Gamelan Music: A Brief Guide

If you're looking for a way to expand your ears, your mind, and your vision of music, look no further than the sounds of Indonesia's classical music - the music of the Gamelan. A mostly percussive music, Gamelan is at times noisy, calming, boisterous and beautiful - often all at the same time. And surprisingly, Gamelan has had a profound influence on the development of Western classical music. Most notably, Claude Debussy incorporated elements of the Gamelan sound into his compositions.

The instrumental makeup of a gamelan is relatively simple. In Javanese, the word "gamelan" literally means "things you hit," and indeed the majority of the gamelan is made up of gongs (both hanging and pot-gongs), drums, and xylophone-like instruments. Additionally, gamelans will often incorporate flutes, zithers, fiddles, and vocalists to layer on top of the constantly-shifting percussion. Where gamelan music becomes particularly interesting, though, is in its structure. While most western music has a beginning, middle, and an end, gamelan pieces can go on forever - they consist of an opening section, to "call in" the piece, and then a main section, which is repeated for as long as the players wish to play it - to end the piece, they just gradually slow down and fade out. The idea is that all gamelan pieces are constantly being played by an ensemble somewhere, and each individual group is just "borrowing" it for a short time. Perhaps the most striking distinction from western music, though, is the beat structure. In western music, the first beat of a phrase is usually considered the most important, and the notes which follow go out from that initial beat. In gamelan, however, the last beat of a phrase carries the most weight - and every note before that beat is leading in towards it. It seems like a small, simple distinction, but it creates a profound effect on the music. Every note has a specific direction - you could say that while western music is exploratory, gamelan music is goal oriented.

In its native context, gamelan is rarely performed by itself, in a concert setting. In fact, it's usually viewed as being inseparable from the other arts - particularly dance and shadow-puppetry. These are beautiful performances, with the music, dance, and puppetry usually portraying scenes from the Ramayana. In fact, gamelan performances as concerts are an incredibly recent phenomenon, and are usually reserved for tourist shows.

Gamelan music has had an incredible influence on the Western tradition, from classical music to modern pop and beyond. Claude Debussy saw a gamelan being performed at the 1889 World's Fair, and it had a profound influence on his work from then on - he would use whole-tone scales to approximate the Indonesian tuning system, and employ many gamelan-like structures in his pieces. Additionally, gamelan music had a profound impact on the Krautrock movement of the 1970's - particularly structurally and rhythmically - so much so that there was even a Krautrock group that performed as a gamelan. Even some modern experimental pop groups, such as Xiu Xiu, utilize the gamelan on their records, and cite the music as a large influence on their sound.

If you're interested in investigating the sounds of the gamelan, there are many records available in record shops and on the internet. I would recommend, however, that you focus mostly on live recordings, as these tend to give a more accurate expression of the shifting dynamics, rhythmic pattern, and outright beauty that is contained in the gamelan.