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Seleh Notes Volume 10 Number 3 June 2003

© Robert Brown

Having decided to try and make a second court gamelan recording in the smaller of the two courts of the rival musical city of Surakarta (Solo), it occurred to me that I could plan a series that would document the state of the art in the four main royal courts in Central Java, which together represented the pinnacles of artistic tradition.

Each recording could include the special music associated with the prince or a particular court tradition, but the four recordings could also develop a kind of panorama of the important modes (pathet), some of the main musical forms, and include the association with classical dancing and the shadow play.

Famous heirloom gamelan sets belonging to the courts would be heard in the great variety of their overall sound. This could then bring, to what I hoped might be a waiting world, a much more comprehensive idea of the riches of Central Javanese gamelan than was possible from just the original Paku Alaman release.

Since the courts share a more or less common repertoire with thousands of village, radio, private and institutional gamelan groups, the series would be representative of the whole Javanese tradition, played at the highest level of artistry.

Arriving at the Mangkunegaran from the United States at the appointed time and day, I found some 40 musicians waiting patiently to perform for the recording. The little Uher simply refused to play its part. The musicians had to disband to their homes, sometimes to distant villages, while I went to Bali to borrow a Nagra from my old Wesleyan student, Andrew Toth.

When everyone had congregated for a second time it rained incessantly for an hour or more, with a great din emanating from the metal roof of the largest pendopo in Java. Finally I thought to ask Soekanto Sastrodarsono, ‘Pak Kanto, don’t you have a special gendhing for stopping rain?’ ‘Oh yes’, he replied, as if suddenly reminded.

The gamelan musicians played (on ‘Kyahi Kanyut Mesem’ which many believe to be the most beautiful sounding gamelan in Java), the rain stopped, and we got ready to proceed.

Not yet. Dozens of large bullfrogs appeared as if from nowhere and squatted happily in puddles around the three long sides of the pendopo, where they commenced to call to one another in what seemed, (to someone about to make a recording) to be truly stentorian tones.

I think that was when I realised that the two-note melody played at royal weddings, by a ceremonial gamelan called ‘Kodok Ngorek’ (Frog Croaks), is nothing short of an imitation of nature. The name of the gamelan is not just a fanciful one, but actually relates to the sound it evokes.

The association of frogs with rain and fertility on the old bronze drums of Southeast Asia may well be reflected in the association of this gamelan and the frog-inspired melody, underlining the hope of fertility in royal marriages.

After a short period of abject despair, someone had the bright idea of calling on a host of little boys, who stood near each of the puddles, intimidating the frogs by their very presence, thereby providing a reasonably quiet atmosphere, except of course for the myriads of sparrows, chattering as they flew between the many crystal chandeliers.

I had decided by that time to record each court gamelan in its individually appropriate acoustical setting, and came to realise that the sparrows were a normal part of the courtly sound ambience in several of the palaces.

Although the twittering was largely masked by the sound of the outsized gamelan known as ‘Udan Asih, Udan Arum’ (Rain of Love, Scented Rain) I did leave a little of the sparrow sound at the end of a piece or two as the great gong faded away.

 

Gamelan is difficult to record with just two microphones. Some 15 or so years of playing experience helped me to know what it was that I was looking for: that is a particular acoustical viewpoint – the group heard from a vantage point where there would be a reasonable balance, without any one instrument overpowering the others. The gong sound is very directional, so that is the first thing to be taken into account.

At least one mike must capture that deepest pitched and most important instrument which, of course, plays less often than any other. When it does play it must be distinctly heard, and not only heard, but felt. The Javanese have a sense that music enters the body as vibration, something only recently coming to be understood in the west.

There are lots of considerations to take into account in trying to make an ideal recording of Javanese or Balinese gamelan, including the sensibilities of native listeners and players as to the meaning of the sound, as far as that is possible to know.

One bonus from the Mangkunegaran recording came from the fact that the prince’s entrance music, Ketawang ‘Puspawarna’, was the same composition used by the Paku Alaman, and the two very different realisations of the same music speak volumes to the sensitive listener about the range of possible interpretation in Javanese gamelan music.

For the huge array of larger-than-life instruments belonging to ‘Udan Asih, Udan Arum’ (said to be the Mangkunegaran’s answer to the ceremonial Gamelan Sekati found in the Kraton Surakarta and Kraton Yogyakarta) I decided to mount the microphones about 10 feet high and perhaps 15 feet apart.

Although the analogy with human ears was lost, flexibility has to be the name of the game in recording gamelan, and it did produce the desired balance of sound.

Later on in the evening, for the recording of the peerless ‘Kanyut Mesem’, the two microphones were placed at a 45 degree angle to one another, almost touching, and were situated at a corner near the gender and gambang, where they would also pick up the funnel of sound from the main gongs.

Given the rain and the frogs it was now after midnight, and the mikes were facing in the opposite direction from the ‘Udan Asih’ placement on the other side of the huge pendopo, perfectly situated, it turned out, to pick up the blare of loudspeakers from the near-by ‘Sri Wedari’ amusement park. Several takes had to be interrupted. Then the Nagra began to give problems, producing intermittent static.

Finally, at about three in the morning, I threw up my hands, turned on the recorder, and decided just to let it roll, in order to have at least one complete recording of ‘Kalibeber’ to listen to later, static and all.

Twenty-seven minutes later, with no static and no sound from ‘Sri Wedari’, I heard the final gong fade away, immediately followed by a burst of static, like a sardonic guffaw from on high. But the wonderful musicians who were part of the Mangkunegaran group in the early 1970s were on tape for posterity and available to a whole world of listeners.

And that was what it was all about, as far as I was concerned. Although I recall the tribulations when I listen to the re-release of this recording, unavailable for so many years, it is the quality of their performance that hits me between the eyes.

I feel myself a very lucky person to have been able, by hook or by crook, to capture it in that all-night session.

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