Semar pegulingan

by Nick Gray

 

Contents

Semar pegulingan (1)

Gamelan semar pegulingan (2)

Gamelan pelegongan (3)

I wayan lotring (4)

The current revival (5)

Bibliography (6)

Seleh Notes Volume 11 Number 1 November 2003

© Nick Gray

In the 1920s and 30s, the dynamic new North Balinese style of gamelan gong kebyar swept the rest of Bali like a wave.

My gender wayang teacher, I Wayan Loceng, remembers these new gamelan first appearing in Bona and Pindha in Gianyar, then spreading to other villages like Dlod Tangluk and Belaluan. Colin McPhee talks of older gamelan being melted down to make way for the new.

One of the main casualties was the court gamelan semar pegulingan:

‘Like the gambuh theatre, the seven-tone semar pegulingan had all but vanished by 1931. There were several six-tone orchestras, so formed as to make possible the playing of separate repertories in the two scales, tembung and selisir.

But only two seven-note ensembles could be found in any state of activity. One, which was badly out of tune, and whose musicians knew only a small repertory of compositions, belonged to the village of Kamasan in Klungkung.

The other, in excellent condition, belonged to a Brahman priest of Tampak Gangsal, a banjar in the town of Badung, and was heard now and then on ceremonial occasions’.

McPhee was so certain of its extinction he all but wrote its obituary: ÔWith changing times it was inevitable that the gamelan semar pegulingan should disappear.

 

It was a luxury orchestra, and had not the functional importance of the gamelan gong which, if no longer maintained by the palace, could always be requisitioned, as it is today, from the villageÕ. Events, however, have proved otherwise.

Pieces are played in a number of pentatonic modes within the seven-note framework.

The seven-note scale is known as saih pitu although the borrowed term pelog is also used nowadays.

Colin McPhee describes the modal system used in Tampak Gangsal as follows:

Tembung 1 2 3   5 6      
Lebeng   2 3 4   6 7   
Baro       4 5 6   1 2
Selisir   2 3   5 6 7   
 

However, different systems occur elsewhere.

In his translation of the manuscript 'Prakempa', I Madé Bandem prefers:

Selisir 1 2 3   5 6    
Tembung 1 2  45 6    
Sundaren   2 3   5 6 7  
Slendro Ageng   2 3 4   6 7  
Slendro Alit     3 4 5   7 1
 

Composer I Wayan Berata proposes yet another system.

In revived semar pegulingan ensembles, slendro-like scales are often included in the scheme, as above, to allow the gamelan to perform angklung pieces.

Go to next page