Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-txr5j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-16T12:13:26.822Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Different Temporalities: The Time of Balinese Gamelan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2019

Andrew Clay McGraw
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

On my first research trip to Bali, Indonesia, I brought along a reasonably expensive digital metronome with the wrongheaded idea that it would somehow aid my learning gamelan music. In a completely uncharacteristic mistake, Singapore Airlines lost my luggage containing the metronome. More than once, my Balinese teachers suggested (only half-kiddingly) that the goddess of music, Saraswati, had probably had a hand in this. Many Balinese teachers have commented that their greatest pedagogical challenge is in helping their foreign students develop a sense of the fluid, flexible nature of Balinese musical time. The differences between Balinese and Euro-American musical time and their representations have partially blinded theorists to its shape, function, and significance. In his magnum opus Music in Bali (1966), Colin McPhee describes a performance that particularly delighted him:

With no rhythmic support of any kind, the players must follow the leading gangsa, partly by watching, partly by ear. They must all feel in the same way the flexible, rubato nature of the passage. The charm of this episode, as played by the gamelan at Jagaraga in 1938, was irresistible. It lay partly in the melody itself, sounding thinly chiming octaves and stressed at intervals by the vibrant tones of the jublags and jegogans. But perhaps most enchanting of all was the lovely pliancy of the passage, and the perfect accord of all the players. (McPhee 1966:350)

Type
Articles
Information
Yearbook for Traditional Music , Volume 40 , 2008 , pp. 136 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 By The International Council for Traditional Music

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References Cited

Bakan, Michael B. 1999 Music of Death and New Creation: Experiences in the World of Balinese Gamelan Beleganjur. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bateson, Gregory 1949 “Bali: The Value System of a Steady State.” In Social Structure: Studies Presented to A. R. Radcliffe Brown, ed. Meyer Fortes, 33–53. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Becker, Judith 1981 “Hindu-Buddhist Time in Javanese Gamelan Music.” In The Study of Time, 4, ed. J. T. Fraser, Nathaniel Lawrence, and David Park, 161–72. New York: Springer Verlag.Google Scholar
Belo, Jane 1970 “The Balinese Temper.” In Traditional Balinese Culture, ed. Jane Belo. 85110. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brinner, Benjamin 1995 Knowing Music, Making Music: Javanese Gamelan and the Theory of Musical Competence and Interaction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam 1972 Language and Mind. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Clayton, Martin 2000 Time in Indian Music: Rhythm, Metre, and Form in North Indian Rag Performance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
D'Andrade, Roy 1995 The Development of Cognitive Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Denpasar Department of Education 1993 Kamus Bali—Indonesia [Balinese, Indonesian Dictionary]. Denpasar: Department of Education.Google Scholar
Ellis, Alexander J. 1885 “On the Musical Scales of Various Nations.” Journal of the Royal Society of the Arts 33: 485–517.Google Scholar
Epstein, David 1985 “Tempo Relations: A Cross-Cultural Study.” Music Theory Spectrum 7: 34–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
1995 Shaping Time: Music, the Brain, and Performance. New York: Schirmer. Geertz, CliffordGoogle Scholar
1973 The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
1995 After the Fact: Two Countries, Four Decades, One Anthropologist. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hoopen, Gert Ten, Sasaki, Takayuki, Nakajima, Yoshitaka, and Remijn, Ger 2006 “Time-Shrinking and Categorical Temporal Ratio Perception: Evidence for a 1:1 Temporal Category.” Music Perception 24/1: 1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gold, Lisa 1998 “The Gender Wayang Repertoire in Theater and Ritual: A Study of Balinese Musical Meaning.” PhD dissertation, University of California at Berkeley.Google Scholar
Hasty, Christopher 1997 Meter as Rhythm. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Herbst, Edward 1997 Voices in Bali: Energies and Perceptions in Vocal Music and Dance Theater. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Honing, Henkjan 2003 “Evidence for Tempo-Specific Timing in Music Using a Web-Based Experimental Setup.” Journal of Experimental Psychology 32/3: 780–86.Google Scholar
Keil, Charles 1995 “The Theory of Participatory Discrepancies: A Progress Report.” Ethnomusicology 39/1: 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Korsyn, Kevin E. 2003 Decentering Music: A Critique of Contemporary Musical Research. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kramer, Jonathan D. 1988 The Time of Music: New Meanings, New Temporalities, New Listening Strategies. New York: Schirmer.Google Scholar
Lerdahl, Fred, and Jackendoff, Ray 1983 A Generative Theory of Tonal Music. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Locke, David 1998 Drum Gahu: An Introduction to African Rhythm. Crown Point, Indiana: White Cliffs Media Co.Google Scholar
London, Justin 2000 “Rhythm.” Grove Music Online / Oxford Music Online. http://www.oxford-musiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/45963 (accessed 3 September 2008).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2002 “Cognitive Constraints on Metric Systems: Some Observations and Hypotheses.” Music Perception 19/4: 529–50.Google Scholar
2004 Hearing in Time: Psychological Aspects of Musical Meter. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Maceda, Jose 1986 “A Concept of Time in a Music of Southeast Asia (A Preliminary Account).” Ethnomusicology 30/1: 11–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGraw, Andrew Clay 2005 “Musik Kontemporer: Experimental Music by Balinese Composers.” PhD dissertation, Wesleyan University.Google Scholar
2008 “The Perception and Cognition of Time in Balinese Music.” Empirical Musicology Review 3/2. https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/bitstream/1811/31938/4/EMR000043a_McGraw_revised.pdf.Google Scholar
McPhee, Colin 1966 Music in Bali: A Study in Form and Instrumental Organization in Balinese Orchestral Music. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Miller, Christopher 2001 “As Time Is Stretched … : Theoretical and Compositional Investigations of Rhythm and Form in Javanese Gamelan Music.” MA thesis, Wesleyan University.Google Scholar
Neuhaus, Christine, and Knosche, Thomas R. 2006 “Processing of Rhythmic and Melodic Gestalts—an ERP Study.” Music Perception 24/2: 209–22.Google Scholar
Perlman, Marc 2004 Unplayed Melodies. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Pressing, Jeffrey 2002 “Black Atlantic Rhythm: Its Computational and Transcultural Foundations.” Music Perception 19/3: 285–310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sloboda, John 1985 “Expressive Skills in Two Pianists: Metrical Communication in Real and Simulated Performances.” Canadian Journal of Psychology 35/A: 273–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spiller, Henry in press “Lou Harrison's Music for Western Instruments and Gamelan: Even More Western Than It Sounds.”Google Scholar
Sumarsam, 1995 Gamelan: Cultural Interaction and Musical Development in Central Java. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Tenzer, Michael 2000 Gamelan Gong Kebyar: The Art of Twentieth-Century Balinese Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
2006 Analytical Studies in World Music. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Vitale, Wayne 1990 “Kotekan: The Technique of Interlocking Parts in Balinese Music.” Balungan 4/2: 2–15.Google Scholar
Zagorski-Thomas, S. 2007 “The Study of Groove.” Ethnomusicology Forum 16/2: 327–35.Google Scholar
Zoetmulder, P. J., and Robson, S. O. 1994 Kamus Jawa Kuna Indonesia [Ancient Javanese, Indonesian dictionary]. Jakarta: Gramedia.Google Scholar
Zuckerkandl, V. 1956 Sound and Symbol: Music and the External World. Trans. W. R. Trask. London.CrossRefGoogle Scholar