On the other hand, music in the archipelago,
as is the case throughout the Orient, is still, in many cases, closely connected to the magical-religious
experience and, as such, penetrates the entire society."
In
1946 Jaap Kunst, the Dutch ethnomusicologist responsible for the
first comprehensive study of Javanese gamelan music, was describing
in this way the substantially different attitude of Westerners and
Indonesians towards music (article contained in "Indonesian
Music and Dance", Royal Tropical Institute, 1994).
It
is difficult to tell to what extent those observations are valid
today; the new generations in Java may be in the process of diluting
the phenomenon. But the essence of the different musical experiences
is well depicted in that description. And important implications
are stated further on in Kunst's essay:
"No matter the stage of development
of the music of a people, whether it is more in the nature of a magic formula or mainly used for
aesthetic satisfaction, it is always, in its serious forms, the expression of the innermost
feelings; the deepest origins of the soul of those involved. Its essence is, therefore,
of all cultural expressions, the most difficul for someone of another race or civilization to
grasp. However, one thing is certain: being able to grasp the character of the strange music,
will open the best possible path toward the understanding of the alien soul."
In
Java, playing - or listening to - a gamelan
is a spiritual discipline, not just mere amusement. It is also a way
of praying. The great didactic poem "Serat
Centini", written around 1820 by Paku Buwana V, reads as
follows (277th stanza):
"Both during prayer and during
the playing of music the heart is directed towards inner peace and
quiet, which is something that should be sought with all of one's
power. But one must not be absorbed by the purely sensual sound
of the composition; its charm is only the means to make the heart receptive and to create a great
desire for unity with God. In this way, the composition itself disappears
completely; there is nothing left.
That is the path that one must follow. The sound
of the gamelan and of the singing must, as it were, be returned to Him,
from Whom all sound has come and Who has given man the ability to
hear."
In
Javanese mysticism (kabatinan)
two almost identical words are pivotal: rahsa
(mystery) and rasa (feeling
and knowing). Let us read what Harun Hadiwijono wrote in 1967 ("Man
in the Present Javanese Mysticism", reported in Archipel no.
24, 1982):
"Concerning rasa, the meaning which comes most to the
front is that of "feeling", but then especially the higher
feeling of the presence of God and of "mystery" with which
usually is indicated the object of that feeling. The object is like
an indefinable fluidity,
which is present in man, by which man not only comes in contact
with God, but also is one with Him. It is the one Being (wujud)
which is in all things and by which all things in its deepest essence
are identical."
The
present CD, with all the limitations of being the reproduction of
one particular performance, offers five gendhing
belonging to the more spiritual side of the vast treasure of Central
Javanese music.
The
first piece, Ladrang TURUN
SIH, (The Descendant of Love), is said to be inspired
by azan, the call to prayer
by the muezzin. The idea of having two musicians sing in turn the
call to prayer in accordance with the music originated from a misunderstanding
of this writer - I had tought that the composition not only was inspired
by azan, but that it actually included the
male voice. Considering the result, which also created a remarkable
emotional involvement on the part of the performing musicians, the
present rendition of the piece may perhaps be taken as a case of serendipity.
Next,
one of the only two compositions especially written (in the 16th century)
for Sekaten, Ladrang RAMBU, is presented in a studio performance on a regular
gamelan. Those who have listened to
CD II in this series, "Ceremonial Music", will find
substantial and, hopefully, interesting differences between the two
types of recording. The field recording in the previous CD was offering
the actual happening during the Sekaten
islamic festivity, where the sacred outsize gamelans are played in
a very crowded setting during a week once a year. In the present CD,
the powerful sekaten music
takes on a more rarefied atmosphere - perhaps a more refined, abstract
spirituality - appealing more to the intellect (the way Western listeners
tend to go). The studio sound and the regular gamelan enhance the
musical role of each instrument. The one drawback that needs to be
recognized is the contained sound of the kendhang
(drum) which replaces the deeper voice of the bedug.
On the other hand, the bonang
part in the racikan - the
slow, halting melody that has been associated to the praying of an
imam - in the silent studio ambient works more effectively to convey
feelings of elevation.
The
third composition, Ladrang MIJIL
LUDIRA, (composed by Paku
Buwana V around 1820) suggests a connection to the opening piece -
"Anglirmendung" - in CD I of our series. They have in common
the context of the sacred kraton
musics and dances, the mythical/didactic sung poems, the use of kemanak (the banana-shaped hand-held one-note double-set bronze instrument).
The poem is sung by a three-men chorus (gerong). We report here the Javanese text and a translation into English
provided by Joko Purwanto.
Wastra
ngangrang tebenging patani A long beautiful piece of cloth as a cover
Panggagasing batos
Desires
of the heart
Atma dwija, Sempani wastane Child of a teacher called Sempani
Gung karanta
So sad (because of love)
Ing siyang myang ratri
During the day and at night
Ingkang sarpa langking
A black snake
Mung sira riningsun
Only you my little brother
Putra Rendra
Son of the King
Parabe pawestri
The name of a woman
Paran wekas ing ndon
How will my life end
Kang toh pita
A mark on the skin
Sumbrambah anggane
All over the body
Lagya ana, panujuning ati
Only now has his heart been captured
Ron leashing siti
Leaves are scattered on the ground
Ewuh marganipun
Confused how to express (love)
Waela di
Beautiful woman
Tanayeng kadhiri
Princess from Kediri
Kiraning tyas ing ngong
Calculation of my heart
Yaksa Prabu
Giant King
Gorangsa kadange
Relative of King of Gorangsa
Datan mantra, Yen sira nimbangi Unexpected that you would return my love
Janma gung kajodhi
A man who is defeated
Wit asor kalangkung
Because he is so poor
The
fourth piece, Ladrang RANGKUNG, is the other of the two original sekaten gendhing. Musically, it has perhaps more interesting features than the first.
For one thing, there is the first appearing of a playing technique
called imbal - two instruments
(demung) playing one on the beat, the other
off the beat (metaphorically heard as two spirits, jim Rambu and jim Rangkung,
talking to each other). The mythical origin of the two sekaten gendhing is told in the "Wédha Pradangga" (Sacred Knowledge
about Gamelan Music) by R. T. Warsadiningrat (1886-1972).
The
last piece of the present CD, Ketawang
MIJIL DHEMPEL, is
in a way twin of the third one. This composition is also connected
to the Bedhaya dances of Kraton Surakarta. The scale here is slendro
(Mijil Ludira is tuned to pelog)
and the listener can appreciate the difference in "feeling"
brought-in by the change of scale in two pieces with the same "orchestration".
We report the Javanese text and an English translation provided by
Joko Purwanto.
Lamun
sira madeg narapati
When you become king
Yayi wekas ingong
A message for my little brother
Apan ana ing prabu ugere Because there are guidelines to become king
Sastra cetha ulatana yayi
It is clearly written, little brother
Omahna den pasti
Study carefully
Wulange sastreku
The literary teaching
Rehning janma tama nguni-uni
By a good person long ago
Kang mengku kaprabon
Who ruled the kingdom
Ingkang nistha kawruhana kabeh
Know all the contemptible
Miwah madya ywa lali
And the mediocre, don't forget
Lire siji-siji
Each meaning
Den kena ywa tungkul
You must master, don't give up
Tindak ing nistha mangka pamardi Understand the reason of the contemptible
Temah tan anggepok
Ultimately have no connection
Ingkang madya resepana wae
Understand the mediocre
Mring utama sira den kepingin
You must be attracted to the good
Den kadi sira mrih
In the same way
Sengsem dyah ayu
You love a beautiful girl
(John Noise Manis)
Islam, Gamelan, and Javanese Spirituality
by Daniel Wolf
Daniel
Wolf is a composer and music scholar based in Budapest, Hungary. He
studied composition with Lou Harrison, Gordon Mumma, Alvin Lucier,
and La Monte Young, as well as gamelan with Undang Sumarna, Sumarsam,
Harjito, Ki Oemartopo, and Ki Suhardi, receiving his PhD in Ethnomusicology
from Wesleyan University (Connecticut, USA).
Gamelan
is played today in central Java by Muslims, Protestant and Roman Catholic
Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, as well as by the nominally Muslim
adherents of Javanese mysticism. Contemporary Wahabbist Muslims and
fundamentalist Protestant Christians alike may distance themselves
from gamelan and other traditional arts, but there is certainly a
quality of gamelan which appeals to the mystic of any faith.
However, the vast majority of central Javanese are either Muslim
or nominally Muslim and our understanding of how that relates to the
gamelan practice demands further reflection.
The
Islamicization of the Indonesian archipelago was and is an incomplete
project, and the relationship between Islam and traditional culture,
including music, is far from settled. Indeed, the relationship is
dynamic, often ambiguous, and not without tension. This is, in part,
an attribute of Islam itself, but uniquely fueled here by the richness
of the traditional local culture, with its complicated assimilations
of aspects of Buddhist, Hindu, and local religious traditions.
Although
full of references to sounds and the command to the believers to "Listen!",
the Quran is silent on the subject of instrumental and vocal music,
and the Hadith, the orally transmitted instructions of the prophet
Muhammad, is contradictory, with the community of religious scholars
holding deeply divided opinions on the subject:
one scholar may praise and celebrate the practice of music
while another will condemn music and forbid its practice without exception. This leads to the paradox of the Islamicate
world being at once rich in depth and diversity of musical experience
and at the same time, having that experience perpetually under threat
of censorship or extinction, as in Afghanistan under the rule of the
Taliban.
The
recitation of Quranic texts, which is the center of Islamic daily
public worship, is not considered by Islamic scholars to be music.
The reader of the Quran is valued for the quality of his voice, but
he is not identified as a singer.
However, the outsider to Islam – and the belated converts to
the faith, as in Indonesia – will readily identify characteristics
of Quranic recitation that are unmistakeably musical.
The
nine muslim saints – the Walisanga
– who are revered for establishing Islam in Java,
were bearers of both the Quran and Javanese tradition. Sunan Bonang (died 1525 AD) may have given his
own name to the prominent gamelan instrument, but it is Sunan Kalijaga
(15th century AD), usually identified as the central figure of the
nine, whose use of both gamelan and wayang
kulit to promote the Islamic faith continues to resonate today
with ensembles said to be of his own invention playing pieces which
are identified as his own compositions.
This
recording includes examples from three areas of central Javanese repertoire:
the first might be called "standard" classical repertoire,
in Solo known as karawitan
, the second is a special gamelan ensemble and repertoire associated
with the festivities celebrating the birth of the prophet Muhammad,
and the third is a genre marrying a reduced gamelan ensemble to sung
classical verse.
The
first track is an experiment in making explicit to listeners something
which musicians understand implicitly.
This does not represent traditional performance practice, but
is much more the spirit of experiment that has characterized the modern
music schools, academies and conservatories of Java
at their best, and is also well within the spirit of Islamic science
in its golden age. (In passing,
one wishes that western conservatories were equally committed to an
experimental approach to their own traditions). Ladrang Turun
Sih, a title which might be translated as "Giving
Devotion", is understood by musicians to be based upon the call
to prayer familiar to anyone who has ever visited a Muslim country. But this understanding is here made overt by
combining a performance of the instrumental work with the vocal call
to prayer. The relationship
between the instrumental composition and the melodic contours of the
recitation are unambiguous, but the propriety of the performance and
recording is problematic: Is music being made out of Quranic
recitation, which by definition is neither singing nor music? Does the instrumental work convey the message
recited? To this listener's
ears, the recording conveys well the
alternating senses of tension and resolution invoked by this
experiment, but also the tension familiar to anyone who has ever experienced
the Javanese soundscape – one in which the amplified voice of the
muezzin regularly punctuates gamelan rehearsals.
The
most joyous celebration in the Javanese Muslim calendar is Sekaten,
corresponding to the Arabic Garabeg Mulud celebration taking place
each year from the evening of the 6th through the evening of the 12th
day of the third month of Mulud, commemorating the birth of the prophet.
In the royal cities of central Java, Surakarta (Solo) and Yogyakarta,
but also in the old palaces of Cirebon on the Northwestern coast,
the celebration centers on the alun-alun (field) between the palace
complex (Kraton) and the central Mosque, where a specialized gamelan
ensemble is carried into a pavillion and played in the morning, early
afternoon, and evening, with break only for the obligatory prayers
on Thursday evening and Friday morning.
In one tradition, Sunan Kalijaga is credited with creating
the special gamelan sekaten with its unique instrumentation and low
tessitura, and the purpose of the gamelan was to attract listeners
and draw them into the mosque. In
central Java, the sekaten ensemble is composed of a very large bonang,
a double-row gong chime, played by two or three musicians facing one
another at opposite sides of the instrument, oversized metallophones:
two demung, three saron, and two peking, all played with extra hard
mallets often at large volume, a single suspended drum of barrel form
and struck with a large mallet, kenong, and gongs. The two Sekaten compostions recorded here,
Rambu (from Arabic Robbuna, "Oh, my Lord") and
Rangkung (from Rokhun, "Great Soul") are understood to be both the first
works composed for the ensemble and to have been composed by Sunan
Kalijaga himself. The form
of these pieces may be heard as metaphorical for the conversion experience,
beginning with long and soft bonang phrases punctutated by the unison
from the ensemble, gradually increasing in speed and density, so that
the melody itself is eventually taken over by the metallophones with
great vigor and the bonang assumes an increasingly ornamental role.
The
present recording is a studio recording done on conventional instruments,
not the specialized sekaten gamelan. In the purity of the studio environment,
one can hear, perhaps for the first time in a public recording, numerous details of the sekaten performance
style. What is missing most, however, is the acoustic ambience of
an event which can be compared to the sonic experience of popular
fairs in western countries.
Finally
this recording includes two gendhing
kemanak, an original genre of the Solonese court in which classical
verse is sung in unison by a male soloist and chorus accompanied by
a gamelan of reduced numbers and featuring an instrument of Hindu-Javanese
antiquity. The kemanak is a pair of roughly banana-peel
shaped bronze "bells", assigned to a pair of musicians,
each one of whom holds the kemanak in one hand and strikes the metal
with a wooden beater wound with cord held in the opposite hand, the
hand holding the kemanak then covering the opening after each strike
to slightly bend and then dampen the sound.
The two kemanak are usually tuned to tones 6 and 7 of the pelog
scale and play alternately in an ostinato 7-6-7-pause that is one
of the most basic patterns underlying gamelan repertoire, familiar
also, for example, in the "archaic"
gamelan Kodhok Ngorek. The gamelan does not include rebab, bonang, or the louder metallophones (exceptionally,
rebab is used in this recording). The two gendhing kemanak recorded
here are both 19th century compositions, intended for courtly dance
accompaniment, combining sung verse in the classical form Mijil (each
verse consisting of six lines, of 10/6/10/10/6/6 syllables, each line
ending, respectively, with the vowel sounds i, o, é, i, i, u), the
first Mijil Ludira ("blood") in pélog,
the second Mijil Dhempel ("close together", or "intimate")
in slèndro. These are uniquely beautiful and refined compositions,
perfect examples of the artistic inventiveness of the Solonese court
in the 19th century, but also examples of an invented antiquity through the pre-Islamic tone of the texts, and
the use of the reduced ensemble featuring kemanak, an instrument which
the listeners would presumably associate with the archaic.
Pendhapa Gamelan of STSI Surakarta
Musicians of STSI Surakarta:
Bambang Sosrodoro,
Darsono, Djoko Santosa, Hadi Boediono, I Ketut Saba, I Nyoman Sukerna,
Kuwat, Rusdyantoro, Rustopo, Sarno, Slamet Riyadi, Sugimin, Sukamso,
Supardi, Suraji, Waridi
Musical Coordination: Joko Purwanto
Musical Design: John Noise Manis
Date of recording: July 22, 2003
YANTRA
PRODUCTIONS