Gamelan at Pitt
Established in 1995, the gamelan performance program at Pitt has introduced hundreds of students to new ways of thinking about, practicing, performing, and composing music. During the past eight years, guest artists from Indonesia have been invited to the university to teach, present workshops and lecture-demonstrations, and perform in large-scale gamelan concerts for the university community, as well as for the larger Pittsburgh community. The ensemble plays the music of the Sundanese people, an ethnic group that inhabits roughly the western third of the island of Java. This evening’s concert features the following genres of Sundanese music and dance:
Gamelan degung is one of several types of gamelan in West Java. Gamelan degung is tuned to laras degung (a five-tone tuning system made up of large and small intervals). Gamelan degung was created as instrumental music for local Sundanese regents (bupati) of West Java during the early 20th century. Modern forms include singing.
Calung refers to a set of bamboo idiophones that accompany songs, including children’s songs (kakawihan barudak Sunda).
Hariring jeung Igel (lit. singing and dancing) presents an arrangement of playful songs and movements.
Classical dance forms are part of elaborate dance drama productions in which dance functions to distinguish different types of characters, ranging from refined to course characterizations. Dancers use elaborate costumes and masks to portray different character types. The accompaniment for Sundanese dance features virtuosic drumming that matches the dance gestures with specific drumming patterns. The drummer also “translates” the dancer's musical cues into an audible form that the musicians can follow.
Gamelan salendro refers to a set of predominantly percussion instruments including tuned gongs, metal-keyed instruments, and drums (as well as bowed lute and voice). The gamelan is tuned to laras salendro (a five-tone tuning system made up of approximately equidistant intervals).
Jaipongan was created in the 1970s in the urban capital of Bandung, West Java. It was based on folk dance movements and music from the rural areas around Bandung, but it had a different aesthetic than the traditional forms. Characteristics of jaipongan include set choreographies, dramatic poses, bright costumes, jagged melodic lines, and elaborate musical arrangements. Most of the dances were created for women, and they highlight the beauty of the female body, as interpreted by male choreographers.
Featured Artist
Ening Rumbini (b. 1969) comes from a family of artists trained in the traditional performing arts of music, dance, and puppetry. Her father was a popular dalang (puppeteer) of the 1940s-1970s. She began studying Sundanese classical dance at age ten. The following year, she began learning the wildly popular jaipongan dance form. Her teacher was Gugum Gumbira, the founder and main choreographer of the Jugala dance company. As a member of Jugala, she participated in local (West Java) and national (Jakarta) performances during the boom years of jaipongan (1980s and 1990s). In 1987 she entered the national music conservatory in Bandung. As a member of Jugala, she has performed on concert tours to Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand.
The University of Pittsburgh Gamelan Musicians
The Pitt University Gamelan is made up of students from Pitt and other universities, as well as community members. The class meets on Mondays and Wednesdays from 4 to 520pm. Enrollment is currently open for the fall semester, 2010.
Julia Axberg
James Bedell
Donald Custer III
Alison Decker
Michael Dodin
Ryan Durkopp
Patrick Ireland
Adrienne Johnston
Michael Light
Rieko Onitsuka
Jacob Phillips
Jaclyn Sternick
Shuo Zhang
Please visit our website:
http://www.pitt.edu/~musicdpt/performance/gamelan.html
http://www.ucis.pitt.edu/gamelan
We’re also on facebook! Gamelan Sunda-Pitt
Acknowledgments
University of Pittsburgh Department of Music, Asian Studies Center, Indo-Pacific Council, Pitt Arts, Dorothy Shallenberger, Phil Thompson.