This book is a wide-ranging study of the varieties of gamelan music in contemporary Java seen from a regional perspective. While the focus of most studies of Javanese music has been limited to the court-derived music of Surakarta and Yogyakarta, Sutton goes beyond them to consider also gamelan music of Banyumas, Semarang and east Java as separate regional traditions with distinctive repertoires, styles and techniques of performance and conceptions about music. Sutton's description of these traditions, illustrated with numerous musical examples in Javanese cipher notation, is based on extensive field experience in these areas and is informed by the criteria that Javanese musicians judge to be most important in distinguishing them.
Sounding Out the State of Indonesian Music showcases the breadth and complexity of the music of Indonesia. By bringing together chapters on the merging of Batak musical preferences and popular music aesthetics; the vernacular cosmopolitanism of a Balinese rock band; the burgeoning underground noise scene; the growing interest in kroncong in the United States; and what is included and excluded on Indonesian media, editors Andrew McGraw and Christopher J. Miller expand the scope of Indonesian music studies. Essays analyzing the perception of decline among gamelan musicians in Central Java; changes in performing arts patronage in Bali; how gamelan communities form between Bali and North America; and reflecting on the "refusion" of American mathcore and Balinese gamelan offer new perspectives on more familiar topics. Sounding Out the State of Indonesian Music calls for a new paradigm in popular music studies, grapples with the imperative to decolonialize, and recognizes the field's grounding in diverse forms of practice.
Calling Back the Spirit describes how, in the face of Indonesian and foreign cultural pressures, the Makassarese people of South Sulawesi are defending their local spirit through music and dance. The book examines the ways performers in this corner of Indonesia seek to empower local music and dance in a changing environment.
Gamelan is the first study of the music of Java and the development of the gamelan to take into account extensive historical sources and contemporary cultural theory and criticism. An ensemble dominated by bronze percussion instruments that dates back to the twelfth century in Java, the gamelan as a musical organization and a genre of performance reflects a cultural heritage that is the product of centuries of interaction between Hindu, Islamic, European, Chinese, and Malay cultural forces. Drawing on sources ranging from a twelfth-century royal poem to the writing of a twentieth-century nationalist, Sumarsam shows how the Indian-inspired contexts and ideology of the Javanese performing arts were first adjusted to the Sufi tradition and later shaped by European performance styles in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He then turns to accounts of gamelan theory and practice from the colonial and postcolonial periods. Finally, he presents his own theory of gamelan, stressing the relationship between purely vocal melodies and classical gamelan composition.
The complex notion of "rasa," as understood by Javanese musicians, refers to a combination of various qualities, including: taste, feeling, affect, mood, sense, inner meaning, a faculty of knowing intuitively, and deep understanding. This leaves us with a number of questions: how is rasa expressed musically? Who or what has rasa, and what sorts of musical, psychological, perceptual, and sociological distinctions enter into this determination? How is the vocabulary of rasa structured, and what does this tell us about traditional Javanese music and aesthetics? In this first book on the subject, Rasa provides an entry into Javanese music as it is conceived by the people who know the tradition best: the musicians themselves. In one of the most thorough explorations of local aesthetics to date, author Marc Benamou argues that musical meaning is above all connotative - hence, not only learned, but learnable. Following several years performing and researching Javanese music in the regional and national cultural center of Solo, Indonesia, Benamou untangles the many meanings of rasa as an aesthetic criterion in Javanese music, particularly in court and court-derived gamelan traditions. While acknowledging that certain universal psychological tendencies may inspire parallel interpretations of musical meaning, Rasa demonstrates just how culturally specific such accrued, shared meanings can be.
This proceeding contains selected papers of The International Seminar On Recent Language, Literature, And Local Culture Studies “Kajian Mutakhir Bahasa, Sastra, Dan Budaya Daerah (BASA)” held on 20-21 September 2019 in Solo, Indonesia. The conference which was organized by Sastra Daerah, Faculty of Cultural Sciences Universitas Sebelas Maret and Culture Studies Postgraduate Program of Universitas Sebelas Maret. The conference accommodates topics for linguistics in general including issues in language, literature, local cultural studies, philology, folklore, oral literature, history, art, education, etc. Selecting and reviewing process for the The International Seminar On Recent Language, Literature, And Local Culture Studies “Kajian Mutakhir Bahasa, Sastra, dan Budaya Daerah” was very challenging in that it needs a goodwill of those who were involved in such a process. More than ten experts were invited in reviewing, giving suggestions for revision and at last selecting the papers. On that account, we would like to forward our appreciation and our gratefulness to such invited experts for having done the process. The committee received more than 180 papers from the participants and based on the results of the review, only 141 papers were declared fit to be presented at the seminar and subsequently published in the proceedings of BASA#3-2019 Papers in the proceeding are expected to give academic benefits, especially in broadening the horizon of our understanding in language, literature, and local culture studies. We realize that what we are presenting for the publication is till far for being perfect. Constructive criticism is very much welcome for improvement. Finally, the committees thank for the participation and congratulate for the publication of the papers in the proceedings of BASA#3-2019. The committees also thank all those who have supported and actively participated for the success of this event. Hopefully these Proceedings can be used as references in developing technology and improving learning activities in the fields of education, social, arts and humanities.
The twentieth century has spawned a great interest in Indonesian music, and now books, articles, and manuscripts can be found that expound exclusively about karawitan (the combined vocal and instrumental music of the gamelan). Scholar Judith Becker has culled several key sources on karawitan into three volumes and has translated them for the benefit of the Western student of the gamelan tradition. The texts in her collection were written over a forty-five-year time period (ca 1930–1975) and include articles by Martopangrawit, Sumarsam, Sastrapustaka, Gitosaprodjo, Sindoesawarno, Poerbapangrawit, Probohardjono, Warsadiningrat, Purbodiningrat, Poerbatjaraka, and Paku Buwana X. The final volume also contains a glossary of technical terms, an appendix of the Javanese cipher notations (titilaras kepatihan), a biographical listing, and an index to the musical pieces (Gendhing).
This is an open access book. Welcome to the International Joint Conference on Arts and Humanities 2023 held by State University of Surabaya.This joint conference features four international conferences: the International Conference on Education Innovation (ICEI) 2023, the International Conference on Cultural Studies and Applied Linguistics (ICCSAL) 2023, the International Conference on Research and Academic Community Services (ICRACOS) 2023, and the International Conference of SocialScience and Law (ICSSL) 2023 .It encourages dissemination of ideas in arts and humanity and provides a forum for intellectuals from all over the world to discuss and present their research findings on the research area. This conference was held in Surabaya, East Java, Indonesia on August 26th, 2023 - September 10th, 2023
Complementing Ethnomusicology: An Introduction, this volume of studies, written by world-acknowledged authorities, places the subject of ethnomusicology in historical and geographical perspective. Part I deals with the intellectual trends that contributed to the birth of the discipline in the period before World War II. Organized by national schools of scholarship, the influence of 19th-century anthropological theories on the new field of "comparative musicology" is described. In the second half of the book, regional experts provide detailed reviews by geographical areas of the current state of ethnomusicological research.
Musicologist Judith Becker contends that sociopolitical changes in Javanese society since the 1940s are reflected in changes in the structure of gamelan music, which is one of the traditional musics of Java. She sees gamelan music as a musical system in a state of crisis, unsure of its proper function and direction. While traditional gamelan musical structures supported old Hindu-Javanese concepts of cosmology and kingship, modern innovations reflect Indonesian nationalism and a desire to become a "twentieth century nation." In particular, the introduction of Western musical notation, which Becker describes as "the most pervasive, penetrating, and ultimately the most insidious type of Western influence," is changing gamelan from an aural to a written tradition. Becker examines the works of contemporary composers Ki Wasitodipuro and Ki Nartosabdho to illustrate modern innovations in gamelan compositions and the attitudes of composers to their music, as they attempt to compromise between the ethos and structure of traditional gamelan music and the changing tastes and attitudes of the modern Indonesian nation. In addition to her interpretation of the political influence on gamelan music, Becker includes four appendices that ethnomusicologists will find valuable. Appendix I articulates her theory of the derivation of central Javanese gamelan gongan, the basic temporal/melodic repeated unit of gamelan music. Appendix II gives biographical sketches of Ki Wasitodipuro and Ki Nartosabdho and lists their compositions referred to in the text. Appendices II and IV deal with various aspects of pathet, a Javanese system of classifying gamelan pieces. A fifth appendix, by Alan R. Templeton, gives an informational analysis of pathet.
