Gamelan Music: A Brief Guide

If you're looking for a way to expand your ears, your mind, and your vision of music, look no further than the sounds of Indonesia's classical music - the music of the Gamelan. A mostly percussive music, Gamelan is at times noisy, calming, boisterous and beautiful - often all at the same time. And surprisingly, Gamelan has had a profound influence on the development of Western classical music. Most notably, Claude Debussy incorporated elements of the Gamelan sound into his compositions.

The instrumental makeup of a gamelan is relatively simple. In Javanese, the word "gamelan" literally means "things you hit," and indeed the majority of the gamelan is made up of gongs (both hanging and pot-gongs), drums, and xylophone-like instruments. Additionally, gamelans will often incorporate flutes, zithers, fiddles, and vocalists to layer on top of the constantly-shifting percussion. Where gamelan music becomes particularly interesting, though, is in its structure. While most western music has a beginning, middle, and an end, gamelan pieces can go on forever - they consist of an opening section, to "call in" the piece, and then a main section, which is repeated for as long as the players wish to play it - to end the piece, they just gradually slow down and fade out. The idea is that all gamelan pieces are constantly being played by an ensemble somewhere, and each individual group is just "borrowing" it for a short time. Perhaps the most striking distinction from western music, though, is the beat structure. In western music, the first beat of a phrase is usually considered the most important, and the notes which follow go out from that initial beat. In gamelan, however, the last beat of a phrase carries the most weight - and every note before that beat is leading in towards it. It seems like a small, simple distinction, but it creates a profound effect on the music. Every note has a specific direction - you could say that while western music is exploratory, gamelan music is goal oriented.