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Seleh Notes Volume 10 Number 3 June 2003

© Robert Brown

 

After a few years’ acquaintance with Pak Tjokro, the leading musician at the Paku Alaman court and RRI Yogyakarta, I finally got up my nerve to enquire into the possibility of recording in the Paku Alaman, which had one of the finest groups of players.

This took place at a siaran, or radio broadcast in honour of the Prince Paku Alam, whose birthday was celebrated every 35 days at the coincidence of the five-day and seven-day calendrical cycles, following Javanese tradition.

The gamelan had already been arranged in two tiers for the broadcast, soft playing instruments on one side, loud playing instruments on the other.

Since I had decided to limit myself to two microphones for a more natural balance of sound, the setup was an obvious one for stereo recording, a relatively new innovation at the time.

The programme had been pre-set, but was carefully planned to be a varied and interesting progression of pieces. It was preceded by Ketawang ‘Puspawarna’, the Prince’s special entrance music.

There were certain natural sounds – the court’s large collection of grandfather clocks chimed in harmony with the gamelan at 15 minute intervals throughout, and the twittering of sparrows in the rafters of the pendopo, a traditional building that typically is open to the outside air on three of its sides, was a normal part of the sound ambience in that court.

 

With one microphone aimed at each of the two groups of instruments I turned on the Uher and held my breath. During the longest and perhaps most beautiful piece, a formation of three military planes was heard far to the east.

As the piece progressed the sound grew louder and louder, until the planes passed a couple of hundred feet above the pendopo, and then gradually receded in the distance towards the west. Of course that piece couldn’t be used.

Later I worked with astronomer Carl Sagan on a selection of music to represent the human race, to be placed on the gold-plated records fastened to the sides of both Voyager spacecrafts. ‘Puspawarna’ was included.

It turns out that Voyager is destined to last for four billion years or so, actually the longest lasting product of said human race, which it attempted to document for any enterprising extra-terrestrials smart enough to capture the spacecraft.

Carl Sagan also liked ‘Puspawarna’, and laughed when he told me that one of the NASA engineers asked him why he had included Javanese music, which ‘seems to have no rhythm’.

Jaap Kunst, who first brought Javanese music to the attention of the west, phrased it rather differently when he said (with endearing charm and simplicity) on the Indonesia album in the early Columbia Library of Folk and Primitive Music – ‘Rhythm is the soul of this music’.

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