In this week’s Gamelan intensive, we first revised playing “Baris Tumbak” and some of the important ideas we learnt last week. It was interesting how naturally we were able to recall playing that piece after a week without touching the instruments. Almost instantly we could recall the Lagu melody, the Pokok accompaniment parts, the Gongan part, and the more complex Kotekan parts.
This week we were to learn a new piece called “Lengker”, which Peter explained to be from the more refined and intellectual court style of music from Bali, as opposed to the military/masculine style of “Baris Tumbak” which Peter described. This piece also uses a different scale, in “Tembung” tuning (hopefully that’s right!!), using notes 12456 as opposed to the 12356 of “Baris Tumbak”. These explanations of how the musical details go hand in hand with the contextual meanings and values of the music were an important teaching strategy, something that can apply to any music taught in classrooms, rather than showing music to a class without a sense of purpose or value given to the origins and context of the music.
This piece “Lengker” featured yours truly attempting the Lagu on the Reong while the Gangsa and Kantilan players joined me and hammered out another complex Kotekan section. Worth mentioning that the Reong instrument is different to the majority of key/bar based Gamelan instruments we used, it uses different looking Panggul’s to strike the bell-like pieces resting on the frame.
Watch this performance by clicking here. – links to a video
Mitchell Davis Music Education Study Blog 2019-22 