Gamelan and Javanese Dance Concert

The slamatan before the concert. Andy (our gamelan teacher) and his wife, Peggy (the Javanese dance instructor), led the ceremony.

Rearranging the instruments on the stage, which include moving the heavy and highly sensitive gongs.

Moving the gongs. What a team effort!

The second act: Lawung Jajar

With my boss, Mary Jo; my Indo comrade, Dadit; his son, Fasha; and his wife, Heni.

At Sinae's prodding, posing for photo Korean-style, with Andy and Mary Jo.

With Isabel and Yosef.

The Malaysians who came for support with Huda still in her dancer costume (on the left).

Post-concert photo with the Malaysian guys and one-half of the kempul. Tonight was the first time I had worn batik shirt in years, which I had to dig out of my closet the night before.

Last night was the annual University of Wisconsin's Javanese Gamelan and Dance Concert, and I was one of the gamelaners. The concert has always been held on the last Saturday of April at the Mills Music Hall in the Humanities building. I have to say that I was nervous as heck. I have only been playing gamelan for two semesters and now I had to perform on the stage in front of hundreds of scrutinizing eyes. I was also playing the gong for the first three songs, which made me even more tense because gong is the central instrument of a gamelan ensemble. Well, some people say that playing gong is easy because it does not get hit that often. True, but therein lies the pressure. If a player hits the gong too early/late or with the wrong pitch (too loud/soft) or simply hit the wrong gong (there are four different gongs but we're only using three), then the result is disastrous because the mistake is so obvious and very audible to all.

We gathered at 4pm to carry the instruments out to the hallway in the back of the stage. After the gamelan room was cleared, I was told that because this was my first gamelan concert, as a hazing ritual, I had to vacuum the room to get it ready for slamatan. Slamatan is a traditional Javanese feast to commemorate important events such as birthday, birth, farewell, good luck, etc. As in every year, the food for slamatan was provided by the one and only Indonesian restaurant in Madison, Bandung. The slamatan in this case meant as a good luck to all the performers before the show. Mary Jo (the singer or pesindhen, and who is also my boss at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies), made roasted chicken decorated with flowers and leaves as an offering to propitiate the spirits. Every gamelan ensemble, and especially the gong, is considered as pesaka, a sacred relic animated with particular spirits. A couple of incenses were stuck into the "spiritual setpiece," lit up, and placed in front of the big gong (gong ageng, which is the most sacred instrument of all), which annoys the hell out of me because the smoke was suffocating.

There was a brief practice run on the stage an hour before the concert. Everybody then had the chance to change clothe about 20 minutes before the performance; instead I went outside to smoke kretek (clove cigarettes) with Pak Ben Arps, a linguistics professor from Leiden University, who was also our guest player. The concert started a little bit after 8pm. The first song, which had a few extremely long gongans (beats between gongs, 256 beats in this case) went without a hitch. The second song I managed to screw up twice: once I hit the gong too late and the other was too soon. In my defense, the acoustic in the hall wasn't that friendly to a gong player like me because I sat in the back row while all the sound traveled and dispersed forward toward the audience. Gong players have to listen to other instruments for cues and it was hard to hear what notes other instruments were playing when the sound was kind of faint and mushy at the same time. Also, the second song (Ladrang Srikaton and Sukma Ilang) was a gong-intensive piece, where I had to hit the gongs on rapid succession during the ayak-ayakan, sprepagan, and sampak parts, which is a bit unusual for gamelan. I screwed up once during the srepegan part, but fortunately recovered in time to not lose track of my place in the tempo. The third song was uneventful (meaning no error on my part), and then it was time for intermission.

There were four songs in the second act, which were played concurrently with a series of Javanese dances. I played three different instruments, and none of them were gong; I played saron pelog, demung, and gender. The good thing about playing these instruments is that mistakes are not that obvious and can be easily covered up, which happened to me quite a few times. I had the most problem with gender since I just learned how to play it last week. But overall, everything went well and we received thunderous applause from the audience. After the concert, as usual, the audience spilled over onto the stage to congratulate (and take pictures with) the performers. I'd like to thank the Malaysian students and others who came tonight to show support. Including me, there were three other Malaysians performing in the concert: Farah, Fahrol, and Huda (who did both playing the instruments AND dancing!).

I was so famished after the concert since I didn't eat as much during the slamatan. I always lose my appetite when I'm nervous, so naturally I can't wait to go to Andy's house after the concert to eat the leftover food.

I will try to post some more pictures of the concert beside the ones here. It's a bit hard to take pictures while performing!! I'm also trying to see if I can get the video of the concert, so I can show it to my mom. Yes, I'm a momma' boy!

Note: Check out Bern Jordan's website, a member of the UW gamelan group, for a good intro on the music and its particular ensemble here on campus. Bern is an especially adept bonang player and has been playing gamelan for the past six years--currently a PhD student in Mechanical Engineering.