful detailed design in green and gold, was IDR 3,000,000 - £184 - entirely hand made. That one had to go back, unfortunately.
The only item I've bought in that shop so far was a shirt I picked out. This was still handmade, I think, probably a combination of 'tulis' and 'cap'. I think 'cap' again can mean a couple of different things; at the quality end of the marked it still means a hand-made garment, but one where some of the pattern has been applied using a sort of stamp rather than drawn. By luck the short-sleeved cotton shirt I picked out was 'sudah diskon', already discounted, down to IDR 100,000 (£6), normally shirts of this quality are between IDR 200,000 and 300,000 (£12 to £18). These are prices one would happily pay in the UK, I think, but are quite high by local standards.
Around the corner from Gunawan Setiawan are a number of other batik boutiques. Most of these seem to offer items even further down the quality scale. Here you get a kind of batik often sold to you as 'cap' or 'combination', but which I think is in fact entirely machine printed. But, these shirts look absolutely great; you will see a lot of Indonesian guys every day wearing batik shirts like this, where they count as formal wear, rather like a kilt; unless they are very upper class Javanese, they will usually be wearing this machine printed material.
The prices for a short-sleeved cotton shirt in this style are very reasonable indeed; at somewhere like Batik Soga or Mutiara Timun I was paying about 70,000 or less for one of these, about £4, which is an absolute steal really.
Can he go lower? Yes he can! Having got a sense of the quality and price, this morning I braved Pasar Klewer, which is I think one of the biggest clothing markets in Indonesia. It is about the size of the Savoy Centre in Glasgow, on two floors, but about four times as crowded. The batik stalls are about the size of two or three telephone kiosks, every one packed with a bewildering variety of patterns. However, as far as I could see, all of this was machine printed, none of the higher quality hand-made batik at all. Maybe I couldn't find it, but actually I suspect that this material is all cornered by the boutique shops.
So, at the first stall I picked out two cotton shirts. I lowered my voice when making the deal, as is done here, and initially I was told I think about 60,000 each. Although affordable, my previous experience made me think that by local standards these were not particularly high quality at all, and it was a rather inflated price. I offered half that, 30,000, she went to 40,000 and I settled on 35,000. At a second stall I paid the same price for a single shirt, again not the highest quality, but my favourite shirt I've bought so far, I'm wearing it now. I suspect if one wanted to be tough about it there might be quite a bit of room below that, but by the time you bargain someone down to £2.14 for a really unique garment which you're going to take home and treasure for years it's fine to call it evens, I think.
I really like the batik look, though. Around the South Bank Gamelan in London a lot of the players sport these as a kind of nonchalant 'yeah, I just picked this up in the market when I was studying in Solo' kind of look. So, one of my missions here had been to go to an actual batik market and actually haggle for an actual Javanese batik shirt.
Mission accomplished. Over the last week or so I've gradually worked my way down the price scale. At the top of the overpriced tourist scale is a shop like Batik Keris across the road from Cakra. Here you might easily be asked IDR 400,000 (£25) for a short sleeved shirt. A better prospect is a number of small boutiques in the Kauman area near Cakra. The one which was recommended by our Australian friend Melanie was Gunawan Setiawan. This is quite a well-known shop, and if you were to take up one of the five offers a day you get from taxi and becak drivers to take you to a batik shop, this is probably the one they would take you to. Very charming people, fixed prices.
Here I started to learn about the different qualities of batik. At the top end is purely hand-made batik, batik tulis, which means 'drawn', in other words the design is actually drawn by hand by an artisan in wax. Prices here can go way up! I went in with Mags to look at some kain sarong, basically just an oblong of material which men and women wrap around themselves to make a variety of skirt-like garments. Mags had picked out about eight or ten, but we got a bit of a shock when we went to the counter, somehow our order was north of £500! It turned out that one of these items alone, a beautiful detailed design in green and gold, was IDR 3,000,000 - £184 - entirely hand made. That one had to go back, unfortunately.
The only item I've bought in that shop so far was a shirt I picked out. This was still handmade, I think, probably a combination of 'tulis' and 'cap'. I think 'cap' again can mean a couple of different things; at the quality end of the marked it still means a hand-made garment, but one where some of the pattern has been applied using a sort of stamp rather than drawn. By luck the short-sleeved cotton shirt I picked out was 'sudah diskon', already discounted, down to IDR 100,000 (£6), normally shirts of this quality are between IDR 200,000 and 300,000 (£12 to £18). These are prices one would happily pay in the UK, I think, but are quite high by local standards.
Around the corner from Gunawan Setiawan are a number of other batik boutiques. Most of these seem to offer items even further down the quality scale. Here you get a kind of batik often sold to you as 'cap' or 'combination', but which I think is in fact entirely machine printed. But, these shirts look absolutely great; you will see a lot of Indonesian guys every day wearing batik shirts like this, where they count as formal wear, rather like a kilt; unless they are very upper class Javanese, they will usually be wearing this machine printed material.
The prices for a short-sleeved cotton shirt in this style are very reasonable indeed; at somewhere like Batik Soga or Mutiara Timun I was paying about 70,000 or less for one of these, about £4, which is an absolute steal really.
Can he go lower? Yes he can! Having got a sense of the quality and price, this morning I braved Pasar Klewer, which is I think one of the biggest clothing markets in Indonesia. It is about the size of the Savoy Centre in Glasgow, on two floors, but about four times as crowded. The batik stalls are about the size of two or three telephone kiosks, every one packed with a bewildering variety of patterns. However, as far as I could see, all of this was machine printed, none of the higher quality hand-made batik at all. Maybe I couldn't find it, but actually I suspect that this material is all cornered by the boutique shops.
So, at the first stall I picked out two cotton shirts. I lowered my voice when making the deal, as is done here, and initially I was told I think about 60,000 each. Although affordable, my previous experience made me think that by local standards these were not particularly high quality at all, and it was a rather inflated price. I offered half that, 30,000, she went to 40,000 and I settled on 35,000. At a second stall I paid the same price for a single shirt, again not the highest quality, but my favourite shirt I've bought so far, I'm wearing it now. I suspect if one wanted to be tough about it there might be quite a bit of room below that, but by the time you bargain someone down to £2.14 for a really unique garment which you're going to take home and treasure for years it's fine to call it evens, I think.
Monday 13 July 2009
Dark thoughts
A couple of days ago I went through an experience which has left me thinking rather dark thoughts; kind of 'who am I, what am I doing here, and what is music anyway?' thoughts. The occasion was a rehearsal hosted by Kitsie Emerson for a performance here on the 18th of July. Kitsie's name has long been familiar to me from the gamelan mailing list, as an American living in Solo who organises the Pujangga Laras klenengan, a monthly series of gamelan concerts. For the concert on the 18th, she told us she wanted to attempt something which had 'never been done before'; a concert of classical Javanese music performed by an all-western group of musicians. 'Western groups have come here before, but they have always performed new pieces, "komposisi"' she said. Mags and I looked at each other, feeling very slightly disparaged, and thinking the same thing, I think; one of the things our group in Scotland does best is new music for gamelan.
At any rate, we agreed to take part. The other musicians involved seemed to be mainly American acquaintances of Kitsie's, including a couple of people from the New York group Kusuma Laras who we had already met here. A whole other set of misgivings revolved around our general lack of skill and experience in this music; most of the other western musicians seem to have already spent a significant amount of time either studying in Java or with Javanese musicians back home, something neither of us has done.
The evening started like something out of a spy movie, with an eight o'clock rendezvous somewhere near the entrance of the ISI campus, the gamelan college here in Solo. Text messages flew back and forth; who were we meeting, where were we going, were we in the right place? A woman who might have been Japanese or Korean turned up on the back of a motorbike, she and I managed a brief conversation together in Indonesian, she sped off again apparently knowing where she was going.
In due course Kitsie appeared and led our taxi off into the night. We pulled up ten minutes later, somewhere in the Jebres district I think, and were led into a room about the size of a basketball court on the top floor of a house. It was rather bare and stark, with glaring lighting and a ceiling made of what looked like asbestos panels.
Filling about half the room was a rather battered but servicable looking gamelan, and about fifteen Javanese men sitting around, variously at the instruments or not, chatting, smoking and joking amongst themselves, with one or two other westerners in place also. 'Now', said Kitsie brightly, 'Is there anyone here who hasn't learned Indonesian yet?' Mags and I looked sheepish, as did Anthony from the New York group. My standing joke in an Indonesian conversation these days is 'Saya bisa berbicara bahasa Indonesia, tapi tidak bisa menggerti'; 'I can speak Indonesian, but I can't understand it'. Kitsie duly made introductions in two languages.
Then, there was another language in the room, Javanese. Most of the westerners in this circle have done the Dharmasiswa programme, which is a funded opportunity for musicians to come to Java for a year. And, it would be safe to assume that all of these people can get by in Indonesian, which is after all reputed to be one of the easiest languages in the world to learn. On the other hand, Javanese is really tough. It exists in three different simultaneous variants, as I understand it, with different words being used for the same thing depending on the social standing and circumstances of the conversation. The pronunciation is a little more complicated than Indonesian, and there is no such thing as a 'Teach Yourself Javanese' book you can buy on Amazon!
I'll come back to this point about the language. So, Mags and I were ushered to a saron and demung respectively, and given some music. For people who haven't played gamelan, I should explain that in theory what we were given here should have been an easy task. In front of you is an instrument with seven keys, with (to simplify things a bit) the numbers 1-7 written on them from left to right. You are given an A4 sheet of paper with a big list of maybe a couple of hundred numbers written on it, and all you have to do is hit the corresponding number on your instrument at the right time.
Sounds like the kind of task anybody would be able to manage, without even any gamelan experience, huh? Not a bit of it. The music stops and starts unpredicatably, then jumps to another part of the page, then slows down so much that you lose track of where you are, then suddenly speeds up again and other numbers are inserted which aren't written on the page.
I'm writing this in a naive way; of course, as someone who has played gamelan music in some shape or form for over ten years, one might have hoped that some of that experience would be useful. But no; I was frequently completely lost, with no idea how to find my place or get back in again. A bit dispiriting.
Which brings me to the big personality in the room; Darsono 'gila'. I've mentioned my teacher Darsono before, but it's a common name, it seems; our teacher is Darsono 'cilik' (I think), 'young' Darsono, whereas this was 'mad' or 'crazy' Darsono. That seems to be a completely accurate translation; everyone I spoke to in English agreed that this Darsono was 'mad' or 'crazy'. Kitsie explained this a little further; what it means, it appears, is that within the Central Javanese tradition, he is one of the musicians how is prepared to go further than anyone else in... I don't know quite how to describe it, innovation? Making up new parts on the spot? Which, it seems, makes him 'crazy', but in a good way; he seemed to be very highly respected by everyone in the room.
For a lot of the rehearsal he was sitting directly in front of me, and it was immediately apparent that he is a master musician. As with my own teacher here, the top players are able to sit in the middle of a rehearsal, playing one part, singing another, whilst simultaneously being able to listen to everything else which is going on and immediately correct anyone who goes astray. It's an impressive performance, and I have the highest respect for musicians who have made such a thorough and deep study of their music.
On the other hand, he really is a big personality, and I found it a little disconcerting. Sitting there in front of me, as well as correcting my mistakes he was forever mugging at me, shouting 'rest!' when I leaped ahead, singing snatches of Beatles songs, and generally being quite loud and... perhaps deliberately kind of coarse in his manner? This is where the Javanese language thing comes in, every once in while he would crack some joke in Javanese and all the guys would laugh uproariosly; it would probable take five or ten years of living in Java and studying the language intensively to have any chance of even understanding the joke once explained. He reminded me of an ex-army guy I used to play beside in a military band, a really bright guy who in the same way took a certain delight in acting the bufoon, and particularly in gently needling at my middle class pretensions. I kind of liked him, and I kind of liked crazy Darsono as well. Kind of...
All these layers of cultural disconnection; the continual smoking, unfamiliar languages, different agendas. One of the reasons this easy-looking music was so impossible for us to get right is the degree of knowledge of the repertoire and genre which the local musicians shared. Anthony and I have on a couple of occasions discussed the analogy with jazz musicians, and I think it stands up very well. Jazz musicians build an entire universe around themselves, which again is based on an extensive knowledge of a particular repertoire and set of conventions. A jazz musician (a real one, not a dilletante like myself) could happily have walked into the bar here at the Novotel and sat in with the house band, calling 'Autumn Leaves' in the full confidence that everyone present would have listened to the same recordings, studied the same books, know more or less the same set of changes, and have more or less the same expectations as to the routine of the performance. For the musicians, individually and a group, it's an affirmation of their identity as 'jazzers', built upon anything between ten years to a lifetime of studying, memorising and thoroughly internalising an entire genre.
So with these Javanese musicians. The music is filled with vocal and instrumental cues which they just know, but which are entirely inscrutable to naive players such as myself.
Dilletante. I never really went all the way with jazz, and I don't think I'm ever going to go all the way with Javanese music. Or any kind of music, I think, except my own. One doesn't become a composer entirely by chance, I think. There is a particular kind of musician who, depending on how you look at it, is either too lazy to fully absorb an existing genre, or who, having got a certain way in, feels the need to... break away, do something different, make the music go my way. Secretly, in our own wee clique, we composers allow ourselves a certain measure of arrogance, we feel a little superior to the musicians who 'merely' reproduce a tradition; we feel that there is something we know that they don't, that there is a step of courage we have taken in putting forward something new, which guys who are just 'players' don't really understand.
Talking myself into the ground here, but... I've decided that I'm not going to allow myself to feel inadequate because I don't understand spoken Indonesian (or Javanese!), that I don't smoke, that I don't like to eat spicy ricy food all the time, and that a part of me finds this music sometimes long, slightly samey, locked in it's own genre and history. At some point I'm going to do my own thing again. With, perhaps, some even firmer convictions around my personal internal thesis that 'music is not sound'; to me, the sound of Javanese music is almost an epiphenomenon, an accidental byproduct of what is really going on, which is a set of social interactions confirming a certain group of people in a particular individual and cultural identity.
At any rate, we agreed to take part. The other musicians involved seemed to be mainly American acquaintances of Kitsie's, including a couple of people from the New York group Kusuma Laras who we had already met here. A whole other set of misgivings revolved around our general lack of skill and experience in this music; most of the other western musicians seem to have already spent a significant amount of time either studying in Java or with Javanese musicians back home, something neither of us has done.
The evening started like something out of a spy movie, with an eight o'clock rendezvous somewhere near the entrance of the ISI campus, the gamelan college here in Solo. Text messages flew back and forth; who were we meeting, where were we going, were we in the right place? A woman who might have been Japanese or Korean turned up on the back of a motorbike, she and I managed a brief conversation together in Indonesian, she sped off again apparently knowing where she was going.
In due course Kitsie appeared and led our taxi off into the night. We pulled up ten minutes later, somewhere in the Jebres district I think, and were led into a room about the size of a basketball court on the top floor of a house. It was rather bare and stark, with glaring lighting and a ceiling made of what looked like asbestos panels.
Filling about half the room was a rather battered but servicable looking gamelan, and about fifteen Javanese men sitting around, variously at the instruments or not, chatting, smoking and joking amongst themselves, with one or two other westerners in place also. 'Now', said Kitsie brightly, 'Is there anyone here who hasn't learned Indonesian yet?' Mags and I looked sheepish, as did Anthony from the New York group. My standing joke in an Indonesian conversation these days is 'Saya bisa berbicara bahasa Indonesia, tapi tidak bisa menggerti'; 'I can speak Indonesian, but I can't understand it'. Kitsie duly made introductions in two languages.
Then, there was another language in the room, Javanese. Most of the westerners in this circle have done the Dharmasiswa programme, which is a funded opportunity for musicians to come to Java for a year. And, it would be safe to assume that all of these people can get by in Indonesian, which is after all reputed to be one of the easiest languages in the world to learn. On the other hand, Javanese is really tough. It exists in three different simultaneous variants, as I understand it, with different words being used for the same thing depending on the social standing and circumstances of the conversation. The pronunciation is a little more complicated than Indonesian, and there is no such thing as a 'Teach Yourself Javanese' book you can buy on Amazon!
I'll come back to this point about the language. So, Mags and I were ushered to a saron and demung respectively, and given some music. For people who haven't played gamelan, I should explain that in theory what we were given here should have been an easy task. In front of you is an instrument with seven keys, with (to simplify things a bit) the numbers 1-7 written on them from left to right. You are given an A4 sheet of paper with a big list of maybe a couple of hundred numbers written on it, and all you have to do is hit the corresponding number on your instrument at the right time.
Sounds like the kind of task anybody would be able to manage, without even any gamelan experience, huh? Not a bit of it. The music stops and starts unpredicatably, then jumps to another part of the page, then slows down so much that you lose track of where you are, then suddenly speeds up again and other numbers are inserted which aren't written on the page.
I'm writing this in a naive way; of course, as someone who has played gamelan music in some shape or form for over ten years, one might have hoped that some of that experience would be useful. But no; I was frequently completely lost, with no idea how to find my place or get back in again. A bit dispiriting.
Which brings me to the big personality in the room; Darsono 'gila'. I've mentioned my teacher Darsono before, but it's a common name, it seems; our teacher is Darsono 'cilik' (I think), 'young' Darsono, whereas this was 'mad' or 'crazy' Darsono. That seems to be a completely accurate translation; everyone I spoke to in English agreed that this Darsono was 'mad' or 'crazy'. Kitsie explained this a little further; what it means, it appears, is that within the Central Javanese tradition, he is one of the musicians how is prepared to go further than anyone else in... I don't know quite how to describe it, innovation? Making up new parts on the spot? Which, it seems, makes him 'crazy', but in a good way; he seemed to be very highly respected by everyone in the room.
For a lot of the rehearsal he was sitting directly in front of me, and it was immediately apparent that he is a master musician. As with my own teacher here, the top players are able to sit in the middle of a rehearsal, playing one part, singing another, whilst simultaneously being able to listen to everything else which is going on and immediately correct anyone who goes astray. It's an impressive performance, and I have the highest respect for musicians who have made such a thorough and deep study of their music.
On the other hand, he really is a big personality, and I found it a little disconcerting. Sitting there in front of me, as well as correcting my mistakes he was forever mugging at me, shouting 'rest!' when I leaped ahead, singing snatches of Beatles songs, and generally being quite loud and... perhaps deliberately kind of coarse in his manner? This is where the Javanese language thing comes in, every once in while he would crack some joke in Javanese and all the guys would laugh uproariosly; it would probable take five or ten years of living in Java and studying the language intensively to have any chance of even understanding the joke once explained. He reminded me of an ex-army guy I used to play beside in a military band, a really bright guy who in the same way took a certain delight in acting the bufoon, and particularly in gently needling at my middle class pretensions. I kind of liked him, and I kind of liked crazy Darsono as well. Kind of...
All these layers of cultural disconnection; the continual smoking, unfamiliar languages, different agendas. One of the reasons this easy-looking music was so impossible for us to get right is the degree of knowledge of the repertoire and genre which the local musicians shared. Anthony and I have on a couple of occasions discussed the analogy with jazz musicians, and I think it stands up very well. Jazz musicians build an entire universe around themselves, which again is based on an extensive knowledge of a particular repertoire and set of conventions. A jazz musician (a real one, not a dilletante like myself) could happily have walked into the bar here at the Novotel and sat in with the house band, calling 'Autumn Leaves' in the full confidence that everyone present would have listened to the same recordings, studied the same books, know more or less the same set of changes, and have more or less the same expectations as to the routine of the performance. For the musicians, individually and a group, it's an affirmation of their identity as 'jazzers', built upon anything between ten years to a lifetime of studying, memorising and thoroughly internalising an entire genre.
So with these Javanese musicians. The music is filled with vocal and instrumental cues which they just know, but which are entirely inscrutable to naive players such as myself.
Dilletante. I never really went all the way with jazz, and I don't think I'm ever going to go all the way with Javanese music. Or any kind of music, I think, except my own. One doesn't become a composer entirely by chance, I think. There is a particular kind of musician who, depending on how you look at it, is either too lazy to fully absorb an existing genre, or who, having got a certain way in, feels the need to... break away, do something different, make the music go my way. Secretly, in our own wee clique, we composers allow ourselves a certain measure of arrogance, we feel a little superior to the musicians who 'merely' reproduce a tradition; we feel that there is something we know that they don't, that there is a step of courage we have taken in putting forward something new, which guys who are just 'players' don't really understand.
Talking myself into the ground here, but... I've decided that I'm not going to allow myself to feel inadequate because I don't understand spoken Indonesian (or Javanese!), that I don't smoke, that I don't like to eat spicy ricy food all the time, and that a part of me finds this music sometimes long, slightly samey, locked in it's own genre and history. At some point I'm going to do my own thing again. With, perhaps, some even firmer convictions around my personal internal thesis that 'music is not sound'; to me, the sound of Javanese music is almost an epiphenomenon, an accidental byproduct of what is really going on, which is a set of social interactions confirming a certain group of people in a particular individual and cultural identity.
Saturday 11 July 2009
Photos from Bali
Finally managed to get enough time on the really rather slow internet connections around here to upload a couple of photos from Bali. Maybe more to come from Solo in a wee while; video out of the question until I get home, I think. (Click on the slideshow above to see bigger versions.)
Tuesday 7 July 2009
Buying gamelan instrumets
In possibly one of the most exciting and enjoyable days of my entire life, today we went with our teacher Mas Darsono to see gamelan maker Mas Cokrik and talk about buying some instruments. A ten-minute taxi ride from Cakra Homestay brought us to a rather quieter part of the city, where we were welcomed into Mas Cokrik's front room. We chatted over our shopping list, with Mas Darsono helping translate.
After a while we popped across the road to his storeroom, where he started by pulling out a couple of really great looking ciblons, one in particular really heavy, from nangka wood, the best, and a little hard to get these days. We looked at the various spare parts we needed, then he brought out a set of gender keys, for which I think he will make the casing. Basically, he is at the final end of the making chain, doesn't do the bronze work, but puts the instruments together and, crucially, tunes them.
So, my mission now is to find somewhere I can burn .mp3 files to CD so that he can hear our tuning; I never thought that would be so hard or I would have done it before I left!
Wouldn't be right to discuss the prices in public, I think, but we readily agreed to the price which he suggested, which seemed a good deal from our end and is presumably a good deal from his end also. To round the day off, we hopped on the back of a couple of motorbikes driven by the two guys and went to see the gong factory. Who had stopped forging for the day, so we're going back there on Thursday.
I'm gonna spend every day of my life now buying gamelan instruments; this rocks!
(Oh, Mags is a little better, but need to wait and see. If headache reccurs tomorrow, back to the hospital I think.)
(Oh, oh and, I've memorised the ladrang drumming for Wilujeng, and I nearly managed to get through the whole thing from memory today in a play-through.)
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