Let's talk about
Gamelan.
You may have never seen that word before, but, if you're an anime fan, chances are you heard gamelan music before without even knowing what it was.
Indeed, my own first contact with gamelan, like that of many other people, was this piece of soundtrack from a very famous animated film:
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This isn't exactly pure gamelan (the church organ/synth is pretty incongruous, for instance), but it's a good introduction. When I acquired this soundtrack, I was fascinated by these shimmering, vibraphone-like sounds, because it sounded like no instrument I knew of.
At the time, I thought this was traditional japanese music —a belief reinforced by the fact that the rest of the soundtrack
does, in place, use traditional japanese music (notably shomyo (japanese buddhist chant) and kabuki theater music).
But when I later looked into authentic traditional japanese music, I found many things I liked, but nothing that sounded remotedly like that.
Until I learned that this wasn't a genre of japanese music at all, but instead that it originated in Indonesia and was called "gamelan". Futhermore, I learned that, much like western classical music, gamelan wasn't so much a genre, but an entire collection of related genres, with many different forms and many different variations, with important historical and even geographical differences between the genres —they don't play the same genres in Java and in Bali (heck, they don't play the same genres in western and central Java!)
So what is gamelan? Gamelan is the classical music of Indonesia; it seems to have existed for a long time, and much like western classical music was often very functional, coming in various shapes and forms for many aspects of western life, so too does gamelan: there is gamelan for religious ceremonies, gamelan for feasts, gamelan for marching military bands, gamelan for court ceremonies, gamelan to accompany dances…
Gamelan is generally characterised by the instruments it uses: tuned percussions of many sorts. However, the true defining feature of gamelan is its musical structure, made of melodic-rythmic line that
appear simple at first glance, but can in fact be quite complex when you look at what each individual instrument is doing; another defining trait of gamelan is the specific scales it uses, which are quite different from that of western music. Following these criteria, it is possible to have gamelan ensembles that don't have tuned percussions at all, and conversely, there are other genres of music in south-east asia that use instruments typical of gamelan but aren't considered to be stylistically part of gamelan music (common non-percussion instruments in gamelan include the suling (flute), the rebab (fiddle) and the celempung (zither)).
Nonetheless, most gamelan ensembles do use tuned percussions extensively.
Fun fact, the word "gong" comes from the Malay/Indonesian language.
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Ok so, let's look at balinese genres of gamelan (because those are the ones I like the most).
Balinese gamelan tends to be very energetic and fast paced, with large ensemble of instruments where each instrument is doubled —the instruments of each pair are slightly off-key from each other, which create the typical shimmering sound of balinese gamelan. Here's a short overview of a few genres.
Gong gede:
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Gong gede is a form of ceremonial gamelan that is almost extinct. I'm not sure this particular track is quite typical, since it seems to include reed instruments that are normally not found in Indonesian music but what the heck, it's a really awesome song, this is the song that really got me into gamelan.
Gong kebyar:
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Gong kebyar is the most popular genre of gamelan in Bali. It's really fast-paced and energetic genre.
Jegog:
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Jegog is a genre of gamelan that eschew the metallophones for bamboo percussions (some of which get so imposing that the musicians have to stand on a platform
over the instrument in order to play it), giving it a very distinctive sound (this genre was also featured in the soundtrack of Akira). I tend to find jegog a bit repetitive, but this track is really nice.
Beleganjur:
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A genre of gamelan for military marching band, complete with group choregraphy!
Gender wayang:
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A minimalist form, with only two or four instruments. Used in many contexts, but notably shadow puppet theater.
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I hope you'll enjoy this as much as I do.
