gamelan | Crooked Glasses

My studies of music have been windows into various cultures, and the style of music I’m writing about today is no different. I first learned about this in my “Music Cultures of the World” class in college, and it was easily some of my favorite music to learn about.

A Gamelan Crash Course (Figuratively Speaking)

Gamelan (pronounced “GAH-meh-lahn”) music comes from the islands of Java and Bali in Indonesia, and is based on defined musical scales, such as Pelog and Slendro, that differ significantly from Western scales. The word “gamelan” can reference both the type of musical ensemble that plays this music, and the style of music that said ensemble performs. A variety of different instruments, ranging from flutes and vocals to drums and all sizes of metallic gongs, make up the ensemble.

To Westernized ears, this music can sound more like people dropping pans in a busy kitchen at first. But, in reality, each gamelan song is a complex orchestral work, with each instrument built and tuned specifically to fit within its particular gamelan ensemble and no other. It has also influenced world music–even composers like Claude Debussy and John Cage brought in some of its concepts in their music!

The history of gamelan music is intertwined strongly with the spiritual traditions of the various cultures living in Indonesia, to the point that you pretty much can’t talk about gamelan without involving faith, and vice versa. Gamelan music is used in so many ceremonies and rituals, but it’s also broadcast on radio–it’s an integral part of
Indonesian life. It is, quite simply, a form of worship music, used to speak to the gods and invite them into human presence.

Gamelan Styles with Examples (Videos)

There are two broad categories for gamelan music. Javanese gamelan, featured in the first video below, is generally smoother, calmer, reverberant, rhythmical/flowing…it’s almost like being inside a giant, harmonic clock. Balinese gamelan sounds more “exciting,” with a harder, ringing metallic sound and faster, more complicated rhythms that don’t necessarily adhere to the clock-like, echoing steadiness of Javanese styles.

A third style, Sundanese gamelan, is from West Java, yet sounds slightly different from the Javanese style–to my ears, it tends toward the ringing metallic tones from Balinese gamelan. Check out the videos below to hear these styles:

Javanese gamelan