Program 2006

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The University of Pittsburgh

Department of Music 

 

presents 

  

 

 

Gamelan:

Music and Dance of Indonesia

 

University of Pittsburgh Gamelan

Andrew Weintraub, Director  

 

Guest Artists:

 

Ening Rumbini

Undang Sumarna

Ben Arcangel 

 

 

Bellefield Hall Auditorium

March 31 and April 1, 2006

8pm 

 

 

 

Introduction

 

          The recent tsunami and loss of life in Aceh have made people aware of the modern island nation of Indonesia.  But many people do not know that Indonesia consists of about 13,000 islands, the fourth largest population in the world, hundreds of ethnic groups, and nearly as many languages spoken. The cultural and musical diversity of this modern island community is staggering.  

          Students at the University of Pittsburgh have the opportunity to learn about Indonesian music and culture by participating in the University Gamelan Ensemble. Gamelan refers to a set of predominantly percussion instruments including tuned gongs, metal-keyed instruments, and drums (as well as bowed lute and voice). 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 five 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 concerts not only demonstrate traditional forms of music, dance, and theater as they are performed in Indonesia, but they also provide an opportunity for musical and theatrical experimentation.  

          The ensemble plays the music of the Sundanese people, an ethnic group that inhabits roughly the western third of the island of Java. The approximately 30 million Sundanese make up the second largest ethnic group in Indonesia. While the majority of the population lives in rural or semi-rural settings, large cities have become increasingly central to the creation of new artistic genres, including those represented this evening.  

          The gamelan ensemble is composed of students as well as community members. The participants in the gamelan program are encouraged to use Sundanese processes of learning as much as possible; oral transmission of musical parts is preferred over written notation and working together as an ensemble is more important than developing individual talent. Students are also encouraged to learn and play more than one instrument and to learn the relationships among them. Therefore, in our concerts, the musicians move from one position to another in order to put into practice what they have learned. 

 

Gamelan

 

          Gamelan music is played as accompaniment to dance, drama, puppet theater, and martial arts, as well as for concerts of listening music. Gamelan is performed for special occasions and to mark important life cycle events. 

          The University of Pittsburgh gamelan owns two gamelan sets. The first set, which arrived in October, 1995, is named “Kyai Tirta Rukmi,” or “Venerable Rivers of Gold.” This gamelan is tuned to laras salendro (a five-tone tuning system made up of approximately equidistant intervals). Each instrument in the ensemble is associated with one of four primary musical functions or roles, which contribute to the rich polyphonic layering or strata of sound. The “structural melody,” usually played on the metal-keyed instruments, is the basic underlying melodic foundation for each piece. “Elaboration,” played on the rebab (bowed lute), gambang (xylophone), and bonang (small kettle gongs on a rack), refers to melodic variation and ornamentation based on the structural melody.  The player of the rebab reinforces the vocal line of the singer in a heterophonic manner. “Punctuation,” played on the large and small hanging gongs and kenong (large kettle gongs on a rack), refers to the temporal marking of important points in the rhythmic cycle. Finally, the “time-keeping” function is realized by the drummer, who signals the beginning and ending of pieces, directs tempo changes, and controls the dynamics of the music.

          The second set of instruments, which arrived in March, 2005, is named “Ligar Pasundan” (“Fragrance of Pasundan”). This gamelan is tuned to laras degung (a five-tone tuning system made up of large and small intervals). Gamelan degung was created for local Sundanese regents (bupati) of West Java during the early 20th century. A typical gamelan degung comprises seven instruments: bonang; jengglong (6 tuned hanging gongs); goong/kempul (2 hanging gongs); panerus (metal-keyed instrument); peking (metal-keyed instrument); kendang (set of 3 drums); and suling (bamboo flute). Unlike the Sundanese gamelan salendro, music for gamelan degung is more heterophonic; that is, the musicians realize one main melody in different ways. The majority of instruments (bonang, panerus, peking, and suling) are all played in a heterophonic manner. The jengglong and goong/kempul are used to punctuate the melody, and the kendang functions as a time-keeping instrument.

          Other instruments used in this performance include: kacapi, an 18-string zither, and angklung, shaken bamboo rattles.  

 

Dance

 

          In Indonesia, dance has developed in conjunction with ceremonial and religious rituals, popular entertainment, court culture, modern drama, and avant-garde artistic expression. 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. Javanese classical dance appears rather abstract, but the movement patterns are all designed to contribute to the portrayal of characters.

          West Java did not have kraton (palaces) like its Central Javanese counterpart. In West Java, the closest equivalent to the Central Javanese kraton were the kabupaten (provincial government seats), which had neither the resources nor the influence to maintain, develop, and preserve dance traditions such as those of the Central Javanese kraton. Dance was performed in the kabupaten and patronized by the bupati (governors), but limited resources necessitated bringing artists in from the surrounding community to perform in the kabupaten. As a result, music and dance traditions were developed within artistic families rather than in the courts.

          Sundanese classical dance, while based on Javanese forms, has its own unique style and repertoire. One of the most important features of Sundanese dance is its close connection to the drumming, which is loud, dynamic and exciting. All Sundanese dance genres share certain traits including the prominent drumming, manner of stepping, and graceful arm gestures. In dance music, the drummer accompanies the movements of the dance by playing corresponding sound patterns for each movement.

          One of the most widely known and important modern dance forms in Indonesia is called jaipongan. Created in the 1970s in the urban capital of Bandung, West Java, jaipongan took the dance world by storm.  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.   

          The emergence of jaipongan coincided with the tremendous influx of Western cultural and entertainment forms during the 1970s.  In order to compete with these forms, composers incorporated Western movements and sounds. Propelled by the cassette industry, which disseminated the music for accompanying the dances, jaipongan caused quite a stir when musical recordings for the dances began circulating widely in the early 1980s. Some thought jaipongan was too Western because some of the dance movements were akin to modern dance a la Martha Graham as well as the then-popular genre of disco. Others thought the dance was too eroticized because of the hip and chest movements, as well as the revealing costumes (by Indonesian standards). Some called for the dances to be banned from live performance and television. However, people began to appreciate the beauty of the dance, and they prevailed over more conservative voices. Its popularity continued to grow in the 1990s. Today, jaipongan is considered one of the "classical" dances of Indonesia. 

 

 

Program

 

1. Gamelan Salendro (Instrumental): “Gonjing Miring”

“Gonjing Miring” is a traditional opening piece for a concert.

 

2. Dance: “Jayengrana” (R. Ono Lesmana, choreographer, 1946)

This dance depicts a wayang character. Wayang refers to the dramatic presentation of stories through various media including puppetry, dance, storytelling, and visual forms, among others. Jayengrana is a Muslim king from the Islamic story of Kelaswara Senapati from the Serat Menak epic cycle.

 

3. Dance: “Kandagan” (R. Tjetje Somantri, choreographer)

In this dance, the female princess Anjasmara disguises herself as a male warrior in order to meet her lover Damar Wulan on the battlefield. The movements reflect both male and female movements and sensibilities. 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.

 

 4. Dance: “Oray Welang” (Gugum Gumbira, choreographer)

Jaipongan is a music and dance form created in Bandung, West Java, during the 1970s. The genre is rooted in Sundanese village performing arts, particularly the instrumentation, repertoire, and drumming style of ketuk tilu. Jaipongan’s most influential creative figure is Gugum Gumbira, the founder and director of the group Jugala, and the choreographer of this dance.

 

5. Gamelan Salendro (Vocal): “Mojang Priangan” (Iyar Wiarsih, composer, 1960)

“Mojang Priangan” is a song about the beauty of young girls (mojang) in the Priangan region, a mountainous area in the southern part of west Java. Female singer and composer Iyar Wiarsih created this text. The melody was borrowed from a song in a diatonic tuning. As such, the melody seems to contrast sharply with the gamelan accompaniment. However, the juxtaposition of different tuning systems is common in Sundanese music.

 

6. Dance: “Topeng Koncaran” (R. Tjetje Somantri, choreographer)

“Konceran” means “in the style of Koncar.” Koncar is the name of a mask performer from Cirebon, an historically important port city located on the northern coast of West Java.  The great Sundanese choreographer Tjetje Somantri studied mask dance with Koncar, and created this dance based on Koncar’s style. The characters portrayed in this dance are from the Damar Wulan story cycle which recounts the glories of the East Javanese kingdom of Majapahit.  The light-hearted Anjasmara is the essence of young female energy (see “Kandagan” above).  In the middle of the dance, the performer shifts momentarily to the strong energy of Layang Setra, a strong male character who is Anjasmara’s brother. Then, the dancer dons the red face of the demonic attacker, Menak Jingga. 

 


Intermission

 Dance Drama: The Tale of Princess Gandrung Arum 

Created specifically for this event by award-winning Indonesian playwright Yoseph Iskandar, The Tale of Gandrung Arum celebrates the power of women in Sundanese society.  

 

          Before the coming of Islam, during the era of Hinduism on the island of Java, there was a kingdom called Pajajaran. Established in 1333 in West Java, Pajajaran stands for the great past of this land. The kingdom was destroyed in 1579 by invaders from the neighboring kingdom of Surasowan Banten. The Pajajaran capital at Pakuan, near the present-day city of Bogor, was reduced to rubble and all the inhabitants of the palace were forced to flee.  

          A small group of women escaped to the south, led by the Princess Gandrung Arum. Faced with great adversity, they nurtured their culture back to life. In a world where unjust rulers use fear and war to control people, women dream of how social justice can return peace to the land. 

 

Cast of Characters 

 

          Princess Gandrung Arum: the second child of King Ragamulya Suryakancana (1567-1579), who is the sixth and last king of the Pajajaran kingdom. Gandrung Arum is a skilled leader. 

          Putri (3): female children of Pajajaran royalty who accompany Princess Gandrung Arum. Their parents were lost in the war, or fled to outlying areas. They are skilled workers, and loyal to their leader. 

          Parampok I and II: bandits who lead an attack on Lebak Cawene. Parampok I has built a reputation as the most loathsome and immoral criminal in the land.  

          Lutung: a monkey who can talk. In other stories, he turns into a prince. 

 

Featured Artists 

 

Ening Rumbini is a professional dancer and dance instructor based in Bandung, West Java. She specializes in jaipongan, a modern popular form of dance based on village dances and martial arts movements (penca silat). Ening has performed extensively in Indonesia as well as on performance tours to Thailand and Singapore

 

Undang Sumarna comes from a lineage of famous drummers and musicians. His grandfather and main teacher, Abah Kayat, helped to develop and crystallize a style of dance drumming during the 1950s that incorporated influences from the music of Central Java, Bali, Cirebon, and various Sundanese regions.  Undang began studying drumming as a child and quickly developed into one of the most sought-after dance drummers in Bandung, West Java. He has taught gamelan at KOKAR (High School for Indonesian Performing Arts) and ASTI (College of Indonesian Arts) as well as UC Berkeley and UCLA. Undang Sumarna currently teaches at UC Santa Cruz, a position he has held since 1974. 

 

Ben Arcangel studied at the music and dance conservatory in West Java during 1998-99 under the auspices of a student fellowship from the Indonesian government. He was recently awarded the most Outstanding Performer in the Southwest Regional Competition of the American College Dance Festival in Arizona. Ben is currently pursuing an M.A. in Asian Studies at the University of Hawai‘i. 

 

The University of Pittsburgh Gamelan

Musicians and Dancers 

 

Margaret Barnes

Eric Belcastro

Praphai Boonsermsuwong

Ryan Durkopp

Kristy Ann Hartman

Dorcinda Knauth

Brandi Neal

Sarah Papperman

Rachel Phillippi

Christen Wurschmidt  

 

Please visit our website at

 http://www.pitt.edu/~musicdpt/performance/gamelan.html  

Acknowledgments 

University of Pittsburgh Department of Music, Asian Studies Center, Pitt Arts, Bell Yung, Deane Root, Maxine Bruhns, Sharon Berk, Dorothy Shallenberger, Phil Thompson, Eric Riemer, Undang Sumarna, and Dewi Wong.

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