the soul of gamelan gamelan for the soul
The
Drop, the Leaf, the Labyrinth Sounds
are water drops Sounds
fall down Sounds
expand and the labyrinth lives
The
clear drop gets dark on touching earth A
drop hangs from a leaf out there. (Guido Brivio di Bestagno)
THE GAMELAN IN WESTERN CULTURES
To comprehend Javanese gamelan music
is not an easy thing for us, Western people. It is not easy to get into
a sound-world which is an essential element of a forgotten or underestimated
culture. The West is no more a geographic area than a way of thinking
in which we are immersed. It is a vision of reality which we have come
to take as universal - but which isn't.
To own recordings,
to learn technical and historical notions does not mean to comprehend
the gamelan, it may rather mean to "represent" it. The essence
of gamelan music is in that East which we have forgotten or are ignoring.
The essence resides in the heart of the one who makes - and becomes
- the music, giving meaning and form to his thoughts and emotions.
It resides in the mind of the one who does not make distinction between
the visible and the invisible, the abstract and the concrete. We
can try to imagine the attitude of the Javanese musicians as they
play the music in this CD. We all perceive the cascade of sounds,
the flowing of timbres, the notes dancing around a natural and undefined
tonality, even the soft chirping of birds which participate in the
soundscape. But in our listening we most likely come short of attaining
the quality of feeling created within heart and mind of each musician
playing. Our Western aesthetics may even hinder our getting near to
that quality of feeling. The
gamelan invites us to step back, humbly, from our position of "super
partes" observers. It invites us to dissolve our selves in the
world of unity, to re-unite what we have long separated - word and
sound, music and language, heart and mind. (Marco Paltrinieri)
Music, Time, Being A modern philosopher said that “language is the home of being”. Thus forgetting about music. In fact, if Time
is the place where being happens, then music - the body of time -
is the true home of being. And, if being happens for everyone of us
during the time that is assigned, the Kraton Surakarta is one place
where being manifests itself in its immobile unity. There is no distance
from beginning to end; there is no story unfolding and then returning
to concealment after its appearing; there are no Figures that contend
for the centre of a harmonic order dictated by a superior Reason.
Every portion of the music was already at the beginning what is then
to become, and the end will take us back to the whole which has always
been there. If music ceases to appear as a story, then music becomes
the place where everyone is ever at home, the place which we have
never left, where we can recognize ourselves as what we are in our
unity - not only for certain aspects or reasons. Such immobility is
not the romantic nostalgia of the infinite, because every element
is complete and does not allow us to move on from what we hear. This
gamelan music is a totality with no outlet - an absolute contemplating
itself.
A different notion
of sacred There is more than just music to these compositions:
they are a whole world. Such world is very distant from our own in
terms of tradition and culture; but this nothing takes nor adds to
the fascination of the listening, where we experience primarily a
sense of authenticity. The problem is that to speak about this music
inevitably means to apply the measures of our language to something
which does not fit in our codes of communication. A certain “suspension” gives these musical
compositions a strong character of the sacred - but not in a Western
sense. Sacred for us is one pole of a dichotomy (sacred/profane) which
is part of our thinking and living reality, thus separating the world
in two quite distinct domains. And music is “sacred” when - with the
exception of Mozart - it fixes such separation, forcefully defined
by religion. On the contrary, the gamelan music of Kraton Surakarta
evokes the extraordinary perception of the unity, in reality and life, where every
being and every act is “sacred” because it is part of the Whole.
1. Gendhing bonang Danaraja, slendro sanga 16:50
Pesindhen
(female singer): Nyi Cendaniraras
Musical
Design, Mastering, and Photos: John
Noise Manis |