24.

A Short History of Indonesia

Music of Indonesia

WC 3016

In the latter half of the 20thCentury, Australian composers began to be

influenced by Asian music, many if not most finding their greatest
inspiration in the rhythmic, almost minimalist classical music of Java and Bali.
Two of the most important of contemporary composers to be influenced in
this way were Peter Sculthorpe (1929 ) and Richard Meale (1932 2009),
both finding particular inspiration in the percussive rhythms of the Javanese
and Balinese gamelan.

Sasando player on Roti

By far the best known kind of Indonesian
music is the gamelan, that complex
orchestra made up of gongs, metallophones
and other, mostly percussive instruments.
But there are other forms of music and
many different instruments found
throughout the archipelago, all of which, it
must be said, show a family likeness to
music cultures elsewhere in Southeast Asia.

We have already seen the rather unusual sasando
popular in the islands of Roti and Savu. It is basically
a stringed instrument within a boom-box made of
several layers of lontar palm leaves to amplify the
sound.

Sasando player on Savu

On both Roti and Savu, the sasando is played in a

pentatonic scale on Roti, roughly cefg
bc, on Savu, cdegac on our Western
scale. There are many ways this rather beautiful
instrument can be played, depending on which of the
many social occasions to which it is the traditional
accompaniment.

Among the Minangkabau of Sumatra a form of flute is played, usually

accompanying a female singer or singers. This is called a saluang and
produces a sound which one Indonesian described as dark, mysterious and
gothic.

Saluang song Kampar Basiang (Beautiful Village of Kampar)
A Minangkabau saluang and (r) player
and singer ensemble.

The saluang is made from a

particular long, thin bamboo1
called a talang in the local
language. It is normally 3-4
cm in diameter and between
40 and 60 cm long. Four holes punctuate the tube which is open at both ends.
This is not played like the Western transverse flute but held vertically, almost
like a recorder, but unlike the recorder, it has no fupple. The sound is
produced by the player blowing down the tube but at a slight angle to the lip.
And like the didgeridoo and the bag-pipes, the saluang is played using circular
breathing or manyisiahkan angok in Minangkabau. There is no absolute
tuning although most instruments are played in roughly the key of C
roughly because they tend to drift around somewhat. Most of the songs
accompanied by the saluang are love songs or other rather romanticised
themes. In past times it was commonly believed that the saluang player had a
special magic called a pitunang which had to power to hypnotise the audience.

A set of talempong in West Sumatra.

Saluang is often accompanied by percussive
rhythms of a talempong. This is sometimes
described as a small kettle drum but that is
an inaccurate description because kettle
drums or timpani are a bowl covered with a
skin of some kind stretched over the open top
whereas the talempong is made of solid brass or bronze. However, like the
kettle drum, each talempong is tuned to a particular note. In fact, just as the
saluang is closely related to the West Javanese suling (see later) so the
talempong is more or less identical to the brass or bronze instrument
common throughout Southeast Asia and known in Java as the bonang which
we will discuss in detail a little later. This instrument, known by many names
throughout the region, is thought to have originated in west Java where it
was used in prehistoric times as a means of communicating among
communities in the mountains. From Sunda it migrated west into Sumatra,
1

Schizostachyum brachycladum Kurz

east through Java and Bali and northwards where it

reached as far as the Philippines. In the Moluccas it is
known as the totobuang and has become so central to
the local culture it has even figured on an Indonesian
stamp celebrating the region.
1967 Indonesian stamp showing the totobuang of the Moluccas.

It is said that the bonang a.k.a. kolintang,

kulintangan, talempong, totobuang and many other
names is the most highly developed tradition of
archaic gong-chime ensembles in Southeast Asia.

A set of totobuang from Central Moluccas on e-Bay; and (l) a group playing
totobuang and tifa (drums) on Ambon.

Totobuang in Malukku are usually played in conjunction with tifa or drums.
These come in various sizes and range from plain to highly decorated. Drums
of course are universal some of the most
interesting are made
by the Asmat people,
master carvers of
New Guinea. The
example shown here
was made mid-20th
Century and is from
the Michael C.
Rockefeller Collection in New Yorks Metropolitan
Museum of Art.

There is another genre of music found in the Moluccas which needs to be
mentioned here. This is kroncong2 which had its origins in the songs brought
to the Spice Islands by the Portuguese. Just as the Portuguese fado celebrates
a kind of emotion known as saudade, so too kroncong tugs at the heart-strings
with its sense of rindu both words cannot be translated directly into
English but each means the same as the other. This feeling is one which in
earlier times was known as Divine Melancholy for example, John
2

Also spelled keroncong

Dowland wrote music with this quality a positive version of sadness and a
sense of longing for what is lost. Along with their style of song, the
Portuguese also left their guitar, the Portuguese, not Spanish guitar, the local
descendants of which lent to kroncong a sound a little reminiscent of
Hawaiian music.

Kroncong has been eclipsed by modern pop music but lives on, strangely
enough, in many restaurants in Solo where young people today perform in
the manner of the 1960s when the Beatles were still banned and superstars
like Waljinah ruled supreme. While many kroncong pine for my island
home, interestingly the best-known of all of this genre is Bengawan Solo, a
paen of praise to the river which runs through that city and on whose banks,
thousands of years ago, Solo Man once roamed.

Bengawan Solo sample

Meanwhile, back in the Moluccas and back in the 1960s this is what
kroncong sounded like when recorded on red translucent vinyl. The disc,
Songs from the Moluccas in Krontjong Beat3, was a compilation of songs from
the region and performed in the kroncong style, many of which had already
become well-known throughout Indonesia and were virtually national songs.

Kroncong Sayang dilale sample

Music in Java and Bali

While the music of other islands is interesting in its own right, by far the best-
known and most refined music is found on the islands of Java and Bali. On
those two islands it is the classical gamelan orchestra which is considered the
most sophisticated and provides accompaniment to many kinds of events
including theatre, dance, and the ubiquitous wayang in its several forms. Of
course it was the gamelans of the kratons of Surakarta and Jogjakarta which
were the most important.

Gamelan orchestra, 1870-91, photo by H. Salzwedel4

In both islands, a gamelan orchestra is made

up of several kinds of instruments. In nearly
all cases, the instruments are percussive of
one form or another with gongs, bonangs as
already described, and metallophones or
3
4

Brigadier General R. Pirngadie presents: Songs from the Moluccas in Krontjong Beat , Evergreen, Stereo TTS565
Photo from The Tropenmuseum, http://www.tropenmuseum.nl/

xylophones predominating.



A typical Javanese gamelan

Javanese gamelan ensemble with two female
sindhen (choral singer) during traditional
Javanese wedding.

Sometimes a gamelan will also include one or more stringed instruments
which are bowed or plucked, as well as drums, flutes and singers. Apart from
the singers and strings, all the instruments of a gamelan must be tuned to
each other and so every gamelan is unique that is to say, you cannot simply
pick up a bonang for example, from one orchestra and play it in another. To
relocate an instrument means re-tuning it, a difficult and irreversible process.

Although there are variations on the tone scales used in Indonesian music,
two predominate. These are called Slendro and Pelog. Slendro5 is a pentatonic
scale that is, based on 5 intervals which looks and sounds like this:

Slendro (Jawa) scale

Although the slendro scale varies from region to
region and from gamelan to gamelan, there is
much less variation in Java where the intervals
are much more evenly spaced within the octave.
In Bali it is common to find pairs of instruments
tuned slightly differently, the interference beating

Called salendro in Sunda

so produced providing that shimmering, almost dazzling effect. This applies

also to the Pelog tuning where the scale contains seven notes although it is
common to find only 5 of these being used.

The word gamelan comes from a Javanese word gamels which means to
strike or hammer6. According to Javanese
mythology, the gamelan was invented by Sang
Hyang Guru who, circa AD 230, was a god who
ruled Java from Gunung Lawu. This is an old
stratovolcano7 rising 3,265 m (10,712 ft) on the
border between Central and East Java.

The 3 summits of Gunung Lawu

It is said that this god-king needed a way of summoning the gods so he
invented the gong and when this was not sufficient, he invented two more
gongs and thus formed the first gamelan. Whether of divine origin or not, the
gamelan is clearly an indigenous and ancient art form in Indonesia. One of the
bas-relief frescos on Borobudur includes illustrations of musicians
performing in what is clearly a gamelan ensemble. While most of the present-
day gamelan instruments can be identified in this bas-relief, the
metallophones and xylophones are missing,
probably not yet invented by the 8th Century. It
is thought however, that the gamelan
instruments were fully developed by the time of
Majapahit.

Musicians performing musical ensemble, Borobudur.

Dating from the 12th Century are the two oldest
known ensembles respectively called Munggang
and Kodokngorek which form the basis for what
is known as the loud style of gamelan music. A soft style also developed
out of the tradition of singing Javanese poetry. By the 17th Century the two
styles had to some extent mixed and now form the basis for the gamelan of
Central Java, Bali and Sunda.

The composition of a gamelan orchestra and the kind of music it plays varies
from region to region. There are major and recognisable differences among
gamelan of West Java, Central Java and Bali. In general, the gamelan music of
Central Java is slower and more regulated and, although regarded by the
6

The an suffix makes it a collective noun.

Typically cone-shaped, these are volcanoes built up layer by layer from successive eruptions. Fuji, Krakatoa and
Vesuvius are well-known examples.
7

Javanese as the most halus or refined, tends to be less accessible to

Westerners. In West Java there is a form of gamelan music called gamelan
degung which, along with another classical form, kecapi suling, is easier for
Westerners to understand and enjoy. Of the three, Balinese gamelan is
probably the best known by Westerners because it is a feature of the events
staged for tourists in that island. Compared to Javanese gamelan music, it is
generally much more vigorous and lively.

Instruments and genres of Javanese and Balinese music

Central Java

Instruments of the
Javanese gamelan
and a sample of
gamelan gending
jawa

(Left to right) Bonang, Gender and Kempul

Gamelan music in Java is closely tied to particular functions and events and so
essential to their proper conduct that there is a saying in Java that "It's not
official until the gong is hung." It is not only the piece of music which is
played which is important but also which particular gamelan orchestra is
used for the occasion. So, for example, a very old form of the orchestra dating
from the 16th Century and called Gamelan Sekaten is used to celebrate the
Mawlid an-Nabi or Prophets Birthday. Kept throughout the year in the
kratons of Jogja, Surakarta and Cirebon, these ensembles are said to have
been first used by a prince to influence his reluctant subjects to convert to
Islam and for that reason, they are nowadays still played very loudly outside
the Mosque during the week of the Prophets Birthday.

Apart from the gamelan Sekaten, there are other archaic gamelan ensembles
kept at the kraton in Jogjakarta. These all have personal names as well as the

honorific title Kangjeng Kyahi (abbreviated to KK and meaning venerable

one) which is written in Kawi script on the back of the gong. Often these
names dont seem to mean much to a modern understanding and some
scholars believe they referred more to the sound rather than any other aspect
of the gamelan. So, for example, three archaic gamelan dating from the reign
of the first Sultan, Hamengku Buwana I (1755 - 1792) contain the word
guntur which means to fall, as leaves fall in autumn or warriors do in
battle However, this makes sense if you think like a contemporary
commentator who described listening to gamelan as like watching moonlight
on water. One of these pusaka gamelan known as KK Gunturlaut (or Falling
Sea) was part of a treaty exchange which marks the beginning of the
Jogakarta dynasty in 1755. Previously, the instruments had been part of the
gamelan monggang, held at Surakarta and believed to have originated back in
the time of Majapahit. These days, this ancient
red and gold gamelan is played only on two
ceremonial occasions, one being for the
funeral of the old sultan and the other, for the
coronation of his successor.

KK Gunturlaut, pusaka gamelan in the kraton of Jogja.

At the other end of the social scale are the gamelan used to accompany
performances of the wayang or special occasions such as weddings. These
ensembles usually involve instruments other than the
classic percussive ones, including suling, stringed
instruments such as the rebab and of course, singers. The
rebab, forms of which exist throughout the Moslem
world and elsewhere, is often found in gemelan
ensembles. Although prized for its similarity to the
human voice, it has only a limited range of a little over an
octave.
K.P.H. Notoprojo, famous Indonesian rebab player

West Java (Sunda)

The music of West Java is often more accessible to Western tastes than that of
Central Java. Most similar to the Javanese classical gamelan is the Sundanese
Gamelan degung in which the large gong punctuates the music at regular
intervals throughout the performance. The suling the vertical bamboo flute
is a frequent player in this kind of music.

Sample Gamelan degung and suling - Setra Galih

Another very attractive form of Sundanese music is kecapi-suling.

Kecapi and suling; sound sample Arum Bandung

Another musical instrument characteristic of Sunda is the angklung. This is an
instrument made of bamboo which is played by shaking it from side to side. A
basic instrument is made up of two bamboo tubes, one larger than the other,
mounted within a frame. The larger tube is tuned to a specific note, the note it
will play during performance, while the smaller tube is tuned to the same
note an octave above. It goes without saying that a performance requires
several players, each with his or her own one-note instrument. There are
larger, more complex versions which play a chord when shaken.

Angklung and angklung
orchestra.

Sound sample: angklung intro to

Bengawan Solo sung by Gesang,
who wrote it8.

The word angklung comes from two words, angka and lung, angka meaning
tone and lung meaning lost or broken so the whole word means
incomplete tone. Although angklung has emigrated throughout Southeast
Asia and even into Western orchestras, it was
originally developed in the Kingdom of Sunda
where it played an important role in rituals and
ceremonies.

A couple of Indonesian boys playing Angklung
in early 1918.

The playing of angklung was banned by the Dutch although as the old photo
shows, children were still able to play it. The oldest angklung in existence
was made in the 17th century in Jasinger, near Bogor and can be seen in the
Sri Bduga Museum in Bandung. Although traditionally, angklung music was
8

Gesang died in 2010.

based on pelog and slendro scales, in recent times a diatonic form has been
developed so the instruments can be played in Western orchestras or in
conjunction with other instruments. In 2010, angklung was designated a
Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO.

Bali
Although angklung in Sunda nowadays is more commonly played by children,
in Bali it has retained its ceremonial function and is used in temples during
anniversary ceremonies and most significantly, during rituals relation to
death, particularly in the processions when the remains of the dead are
carried from the burial ground to the place of cremation. Angklung in Bali as a
consequence has a much deeper and more emotional significance than in Java
or for that matter, in the West.










Cremation in Bali

In many ways, Balinese gamelan is more innovative and adventuresome than
gamelan in Java, the Balinese frequently producing new pieces or, as often
happens, combining parts of older ones into a new whole. By far the most
commonly performed style in Bali is the Gamelan Gong Kebyar, a modern
genre characterised by changes in tempo, syncopation and interlocking
melodic and rhythmic patters the Balinese call kotekan. Gong kebyar is tuned
to a variety of the pelog scale called pelog selisir . This uses only 5 of the 7-
tone scale. Just about every instrument in the gamelan ensemble is paired,
one called the male instrument, the other, the female. Of these the male is
pitched slightly higher than the female so that when played together they
produce a beating effect, creating a
shimmering quality to the music.

Sample of Bali Gong Kebyar

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