Java Gender

by | Speed (↓) | Authenticity (↑) | 0 comment | 1 question

A wood and metal instrument, half of a pair, made in Java and shipped to the UK

Where and how is it used?

I play it sometimes, it has lovely deep bell chime sounds. It also provides a handy shelf for odd bits off paper although it really shouldn't have anything on it.

What did you or someone else pay for it?

My sister bought it and She asked me to hang onto it for a while when she was living in a really small house. It's stayed here even though her house is now bigger than mine.

Why do you want to add it to the museum?

It's the most exotic and high quality crafted item in my house - real, tangible, useful, representing music and a different way to be than trapped in commodity culture.


How was it made?

Is made in a factory

Is farmed

Is mass-produced

Is produced by local cottage industry

Is made to particular specifications

Is craft / hand-made

Is foraged

Is found

Is colonised

Is a service


Materials & Making

Who made or produced your commodity?

Instrument makers in Java

Who was paid to make it?

Those instrument makers

What skills does it take to make it?

Carving, metalwork, synchronising sound with other instruments

Where was it made?

Java

What does it cost to make it?

I have no idea

What is it made from?

1. Metal keys:

10 inch metal keys

2. Wood frame:

Carved and painted wooden frame

3. String:

Orange string holding keys together

4. Pipes:

Bamboo?

5. Wooden pegs:

Attaching keys to frame

6. Beater:

Wood handle, rope and fabric head

Buying & Owning

Who decides how much it costs?

Seller and any go between agent organising sales to UK buyers

Who or what assesses its quality?

Agent

Where is it sold?

Where it is made and potentially online

Who or what sells it?

The Makers

How did this thing arrive from where it was made to where you got it?

By ship, then car

Where is it used?

In my house, currently.

Where is it kept?

My front room

How and by whom is it cared for?

By keeping a cloth over the keys and not putting anything heavy on top

How long will it last?

Decades to a lifetime

Where will it go when it's finished with?

Back to my sister or onto another musician

What is it worth?

In money terms, I don't know.


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Overall Positive155
Overall Negative-14
Controversy84.5 (0 = most controversial)
  

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Questions and answers

Help to reveal unknown quantities, properties and uses of this commodity by answering this MoCC curator's questions.

Question: Would you like to hear how it sounds?

Answers:

Hi there!

My name is Jenny and I am a Commodity Consultant for MOCC.

I would love to hear how it sounds - traditional indonesian instruments tend to be made from wood, producing a deep, rich sound, especially from a toned percussion instrument, such as this one. Such instruments are traditionally used in the indonesian 'gamelan'.

A gamelan is the traditional ensemble music of Java and Bali in Indonesia, made up predominantly of percussive instruments. The most common instruments used are metallophones played by mallets and a set of hand-played drums called kendhang which register the beat. Other instruments include xylophones, bamboo flutes, a bowed instrument called a rebab, and even vocalists called sindhen.
Although the popularity of gamelan has declined since the introduction of pop music, gamelan is still commonly played on formal occasions and in many traditional Indonesian ceremonies. For most Indonesians, gamelan is an integral part of Indonesian culture.
The gamelan predates the Hindu-Buddhist culture that dominated Indonesia in its earliest records and instead represents a native art form. The instruments developed into their current form during the Majapahit Empire. In contrast to the heavy Indian influence in other art forms, the only obvious Indian influence in gamelan music is in the Javanese style of singing, and in the themes of the Wayang kulit (shadow puppet plays).
In Javanese mythology, the gamelan was created by Sang Hyang Guru in Saka era 167 (c. AD 230), the god who ruled as king of all Java from a palace on the Maendra mountain in Medang Kamulan (now Mount Lawu). He needed a signal to summon the gods and thus invented the gong. For more complex messages, he invented two other gongs, thus forming the original gamelan set.
The earliest image of a musical ensemble is found on the 8th century Borobudur temple, Central Java. Musical instruments such as the bamboo flute, bells, drums in various sizes, lute, and bowed and plucked string instruments were identified in this image. However it lacks metallophones and xylophones. Nevertheless, the image of this musical ensemble is suggested to be the ancient form of the gamelan.
In the palaces of Java are the oldest known ensembles, the Munggang and Kodokngorek gamelans, apparently from the 12th century. These formed the basis of a "loud style". A different, "soft style" developed out of the kemanak tradition and is related to the traditions of singing Javanese poetry, in a manner which is often believed to be similar to performance of modern bedhaya dance. In the 17th century, these loud and soft styles mixed, and to a large extent the variety of modern gamelan styles of Bali, Java, and Sunda resulted from different ways of mixing these elements. Thus, despite the seeming diversity of styles, many of the same theoretical concepts, instruments, and techniques are shared between the styles.
Instruments. A gamelan primarily consists of metallophones while other instruments such as flute (suling) and zither (celempung) are discretionary. However, the hand-played drum called kendhang is essential despite not being a metallophone as it controls the tempo and rhythm of pieces as well as transitions from one section to another.
In general, no two gamelan ensembles are the same, and those that arose in prestigious courts are often considered to have their own style. Certain styles may also be shared by nearby ensembles, leading to a regional style.
In Indonesia, gamelan often accompanies dance, wayang puppet performances, or rituals and ceremonies. Typically players in the gamelan will be familiar with dance moves and poetry, while dancers are able to play in the ensemble. In wayang, the dalang (puppeteer) must have a thorough knowledge of gamelan, as he gives the cues for the music. Gamelan can be performed by itself – in "klenengan" style, or for radio broadcasts – but concerts in the Western style are not traditional.
Gamelan's role in rituals is so important that there is a Javanese saying, "It is not official until the gong is hung". Some performances are associated with royalty, such as visits by the sultan of Yogyakarta. Certain gamelans are associated with specific rituals, such as the Gamelan Sekaten, which is used in celebration of Mawlid an-Nabi (Muhammad's birthday). In Bali, almost all religious rituals include gamelan performance. Gamelan is also used in the ceremonies of the Catholic church in Indonesia. Certain pieces are designated for starting and ending performances or ceremonies. When an "ending" piece (such as "Udan Mas") is begun, the audience will know that the event is nearly finished and will begin to leave. Certain pieces are also believed to possess magic powers, and can be used to ward off evil spirits.
Gamelan is frequently played on the radio. For example, the Pura Pakualaman gamelan performs live on the radio every Minggu Pon (a day in the 35-day cycle of the Javanese calendar).[16] In major towns, the Radio Republik Indonesia employs professional musicians and actors, and broadcast programs of a wide variety of gamelan music and drama.
In the court tradition of central Java, gamelan is often played in the pendopo, an open pavilion with a cavernous, double-pitched roof, no side walls, and a hard marble or tile floor. The instruments are placed on a platform to one side, which allows the sound to reverberate in the roof space and enhances the acoustics.
In Bali, the Gamelan instruments are all kept together in a balé, a large open space with a roof over the top of it and several open sides. Gambelan (the Balinese term) are owned by a banjar, nobility or temples and kept in their respective compounds.
In case of banjar ownership the instruments are all kept there together because people believe that all the instruments belong to the community as a whole and that no one person has ownership over an instrument. Not only is this where the instruments are stored, but this is also the practice space for the sekaha (Gamelan orchestra group). The open walls allow for the music to flow out into the community where the rest of the people may enjoy it. Balinese gamelan cannot be heard inside closed rooms, because it easily crosses the threshold of pain. This does not apply to small ensembles like a gamelan gendér.
A gendèr is a type of metallophone used in Balinese and Javanese gamelan music. It consists of 10 to 14 tuned metal bars suspended over a tuned resonator of bamboo or metal, which are tapped with a mallet made of wooden disks (Bali) or a padded wooden disk (Java). Each key is a note of a different pitch, often extending a little more than two octaves. There are five notes per octave, so in the seven-note pélog scale, some pitches are left out according to the pathet. Most gamelans include three gendèr, one for sléndro, one for pelog pathet nem and lima, and one for pelog pathet barang.
The gendèr is similar to the Balinese gangsa, which also has an incredible individual resonator under each key, and the saron, which, although trough-resonated, does have a set of tuned metal bars or keys. It is also similar to the Javanese slenthem, which is pitched lower and has fewer notes.
In some types of gamelan, two gendèrs are used, one (called the gendèr panerus) an octave higher than the other. In Gamelan Surakarta, the gendèr panerus plays a single line of melodic pattern, following a pattern similar to the siter. The gendèr barung plays a slower, but more complex melodic pattern that includes more separate right and left hand melodic lines that come together in kempyung (approximately a fifth) and gembyang (octave) intervals. The melodies of the two hands sometimes move in parallel motion, but often play contrapuntally. When playing gendèr barung with two mallets, the technique of dampening, important to most gamelan instruments, becomes more challenging, and the previously hit notes must be dampened by the same hand immediately after the new ones are hit. This is sometimes possible by playing with the mallet at an angle (to dampen one key and play the other), but may require a small pause.
Both types of gendèr play semi-improvised patterns called cengkok, which generally elaborate upon the seleh. These are relatively fixed patterns, but can be varied in a number of ways to suit the style, pathet, irama, and mood of the piece, as well as the skill of the performer. The cengkok repertoire for gendèr are more developed and specific than those for most other elaborating instruments. Similarly, the gendèr barung is likely to give cues for changing parts or irama, especially in the absence of a rebab. It may also play the buka of a piece.
The gendèr (pronounced gen - DARE) is a soft instrument with multioctave range. The thin metal bars are suspended by cords above tubular resonators that amplify and sustain the sound. There are two sizes of gendèr: gendèr barung (lower) and gendèr panerus (higher). Each plays an elaborate melody derived from the main melody of a piece of music, or balungan.
Gendèr are played with two hands, each holding a mallet with a padded disk-shaped head. Because the instrument has incredible sustain, the sound must be dampened with the wrists after striking the next note (or notes).
Gendèr come in threes (unlike most instruments, which come in pairs). One gendèr is for the sléndro scale, and there are two pélog gendèr for different pathet, or modes. One pélog gendèr has pitches 1 2 3 5 6, while the other has pitches 2 3 5 6 7.
The sekaha is led by a single instructor whose job it is in the community to lead this group and to come up with new pieces. When they are working on a new piece, the instructor will lead the group in practice and help the group form the new music as they are practicing. When the instructor creates a new song, he leaves enough open for interpretation that the group can improvise, so the group will write the music as they practice it.
There are many styles in Balinese gamelan. Kebyar is one of the most recent ones. Some Balinese Gamelan groups constantly change their music by taking older pieces they know and mixing them together, as well as trying new variations on their music. Their music constantly changes because they believe that music should grow and change; the only exception to this is with their most sacred songs which they do not change. A single new piece of music can take several months before it is completed. Men and women usually perform in separate groups, with the exception in Java of the pesindhen, the female singer who performs with male groups. In the twenty-five countries outside of Indonesia that have gamelan, music is often performed in a concert context or as part of ceremonies of expat communities. It may also incorporate dance or wayang.
The tuning and construction of a gamelan orchestra is a complex process. Javanese gamelans use two tuning systems: sléndro and pélog. There are other tuning systems such as degung (exclusive to Sunda, or West Java), and madenda (also known as diatonis, similar to a European natural minor scale). In central Javanese gamelan, sléndro is a system with five notes to the octave, fairly evenly spaced, while pélog has seven notes to the octave, with uneven intervals, usually played in five note subsets of the seven-tone collection. This results in sound quite different from music played in a western tuning system. Many gamelan orchestras will include instruments in each tuning, but each individual instrument will only be able to play notes in one. The precise tuning used differs from ensemble to ensemble, and give each ensemble its own particular flavour. The intervals between notes in a scale are very close to identical for different instruments within each gamelan, but the intervals vary from one gamelan to the next.
Colin McPhee remarked, "Deviations in what is considered the same scale are so large that one might with reason state that there are as
many scales as there are gamelans." However, this view is contested by some teachers of gamelan, and there have been efforts to combine multiple ensembles and tuning structures into one gamelan to ease transportation at festival time. One such ensemble is gamelan Manikasanti, which can play the repertoire of many different ensembles.
Balinese gamelan instruments are commonly played in pairs which are tuned slightly apart to produce interference beats, ideally at a consistent speed for all pairs of notes in all registers. This concept is referred to as "ombak," translating to "wave," communicating the idea of cyclical undulation. One instrument, tuned slightly higher, is thought of as the "inhale," and the other, slightly lower, is called the "exhale." When the inhale and the exhale are combined, beating is produced, meant to represent the beating of the heart, or the symbol of being alive. It is thought that this contributes to the very "busy" and "shimmering" sound of gamelan ensembles. In the religious ceremonies that contain gamelan, these interference beats are meant to give the listener a feeling of a god's presence or a stepping stone to a meditative state. The scale roughly approximates that of the phrygian mode of the Western major scale (E-E on the white keys of the piano), with the notes EFGBC corresponding to the note positions 12356 in the slendro scale used by most gamelan.
As well as the non-western octave and the use of beats, Javanese gamelan uses a combination of tempo and density known as Irama, relating how many beats on the saron panerus instrument there are to notes in the core melody or balungan; density is considered primary.
Gamelan music is traditionally not notated and began as an oral tradition. In the 19th century, however, the kraton (palaces) of Yogyakarta and Surakarta developed distinct notations for transcribing the repertoire. These were not used to read the music, which was memorized, but to preserve pieces in the court records. The Yogyanese notation is a checkerboard notation, which uses six or seven vertical lines to represent notes of higher pitch in the balungan (melodic framework), and horizontal lines which represent the series of beats, read downward with time. The fourth vertical line and every fourth horizontal line (completing a gatra) are darkened for legibility. Symbols on the left indicate the colotomic or metric structure of gongs and so forth, while specific drum features are notated in symbols to the right. The Solonese notation reads horizontally, like Western notation, but does not use barlines. Instead, note values and rests are squiggled between the notes.
Today this notation is relatively rare, and has been replaced by kepatihan notation, which is a cipher system. Kepatihan notation developed around 1900 at the kepatihan Palace in Surakarta, which had become a high-school conservatory. The pitches are numbered (see the articles on the scales slendro and pélog for an explanation of how), and are read across with dots below or above the numbers indicating the register, and lines above notes showing time values; In vocal notation, there are also brackets under groups of notes to indicate melisma. Like the palace notation, however, Kepatihan records mostly the balungan part and its metric phrases as marked by a variety of gongs. The other parts are created in real time, and depend on the knowledge each musician has of his instrument, and his awareness of what others are playing; this "realization" is sometimes called "garap." Some teachers have also devised certain notations, generally using kepatihan principles, for the cengkok (melodic patterns) of the elaborating instruments. Some ethnomusicologists, trained in European music, may make transcriptions onto a Western staff. This entails particular challenges of tuning and time, sometimes resulting in unusual clefs.
Gamelan orchestra in East Java, late 19th century.
The gamelan has been appreciated by several western composers of classical music, most famously Claude Debussy who heard a Javanese gamelan in the premiere of Louis-Albert Bourgault-Ducoudray's Rapsodie Cambodgienne at the Paris Exposition of 1889 (World's Fair). The work had been written seven years earlier in 1882, but received its premiere only in 1889. The gamelan Debussy heard in it was in the slendro scale and was played by Central Javanese musicians. Despite his enthusiasm, direct citations of gamelan scales, melodies, rhythms, or ensemble textures have not been located in any of Debussy's own compositions. However, the equal-tempered whole tone scale appears in his music of this time and afterward, and a Javanese gamelan-like heterophonic texture is emulated on occasion, particularly in "Pagodes", from Estampes (solo piano, 1903), in which the great gong's cyclic punctuation is symbolized by a prominent perfect fifth.
The composer Erik Satie, an influential contemporary of Debussy, also heard the Javanese gamelan play at the Paris Exposition of 1889. The repetitively hypnotic effects of the gamelan were incorporated into Satie's exotic Gnossienne set for piano.
Direct homages to gamelan music are to be found in works for western instruments by John Cage, particularly his prepared piano pieces, Colin McPhee, Lou Harrison, Béla Bartók, Francis Poulenc, Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Bronislaw Kaper and Benjamin Britten. In more recent times, American composers such as Henry Brant, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Dennis Murphy, Loren Nerell, Michael Tenzer, Evan Ziporyn, Daniel James Wolf and Jody Diamond as well as Australian composers such as Peter Sculthorpe, Andrew Schultz and Ross Edwards have written several works with parts for gamelan instruments or full gamelan ensembles. I Nyoman Windha is among contemporary Indonesian composers that have written compositions using western instruments along with Gamelan. Hungarian composer György Ligeti wrote a piano étude called Galamb Borong influenced by gamelan. Avant-garde composer Harry Partch, one of America's most idiosyncratic composers, was also influenced by Gamelan, both in his microtonal compositions and the instruments he built for their performance.
American folk guitarist John Fahey included elements of gamelan in many of his late-1960s sound collages, and again in his 1997 collaboration with Cul de Sac, The Epiphany of Glenn Jones. Influenced by gamelan, Robert Fripp and Adrian Belew used rhythmically interlocking guitars in their duets with each other in the 1981–1984 trilogy of albums (Discipline, Beat, Three of a Perfect Pair) by rock band King Crimson and with The League of Crafty Guitarists. The gamelan has also been used by British multi-instrumentalist Mike Oldfield at least three times, "Woodhenge" (1979), "The Wind Chimes (Part II)" (1987) and "Nightshade" (2005).
On the debut EP of Sonic Youth the track 'She's not Alone' has a gamelan timbre. Experimental pop groups The Residents, 23 Skidoo (whose 1984 album was even titled Urban Gamelan), Mouse on Mars, His Name Is Alive, Xiu Xiu, Macha, Saudade, The Raincoats and the Sun City Girls have used gamelan percussion. Avant-garde performance band Melted Men uses Balinese gamelan instruments as well as gamelan-influenced costumes and dance in their shows. The Moodswinger built by Yuri Landman gives gamelan–like clock and bell sounds, because of its 3rd bridge construction. Indonesian-Dutch composer Sinta Wullur has integrated Western music and gamelan for opera.
In contemporary Indonesian music scene, some groups fuse contemporary westernized jazz fusion music with the legacy of traditional ethnic music traditions of their people. In the case of Krakatau and SambaSunda, the bands from West Java, the traditional Sundanese kacapi suling and gamelan degung Sunda orchestra is performed alongside drum set, keyboard and guitars. Other bands such as Bossanova Java were fused Javanese music with bossa nova, while the Kulkul band fuse jazz with Balinese gamelan.
The Indonesian singer Anggun, often incorporated Indonesian traditional tunes of gamelan and tembang style of singing in her works. Typical gamelan tunes can be trace in several songs in her album Snow on the Sahara such as "Snow on the Sahara", "A Rose in the Wind", and also in her collaboration works with Deep Forest on "Deep Blue Sea" on their 2002 album, Music Detected. Philippines born Indonesian singer Maribeth Pascua also featuring gamelan tunes in her songs Denpasar Moon and Borobudur.
Beyond Indonesia, gamelan has also had an influence on Japanese popular music, specifically the synthpop band Yellow Magic Orchestra. Their 1981 record Technodelic, one of the first albums to heavily rely on samples and loops, made use of gamelan elements and samples. Yellow Magic Orchestra member Ryuichi Sakamoto also used gamelan elements for his soundtrack to the 1983 British-Japanese film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, which won him the 1983 BAFTA Award for Best Film Music.
Later, many Americans were first introduced to the sounds of gamelan by the popular 1988 Japanese anime film Akira. Gamelan elements are used in this film to punctuate several exciting fight scenes, as well as to symbolize the emerging psychic powers of the tragic hero, Tetsuo. The gamelan in the film's score was performed by the members of the Japanese musical collective Geinoh Yamashirogumi, using their semar pegulingan and jegog ensembles, which were also used in the previous album, Ecophony Rinne. Gamelan and kecak are also used in the soundtrack to the video games Secret of Mana and Sonic Unleashed. The two opening credits of 1998 Japanese Anime Neo Ranga use Balinese music (Kecak and Gamelan gong kebyar). Each "waking up" of Ranga in the anime uses the Gong Kebyar theme. The musical soundtrack for the Sci Fi Channel series Battlestar Galactica features extensive use of the gamelan, particularly in the 3rd season, as do Alexandre Desplat's scores for Girl With A Pearl Earring and The Golden Compass. James Newton Howard, who composed Disney's 2001 feature film Atlantis: The Lost Empire, chose Gamelan for the musical theme of the Altanteans.
Loops of gamelan music appear in electronic music. An early example is the Texas band Drain's album Offspeed and In There, which contains two tracks where trip-hop beats are matched with gamelan loops from Java and Bali and recent popular examples include the Sofa Surfers' piece Gamelan, or EXEC_PURGER/.#AURICA extracting, a song sung by Haruka Shimotsuki as part of the Ar tonelico: Melody of Elemia soundtracks.
Gamelan influences can also be heard in the 2004 award winning pop song, Pulangkan, a theme from gamelan-cultural related film Pontianak Harum Sundal Malam by Malaysian songbird Misha Omar and also 2006 hip hop song, Tokyo Drift (Fast & Furious), by Teriyaki Boyz.
In the Regular Show episode "150-Piece Kit", a gamelan is mentioned to be part of the eponymous kit.
Here is a video on how to play the Gendèr http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whatson/festivals-series/gamelan/gender and other videos can be found here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AILyFuGuYKM&list=RDAILyFuGuYKM#t=22 and here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aan_44OK7TY and here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tG7EJzolHBk

Do you have any videos you could show us?

I hope you have found this insightful,

Kind regards,

Jenny

Links
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamelan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gend%C3%A8r
http://homepages.cae.wisc.edu/~jjordan/gamelan/gender.html
https://omeka1.grinnell.edu/MusicalInstruments/items/show/114
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AILyFuGuYKM&list=RDAILyFuGuYKM#t=22
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aan_44OK7TY
http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whatson/festivals-series/gamelan/gender
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tG7EJzolHBk
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=WjDZoDEum7IC&pg=PT109&lpg=PT109&dq=Gend%C3%A8r&source=bl&ots=v3pDqZSyyj&sig=ArmXfl_9juAf6dUfV6xSZS54V2w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiYlIDWrNnMAhXmI8AKHaGwA5cQ6AEIWzAN#v=onepage&q=Gend%C3%A8r&f=false

by MoCCconsultant on May 14th at 10:33am

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