Gamelan - Banyumas Bamboo Gamelan - Traditional Music from Central Java

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Banyumas Bamboo Gamelan
Traditional Music from Central Java

Nimbus Records
Review by Mark Lockett

While there is a high level of interest in classical Javanese music lesser known regional styles are getting new exposure; which is very good news, as a group like this might otherwise have gone unnoticed. Proof, if any were needed, that the rich legacy of regional and syncretic music is not getting swallowed up by state-approved classical music from state-sponsored academies. Unity in Diversity yet again!

This is also Central Javanese but a long way, in sound and feeling (and distance), from the courtly bronze to which we may be accustomed. In fact there’s not a bronze instrument in sight as almost everything is played on tuned bamboo, even the surrogate gong which is a thick piece blown/sung into digeridoo-style. Ever-resourceful, the Banyumas people were not going to be deterred from playing gamelan music by the lack of bronze; they made instruments out of the abundant material growing all around them.

Although the structure of the music is such that it could all be played on a slendro gamelan, the energetic ‘kerplunk’ of rubber mallets hitting bamboo, driven by some wild drumming and shouts, whoops and eeks, is what makes it unique. This is, quite simply, breath-taking music which revels in the deceptively simple pleasures of celebrating, socialising and laughing. The words are full of satire and parody and can be quite risqué. There’s a great sense of fun, worlds away from the refinement of Solonese gamelan. This is something that really came across to audiences when the group played in the UK in 1996.

Banyumas is a rural, mountainous area south west of Solo and Yogya where most people live from the land and, as that land is very fertile, life is not too hard. This leaves time to develop their unique art forms, including music, which are passed on in the traditional non-academic way through watching, listening and imitating. Although the group’s leader, Yusmanto, is STSI-trained, and they have toured internationally, this is still very much village-based art. The players are all local musicians whom Yusmanto got together for a local competition to find the best calung group.

The music has soaked up all sorts of influences from classical court music to Jakarta disco-style dangdut. There’s a wonderful example of that on the final track. Elsewhere there are pieces in Sundanese jaipong-style with the distinctive rhythmic cadences which seem to propel the beat forward and then trip it up just before the gong. As Bradley Smith points out in his excellent notes: ‘anything is fair game and can be adapted for performance’.

There is great variety of style on this CD. The one disappointment is the actual sound. It all seems to be recorded at a distance and at a low level. This kind of ambient what-you-hear-is what-you-get approach works for certain things but I don’t think it works for this. The enclosed, rather resonant space in which it was recorded is not, I suspect, the right acoustical environment for the music and the lack of any close miking gives the whole a uniformly flat sound where more detail would have been welcome, in the kendhang playing, for example.

Nevertheless the high-energy performances shine through. Talking to David Kettle, (Seleh Notes, Vol 3 No 3), Yusmanto says Banyumas music has semangat. This might best be translated as joie de vivre and this CD certainly has plenty of that.

Mark Lockett's review first appeared in Seleh Notes Vol 6 No 2