Gamelan Sekar Jaya blogs

Finale

Matt Gleeson — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 05:23:35 +0000

(Thanks to Phil for this photo from backstage in Munduk. It breaks every rule of photographic composition and I love it.)

The jegog tour officially ended a week ago, and many members are already filtering back into the States, but I thought I'd catch you up briefly on our last couple of shows.

On July 11th we played a mebarung with Suar Agung at their home base in Negara. A mebarung is a musical battle -- the culture of gamelan in Bali loves a good competition. In most parts of Bali, two groups will face off and trade pieces one by one, sometimes heckling each other over their mistakes. Jegog groups in Jembrana take it a bit farther -- when one group finishes a piece, they launch into a repeating musical cycle as a challenge to the other group . . . who respond by jumping back onto their instruments and playing their own cycle. At this point both jegog groups try to drown each other out, stay together with their compatriots through the unholy noise, and be the one to outlast the other in a contest of stamina. As a standard performance, the Negara show may not have been our best -- it didn't help that we were standing in puddles of mud left over from the afternoon downpour and that our instruments were arranged around trees in the garden that blocked our sightlines! But our introduction to the exuberance of the mebarung was incredible fun. It involved literally jumping up and down in the mud while shouting group cheers and hooting at Suar Agung, until our arms were about to fall off. We may not have beaten Suar Agung, but many of them told us afterwards that we lasted long enough to give them blisters on their hands. That's enough to satisfy me.

Our last show was the following night in the mountain town of Munduk -- a fantastic finish to the tour. We shared the stage with a women's gamelan, a gamelan orang tua (i.e. played by old people), and Pak Putu's group Tri Pitaka. It was also a wonderful reunion with our old teachers Pak Terip and Pak Putu Putrawan (Terip was the jegog group's first teacher, and Putu was my own very first teacher of Balinese gamelan). We played one of our most energetic shows ever for a hugely responsive audience . . . Tri Pitaka blew our minds with a supremely dynamic North Balinese dance called Wiran Jaya . . . the whole thing got Pak Terip and Pak Putu a bit misty-eyed, and the boys of Tri Pitaka are clearly fascinated by jegog music.

Thanks to the jegog group for an excellent tour, and thanks to all the GSJ members and friends back home for supporting it! Perhaps our bloggers who are about to return to the States can be persuaded to upload more images and some video in the land of faster internet connections -- in the meantime I shall sign off.

Press

Matt Gleeson — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 05:33:01 +0000

Here are a few scans of newspaper articles from Bali that have featured GSJ! (Hopefully they're high-resolution enough to be legible . . .)

From the July 5th front page of Nusa Bali -- we hadn't even performed yet in Bali at this point. This article talks about the "virus" of interest in jegog music spreading to the U.S. (The photo, by the way, was from our busking session at the Berkeley farmers' market, provided to the newspaper by Gede Oka).

From the July 9th Nusa Bali, the morning after our PKB performance (the caption is headed "Jegog Bule" -- "bule" being basically the Balinese equivalent of the word "gringo"):

I don't have a scanned copy of this last one yet, but here's a photo. This is the article from the front page of the Jembrana Post that called our PKB performance "nearly perfect":

Ah, Jembrana

Matt Gleeson — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 03:30:15 +0000

Suzanne in the gardens of the Suar Agung sanggar

The sanggar temple

The flat, flat fields of Negara (Kansas with coconut palms?)

Ah, Sangkar Agung . . . the peaceful little town in West Bali that was our base of operations while we practiced. It's a far cry from the congested tourist centers of Bali. The landscape is flat, filled with fields of corn, beans and chili peppers. It's Bali, which means that you can wake up at 3 a.m. (as I did one night) to hear melancholy prayers being sung over a P.A. system next door at a funeral ceremony, followed by the squeals of a pig being butchered. But mostly Sangkar Agung is laid-back, lazy, hot, and full of down-to-earth people who seem proud of being "orang kampung" (country folk). At the lovely Suar Agung sanggar, Gede Oka and his family showed us wonderful hospitality, sometimes cooking us special Negara food such as fried ubi root or a soup of clams fresh from the river delta.

Sukses di PKB!

Matt Gleeson — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 03:16:27 +0000

July 8th was our performance at the Bali Arts Festival (or PKB, short for Pesta Kesenian Bali) -- probably the most high-profile show we had planned. The PKB teems with stadium-loads of Balinese spectators who come to cheer on -- or jeer -- the gamelan groups with a level of enthusiasm that would get you kicked out of a symphony hall in the U.S. It also involves a high level of official pomp and visibility.

So yes, we were nervous. By then exhaustion was starting to set in under our athletic regimen. A number of us were dealing with illnesses or injuries -- I personally had a swollen wrist wrapped up in an Ace bandage. And we had to wear our best: long-sleeved jackets for the men and tight merry widows for the women . . . which meant that beforehand we were actually discussing the real danger of fainting from heat exhaustion. What can you do but hope that it's not too insulting to remove your jacket in front of the governor of Bali if you start to black out?

I mention the governor of Bali because he was there, greeted with respect and applause when he sat down in the front row. Many of GSJ's past teachers were there too -- Pak Dewa and Ibu Emiko, Pak Suweca, Pak Subandi, Pak Sumandhi, Pak Bandem, Pak Windha, Ibu Arsiki . . . (apologies for any I've missed in this list!) . . . And let's not forget Steve and Linda, there to cheer us on as well.

We managed to truly let the spirit in, and we ended up playing a superb show, full of power and energy. I felt fed by the audience. They drenched us with cheers . . . and only laughed out loud once or twice. One of those times was halfway through the set, when our overheated ugal player Sam, standing front and center, fanned himself with a piece of cardboard and then took a hearty swig from a large clear bottle filled with an electrolyte drink of a suspiciously yellow color -- you can imagine how the audience busted up with laughter, and this moment of unwitting comic relief actually made me feel entirely at ease. In the second half of our show, little kids were dancing in the sidelines. And when we got to the finale of our last piece, Jaran Dauh, we found the audience clapping along in time with us. Afterwards, my face burning and my outfit soaked through with sweat, I saw jegog master Pak Suwentra (Pak Gede Oka's father) when he came up to shake our hands. He was beaming with pride.

The next day we found that GSJ had been written up in several local newspapers, including the Jembrana Post, who called the performance "nearly perfect"!

taking it on the road

Lexi Brayton — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 09:51:57 +0000

After four days of intense practice at Sangkar Agung we headed from Negara to Ubud for a performance with New York group Dharma Swara at Pura Dalem Taman Kaja. After a heavy rain and a long Topeng, the show started-- three rubber hours late-- at midnight. Dharma Swara was tight and put on a great show. We managed to make it through without anyone passing out. Fun was had by all and the show was a great warm up for both our and Dharma Swara’s upcoming PKB performances…

Our lovely dancers in Subak

Dharma Swara dancing Kebyar Legong (imagine an extended remix of Teruna

Jaya)

after hours at Sangkar Agung

Lexi Brayton — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 09:11:35 +0000

We've had some rousing late night genjek with the Suar Agung guys including (but not limited to) an impromptu national anthem 'mebarung' on the fourth of July. Hopefully we can get some video of the singing uploaded soon as words simply won't do the scene justice. For now, a picture...

a word from jonah

Lexi Brayton — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 08:51:56 +0000

Jonah Benningfield says of the tour:

My favorite part of being in Bali is playing with the other Indonesian kids. While the adults are playing music I play games with them.One morning I banged around on the huge jegogs in the back of the stage outside with the Indonesian kids. When the adults aren’t playing we sit out on a bale, chat and eat really good food we hired a cook to make for us.

Chapter 2: in which we get whipped into shape

Matt Gleeson — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 08:53:20 +0000

These Are Your Hands on Jegog...

Any questions?

Let’s talk for a minute about how strenuous jegog practice is.

If I mention jegog music to a player of another style of gamelan – of gong kebyar, say – who isn’t native to West Bali, the first thing I usually hear is, “Gamelan jegog? Oh, you have to be strong!” This is usually accompanied by a muscular pumping of the arms to illustrate the statement. And jegog is an intensely athletic form of music. It’s no coincidence that so many of the Suar Agung players are strapping young men with the biceps of woodcutters and callused hands. Stately court music it ain’t.

The physical adjustments we’ve had to make have been a shock and a challenge. The first thing you notice when you step up to Suar Agung’s instruments is that you stand instead of sitting – yes, it’s more tiring in the Balinese heat, but it also lets you sway and move more freely. The next thing you notice is that everything is BIGGER. This includes the mallets, which are heavier than ours – significantly so. It takes about ten minutes for your fresh soft American hands to start blistering. By the middle of day one, everyone’s raw hands were wrapped up in bandages and medical tape. Our schedule has called for about six hours of practice per day . . . in the heat and humidity of Jembrana, successfully getting to the end of one piece has about the same effect on the body as a five-hour sauna. And so you strip off as much clothing as you can. Streams of sweat pour down your elbows. Your fingers swell up from the whacking. After a day or two all of your muscles ache. The endurance required is sometimes exhilarating and sometimes demoralizing.

Then on Sunday as we collapsed into an exhausted sprawl after our morning practice, Suar Agung began their own practice. It was a breathtaking thing to watch – their exuberance as sweat literally sprayed off of their faces, their gaya and precision, their superhuman speed, and the way they handled those mallets that were turning our forearms to rubber as lightly if they were toothpicks. We must consider ourselves schooled.

We're here!

Matt Gleeson — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 08:32:33 +0000

Om Swastiastu to all of you dear ones in America. The jegog tour to Bali is officially underway – and our schedule is galloping along with a vengeance!

The tour truly began last Friday, when all the members of the group found their way to the village of Sangkar Agung in Jembrana, West Bali. There we met at the sanggar of Suar Agung – Pak Gede Oka’s intimidatingly talented jegog group. Pak Oka, his father Pak Suwentra, and all the members of Suar Agung greeted us with a major feast, including a roasted suckling pig, and they regaled us with a performance of several thunderous pieces of gamelan jegog. And then it was our turn – “Now you play something!” insisted Pak Oka. If you’ve been to Bali before, you may know just how terrifying it is to be asked to demonstrate your skills for a Balinese audience, given the fact that even the nine-year-olds here are serious wizards who could easily battle us to a standstill. But we launched cold into our version of Jaran Dauh and gave them our best. With the friendship between Suar Agung and Sekar Jaya acknowledged, we settled into Sangkar Agung and got ready for three days of intense band practice.

Incidentally, over the next couple of days, we attracted the attention of the kepala desa (village head) of Negara, another government official on the level of kabupaten, and a representative from the army. As Sam points out, if an army officer shows up and the proper response is to play music for him, you must be in Bali.

We’ll try to post some video from the welcome party as well as more images soon (depending on the vagaries of local internet). Stay tuned!

The Bali Arts Festival (PKB) Schedule

Sara Gambina-Belknap — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 19:56:52 +0000

For those of you lucky enough to be in Bali this summer...here's a link to the schedule for the PKB

32nd Bali Arts Festival June 12 – July 12, 2010

Arts Groups from 7 countries have confirmed that they will participate in the 32 Bali Arts Festival (PKB) to take place June 12 – July 12, 2010. During the one-month festival 180 separate dance, music and liverly arts performances will be staged involving an estimated 15,000 artists from every regency of Bali and foreign nations.

Thumbnail:

Pkb.jpg

And they're off!! - DESTINATION BALI

Sara Gambina-Belknap — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 23:33:26 +0000

The GSJ Tour Crew:

phil, susie, scott, matt, barb, dan, kathy, sam, heather, suzanne, john, kwan, lexi, paddy, christina, laurel, noni

The Guest Artists:

Ni Ketut Arini (choreographer)
I Gede Oka Artha Negara (dancer/musician)
Kadek Ikken Ayu Sadewi (dancer)
Putu Widi Anggarawati (dancer)
Ida Ayu Rani (dancer)
Komang Artisti Sekar Linuwih (dancer)

The GSJ Tour Bloggers:

Lexi Brayton

Matt Gleeson

BAMBOO JEGOG TOUR TO BALI - Starts in 15 days

Sara Gambina-Belknap — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 00:47:36 +0000

TOUR SCHEDULE

July 6 Ubud—Performance at Pura Dalem Taman Kelod with Gamelan Dharma Swara
July 8 Denpasar—BALI ARTS FESTIVAL: Performance at Taman Budaya Arts Center Wantilan Hall 7-8:30p
July 11 Negara—Performance at Banjar Sangker Agung with Suar Agung
July 12 Munduk—Performance at Sanggar Tri Pitaka

ABOUT THE TOUR
Gamelan Sekar Jaya (GSJ) is company of musicians and dancers from the SF Bay Area specializing in Balinese performing arts. For more information about our organization, please visit www.gsj.org. GSJ's jegog bamboo group has been invited to play at the famed Bali Arts Festival, an annual showcase of Balinese performing arts that takes place in the city of Denpasar. In order to make this tour a reality, we need the support of our community of friends.

The gamelan jegog, comprised of giant bamboo marimbas with tubes up to eight feet long, originates in West Bali and is noted for its rhythmic energy -- Its bass tones can be heard for miles across Balinese rice fields and has been described as mother nature's subwoofer. It is also exceedingly rare: GSJ's jegog is the only one of it's kind that exists in the Western Hemisphere, and only 1 of 3 that exists outside of Indonesia.