The Music of Bali A special paradise…. Balinese gamelan Cudamani

And ubiquitous means? “Music is ubiquitous in Bali; its abundance is far out of proportion to the dimensions of the island. The Hindu-Balinese religion requires gamelan for the successful completion of most of the tens of thousands of ceremonies undertaken yearly.” --Michael Tenzer: Balinese Music

Music is everywhere “It is part of everyday life. A young boy plowing the fields on the back of a water buffalo plays a small bamboo flute. Street vendors play gongs to indicate whether they are selling noodles or shrimp chips. Martial arts are accompanied by drums, gongs, and oboes, and bull-racing has its own appropriate rhythmic accompaniment.”

Tongtong CD Music for the Gods, cut 3 example of bull racing

Music for... Rituals. More rituals. And, yes, even more rituals. entertaining the gods in lavish ways during festivals for offerings at the temple or blessing a house for spilling cremated souls’ ashes into the sea (kelod) for the exorcism of evil spirits for the ritual filing of teeth gamelan for tooth filing example of tooth filing gamelan for tooth filingexample of tooth filing for nearly everything...

for DANCE! Balinese dance

In Bali, music and dance are WEDDED in spirit, nuance, structure--even terminology. Balinese choreography is a manifestation of the music that accompanies it. Music and dance present a “reflective duet”. They are “two realizations of the same abstract beauty”.

For the gods, dance is as important as music.

Performers? To participate in music and dance is a very fortunate thing for a person. It is, in fact, a coveted privilege.

Gamelan The linguistic root of the word is “gamel”, which means to hit or to manipulate with the hands A gamelan is a group of instruments, most of which are bronze percussion instruments. suspended gongs and kettles, xylophone some strings and winds singing by both men and women DIVERSE BODY OF INSTRUMENTS

Perhaps even the kitchen sink...

The gamelan “orchestra” then includes... instruments which are linear in function, such as the voice and the suling (bamboo flute), which elaborate and ornament the melodies and... instruments which articulate and punctuate the structure of the melodies in a vertical way (gongs)

Tuning systems for Java’s gamelan Usually one of two possibilities: ( text p 283) –Slendro: a 5 tone system, nearly equal intervals –Pelog: a 7 tone system, large and small intervals –Some gamelan are entirely one or the other –Some are double, with a full set of instruments for each tuning

Tuning systems in Bali Scale tones are named as follows: ding, dong, deng, dung, and dang Full range is 21 tones, from a low ding to the high ding four registers above Larger gaps ( cents) between deng/dung and dang/next octave ding Smaller intervals ( cents) between others

Pitch…..okay then The absolute pitch for ding varies within a range of about 300 cents (100 cents in a Western minor second) It’s usually close to the Western C or C#, but it can vary up to or beyond a D# Range is about 130Hz to 2080 Hz GONGS are outside the gamut…near 65Hz to match the ding

Just when you were getting it... Java’s term pelog is used to label Bali’s gamelan types, but the Balinese call it saih piut. There are often only 5 tones, not 7, but they are subsets (patutan) of the full collection Saih pitu is often called tetekep pitu (seven fingerings--wait, weren’t we just talking about 5 tones?

Other tuning considerations The patutan of saih pitu are called saih lima. To extract a patutan from the 7 tones, you take any origin tone, go three conjunct steps, skip one, take two more, skip the remaining degree patutan selisir uses 123(-) 56 (-) patutan tembung uses 456(-)12(-) ding is always the first step of any patutan (moveable…..that is, WAAAAAYYY moveable “do”)

Shimmery quality Instruments are tuned in pairs, with one intentionally tuned slightly higher than the other. This results in fast “beats” in the overtones. We might say these are “out of tune”. In Bali, these are “in tune”.

After all of that…. The tuning systems work primarily at a conceptual level. “Acoustically speaking, all of these notions are, to varying extents, fictions.” Tenzer Ah, tuning: let’s leave it to the masters, members of the Pande clan who work in one of three main areas in Bali.

Text mentions….(p.315) 1) strictly instrumental--not exactly 2) characterized by changes in tempo and loudness (often abrupt) 3) dazzling technical mastery 4) fast interlocking rhythms with asymmetrical groupings