Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Contributors
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Maps
- 1 Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam
- 2 Java
- 3 Japan
- 4 China: The Guqin Zither
- 5 Chinese Opera
- 6 North India
- 7 South India
- 8 Mande Jaliyaa
- 9 North American Jazz
- 10 Europe
- 11 North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean: Andalusian Music
- 12 The Eastern Arab World
- 13 Turkey
- 14 Iran
- 15 Uzbekistan and Tajikistan
- Notes
- Bibliographies
- Index
2 - Java
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 May 2021
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Contributors
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Maps
- 1 Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam
- 2 Java
- 3 Japan
- 4 China: The Guqin Zither
- 5 Chinese Opera
- 6 North India
- 7 South India
- 8 Mande Jaliyaa
- 9 North American Jazz
- 10 Europe
- 11 North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean: Andalusian Music
- 12 The Eastern Arab World
- 13 Turkey
- 14 Iran
- 15 Uzbekistan and Tajikistan
- Notes
- Bibliographies
- Index
Summary
A crowd of men, women and children are gathered in a courtyard, and more are in the street, squeezing into the gateway and sitting on the walls, or in rickshaws which have stopped for the show. An array of instruments – large and small gongs, xylophones, keyed metallophones, a bowed instrument, a bamboo flute – is spread out on the raised stone floor of a pavilion where a woman sings; players not absorbed in the music smoke and chat on the fringes. The only real light on this hot dark night is projected onto a white sheet stretched on a carved wooden frame at which a man sits, moving flat leather puppets of fantastical shapes while speaking their parts and singing songs; he also directs the gamelan, as this collection of instruments is known. At times one single instrument creates a shimmering background; at others the group produces loud snatches of repetitively-twirling melody. The musicians don't use notation but watch the screen, laughing uproariously with the audience at the comic bits. Shows like this traditionally last all night without a break, with the puppeteer being the only one never to leave his place. The spectators come and go freely, knowing the story and format so well that they can decide which parts to watch, and when to go somewhere to doze, lulled by the background music which fuses magically with the buzzing and humming of insects.
ON a visit to Java in 1971 I stayed with a cultured and musical family. The father listened for hours to gamelan music on the radio, and extolled its subtlety and power. Among the many beautiful ways he found to describe it, the most memorable was ‘like raindrops falling from leaves after a shower’. Writing in 1937, the Dutch author Leonhard Huizinga gave a similarly poetic description: ‘There are only two things one can compare it with: moonlight, and running water. It is pure and mysterious like moonlight; it is always the same and yet always changing, like running water.’ The aquatic metaphor common to both descriptions is not far-fetched, as at least one sound in the gamelan actually has an aquatic origin. One of the drums derives its name, and many of the sounds it produces, from ciblon, a game in which children slap the surface of water.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Other Classical MusicsFifteen Great Traditions, pp. 50 - 73Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2015