Gamelan Çudamani - live at The Musical Instrument Museum, Phoenix, 15 Nov 10
The people onstage - about 25 metallophonists, drummers, singers, flautists, and dancers - almost all were constantly on the verge of laughter. Intricate percussion patterns were traded between subsections of players, elaborately costumed girls stepped and stared, at times an individual stretched out into the void and let head explode - each was an inside joke first, then a public performance. Though it succeeded with the audience, it was as if our delight was a byproduct of their joy, as if their playing a concert was just one more grandly humorous gesture in a life full of glee.
The one person who seemed not to get the joke was a girl - a dancer who must have been around 10 or 15 years old - who before standing up to dance was slouched, frowning, fiddling, like any young person who has nothing to do. This went on for a while, before she finally got up to dance. Then she sat again, without impatience, waiting until the end of the piece. This was her only time onstage. Perhaps she wanted to dance more, a thwarted child. During her crabbiness, I began working on the impression that the others were laughing almost in the way any healthy family would laugh about an unjustifiably displeased young person. Then I wondered if there were other specific jokes being shared - someone always hits one note a little differently, or interferes with a technical dazzlement.
The classic moment of the performance came in the first half. Playing end-blown bamboo flutes and percussion, the gamelan expertly deconstructed several rhythmic ideas. They began with long, deep notes on the flutes, four girls dancing and singing in unison, and a bit of back and forth on bamboo, hit on the end to make hollow notes, on the side for crack.
The pitched bamboos were tuned to the classic metal gamelan instruments which came to dominate the show later. This tuning, which is a distinguishing identity for each gamelan, but which Cudamani has developed even more than usual, is not essentially harmonic; while it uses octaves, the rest of the scale is not derived from the simple pitch ratios forming the intervals of most music, but rather by creating one master tuning and matching the other instruments to that. As far as I could tell, the singing was harmonic, creating an interesting friction with the pitched-but-percussive instruments.
During this introductory material, I noticed how young the performers were. The oldest appeared to be perhaps 25 or 30, the average much younger. I began thinking that there must be some older people orchestrating them, whether touring with them or remaining in Bali. The level of execution and group dynamic just seemed beyond what I could imagine otherwise. Sure enough, a woman, Emiko Saraswati Susilo, arrived onstage, singing an ornamented counterpoint to the girls melody. I left the concert imagining that she was the driving force of the group, or perhaps its conscience, as her awareness and concentration seemed even firmer than the rest.
Soon afterward, three men came out, with matched sets of what I gather were a form of “rice irrigation meter”, which they hit with blocks of wood. At this point the effusive joking really began, while the three played an incredible improvisation in the midst of the large group’s continuing piece. At one point, two of them simultaneously played a quite complex pattern, but one (perhaps it was I Dewa Putu Rai?) remained a few moments after the other (I Dewa Putu Berata?). Playing not a syncopation, but really just a slight delay, what a drummer would call a “flam”, consistently following another person - this is frankly almost impossible to do, and showed that these people were deeply capable and well-practiced. More amazing, the manner in which they showed excellence was specifically social. It was no suprise then that this was the moment where the humor began bubbling up.
Soon after came the representative moment: a monster snuck in, dancing with wildly protruding teeth and mats of hair dragging and flying around. These pieces of hair were analogous to an odd piece of fabric the other dancers had, which they would allow to pass on the floor between their feet, kicking it around and stepping over it (they also kept eyes and fingers in a state of extreme extension). The monster enjoyed the music immensely, and would match the music in his motions so that it was hard to tell whether the musicians were responding to him or vice versa. It was hilarious.
In the second half, they played what I believe was more typical gamelan music. There were a few sets of the sort of small kettle gongs (reong) which I’ve only seen in gamelan, and several instruments like xylophones (gangsa). Cudamani played gamelan music ferociously. Instantly spinning from quiet to loud, they created sounds that sank into my teeth. In one huge rush of sound, the chief xylophonist managed to destroy a hammer. Everyone laughed while the patterns inexhaustibly iterated. It was like seeing a map of a mind on the cusp of an idea.
Here is a video of them. You may as well try to understand fire by looking at a video of it.
There was one pattern that kept coming back for a while, played on the reong, which was perfect, like bees in heaven. Then a few big hits on the metal, making a kind of train whistle. On the gangsa, one hand hit a sequence of notes, while the other hand traveled one note behind, briefly touching each bar to mute it. I believe that each performer was playing only half the notes, so that they alternated, doubling the pace of notes, and making the virtuosity again as much social as technical.
I imagine that the slouching girl was a daughter, and Emiko Susilo did look on her in a motherly manner. She is being raised by the ideal village. Indeed my impression is that Gamelan Cudamani is as much a school as an orchestra. The young people are constantly in eye contact with the leaders, watching, laughing together, matching notes for notes. The task which they have is specifically one which develops the most important qualities in a person - intense awareness, great humor, kindness, intelligence, diligence, all directed toward worshiping the divine together.
1 year ago
