Page 5 | Semar pegulingan

The current revival

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

Often STSI sendratari performances feature both kebyar and semar pegulingan to provide a musical contrast to dramatically contrasting scenes, for instance using the lighter-toned semar pegulingan for scenes set in heaven and reintroducing the kebyar for earthly or demonic scenes.

Although there are some folklorising elements to STSI’s approach, the semar pegulingan revival seems more of an attempt to create genuinely new music.

Like so much Balinese creativity, the revival is partly spurred by boredom (emed) with what has gone before; a feeling that the kebyar seam has been nearly exhausted after being mined so intensively.

The old five-note pelegongan ensemble has not been revived to the same extent as the seven-note, apart from the well-known Teges group.

It is the very limitations of the five-note pelog that player-composers are now seeking to escape.

However, a new form of wayang was created in Sukawati that makes use of both the instruments and repertoire of legong in a new way.

Sukawati dalang I Wayan Wija has developed wayang tantri, a new form of wayang telling stories derived from the Pancatantra, with an accompaniment of four legong gender together with drums and punctuating gongs.

The instrumental repertoire for this, devised by I Wayan Loceng and other Sukawati musicians, fuses gender wayang techniques, such as playing melody in the left hand and kotekan in the right, with legong tuning and melodies.

Balinese music is, as ever, evolving creatively to explore new possibilities within the basic concept of gamelan. The semar pegulingan and selonding revivals differ from a kind of fashion for early music in their attempt to reach for something genuinely new.

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