Page 5 | Exploring for Nonesuch

Bali
Gender Wayang from Teges Kanginan
Gamelan Semar Pegulingan

Contents

Exploring for Nonesuch (1)

Recording at Paku Alaman (2)

The Mangkunegaran (3)

Kraton Yogyakarta (4)

Bali recordings (5)

Seleh Notes Volume 10 Number 3 June 2003

© Robert Brown

My early recordings in Bali were made in Teges village: one of gender wayang music, and the other of the famous semar pegulingan gamelan that had so inspired Colin McPhee, who kept it in his house in Sayan in the 1930s.

I was fortunate to be able to study with Tuan Colin just before he died, and his interests and writings have affected me more and more over the years. As I write this, sitting in my own house in Bali, I can recall how some of us asked McPhee’s friend and musical informant, I Madé Lebah, about the semar pegulingan so many times, that he and the Anak Agung Gede Mandera from Peliatan, who owned the instruments, finally decided to resurrect it after a lapse of about 40 years.

It is the new group of young musicians Lebah had trained in Teges who took part in the recording called Gamelan Semar Pegulingan, the Gamelan of the Love God. They are still playing now in dignified middle age, but the freshness of the Nonesuch recording, when it was still a recent enterprise, makes me proud to have arranged this.

I can recall working out for the first time how Balinese gamelan could be recorded inside a temple enclosure, preferably in the evening hours, relatively safe from barking dogs and children at play, if not from the occasional motorbike (less common in the 1960s than they are now).

Hanging the stereo mikes from the thatched grass roof of a temple pavilion provided a perfect non-reflecting back- ground, and one that was also relatively remote from ambient sounds.

My other Balinese recording on Nonesuch is a kind of compendium of well-known pieces for wayang, recorded by a group from the same village, Teges, and an example of traditional local style before the influence of the virtuoso style of play emanating from Sukawati.

I went on to record a number of rare old gamelan in Bali, an interest kindled by the writings of McPhee and developed through numerous on-site visits with Lebah and his son, I Wayan Gandera, who, along with Tjokorda Mas, had been my first Balinese teacher at UCLA.

The idea was to document some rather remarkable old music from about eight different groups (which were, more often than not, one of a kind) before they disappeared, or the pristine quality of the music changed in subtle ways as tourists began to invade Bali.

When I produced this surprise for Tracey Sterne she dampened my hopes by saying that she thought the public was not yet ready for something that esoteric. I felt, and still feel, that it was simply wonderful music, and I had long since lost the idea that music might be too exotic for inexperienced audiences.

When she offered to bring out an anthology, with one piece from each group, I refused. I can’t help but wonder if the world is ready yet, for some of the groups have, indeed, become extinct.

I was fortunate to be able to make connections with some superlative musicians in Java and Bali years ago. What is on the discs is their music, as it was then, the ‘true representations of what was going on in a particular community at a particular time before media influence became apparent’. (Richard Henderson, ‘Out of this World’ published in ‘The Wire’, May 2003).

I hope that all of those who read these personal musings can take the time to enjoy the sound of some great Indonesian musicians of the past.

It has somehow, against all odds, come down to you through the good graces of Nonesuch. Without Tracey Sterne that music, as it was then, would never have been heard again.

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