Where is gamelan music played

The ensemble is conducted by a drummer, and often includes voice, bamboo flute, xylophone, and stringed instruments. The most well-known gamelan ensembles are those from the islands of Java and Bali. The Bates College Gamelan Orchestra serves as an Indonesian music study group, performance ensemble, and provides ceremonial music for college events.

The group plays traditional and contemporary music of West Java Sunda , Central Java, and new music for gamelan by North American composers. Students enrolled in a variety of music and anthropology courses have the opportunity for a hands-on experience with the instruments as part of their coursework. For several decades, the presence of gamelan orchestras on college campuses both in the U. The inclusion of such an ensemble from outside of the West serves multiple roles within an academic setting.

As most pieces are composed of several different cycles, each played several times, the duration of pieces can range from a few minutes to more than an hour, rivaling a Mahler or Beethoven Symphony in terms of complexity, movements, and duration. He was transfixed and spent many days in the Dutch East Indies Pavilion listening to the Indonesian musicians perform. He worked hard to understand the structure and tuning.

He later set about composing music inspired by the music he heard. Harjito; B. Still others are excited by the multileveled interlockingness of the texture, comparing it to the experience of listening to several, incredibly good jazz solo players improvising together. Skip to main content. You are here. Hispanic Studies. International Affairs.

Rhetoric and Media Studies. Sociology and Anthropology. Entrepreneurial Leadership and Innovation. Latin American Studies. Middle East and North African Studies. Photo Credit: Rachel Hadiashar. A gamelan is an orchestra made up of a set of instruments from Java and Bali, Indonesia. In learning gamelan music, unlike western orchestral music, a musician will learn more than just one instrument. In order to understand gamelan, it is necessary to know what each instrument provides to the whole.

During the performance, you will see us moving around and switching instruments. The instruments in the gamelan can be separated into four distinct categories, each serving a different function in the music.

The first is the balungan.