Bandung Gamelan and Utrecht

By Ahmad Nurhasyim

Gamelan becomes the cultural dialogue media between two nations that has a long historical relation.

The audience in the Salihara performance room on Tuesday (13/7) witnessed an extraordinary show. Ten white men wearing dark red shot sleeves and 15 tanned men in black sat cross-legged. They all faced Javanese gamelan metals those are arranged by their front. Their hands grabbing the panakol -batons in Sundanese language-.

Not long after the composition of Sanata de Camera that was written by Klaus Kuiper and the Holland Gending Ensemble was heard. At first this composition was played by ten players, but for that night, 20 players were performing. The composition was opened slow, soft and flowing. Jurrien Sligter was the conductor that gave commands to to the gamelan members from the Gending Ensemble and Kyai Fathahillah Bandung. The Bandungs played the pelog while the Hollanders played the slender. As soon as Jurrien came down, energetic tunes surround the entire performance room that was packed by at least 120 spectators.

The show did not only show the gamelan proficiencies of the two nations, but also became the sign of cross-learning. Kyai Fathahillah, as any karawitan groups in Java, in general uses number notations, while the entire composition played were using block notations. The issue was that Gending is used to the Bes as their ground note. Fathahillah uses A base note. Iwan Gunawan, the conductor and leader of Fathahillah must interpret the two different notes so that is can be accepted by the two groups of two different backgrounds.

Although enchanted the audience, the collaboration show that only took place at the beginning and end of performance was a 90 minutes show. The rest was filled with each groups playing their own composition separately.

The next show was filled by the Gamelan Ensemble. The second composition, Petruk, was one of the compositions chosen by the judges at the 2010 International Gaudeamus Musicweek. The composition combines Chinese techniques and Indonesian musical instruments, including the Balinese and Javanese instruments. Fast and slow tempos were going one after another.

The performance began with a theatrical act. At first there were only two persons on stage, then one by one the players come on and played the music directly. The same act was then repeated to close the composition. For the next composition, Pengaget by Iwan Gunawan, fast music pattern was used.

The show that night showed that traditional musical instruments can serve as the inter-nation dialogue embassy. It did not occur overnight, but since 2006 both have been travelling around under the collaborative project of Tribute to Ton de Leeuw. This is the concrete form of East meets West dialogue.

source: arti magazine 31 edition