Wayang Kulit - Gamelan Performance

Featuring Master Puppeteer and Wesleyan University Professor of Ethnomusicology,
Sumarsam
and the
Wesleyan Javanese Gamelan

Friday, April 23, 8:00 P.M. - Branford College Common Room*
Hosted by The Yale World Music Undergraduate Organization
 

Co-sponsored by the Council on Southeast Asia Studies, the  Department of Music,
Ezra Stiles Masters Office, and the Malaysian and Singaporean Association (MASA)
Yale University

WAYANG
The Javanese wayang kulit or wayang purwa (shadow puppet play) is one of the great dramatic forms of the East. Above and beyond its value as a wonderful entertainment, it is important to the Javanese as a ceremony: It provides a means of contact with ancestral spirits and establishes an atmosphere of serenity and balance; it is a means of educating the young in the wisdom of the culture; and it employs, as a frame of reference, philosophical and mystical ideas relating to the esoteric self-discipline known as semadi. No one understand all the facets of a wayang performance -- even the dhalang (puppeteer) may not completely understand the obscure imagery of some of the beautiful songs he sings. One is not expected to pay constant attention throughout the nightlong course of the play, and may wander away for some tea or food. Children, who form a large part of the audience in Java, often fall asleep during the longer and more philosophical dialogues and wake up when the clowns appear.

In general, a play falls into three main divisions defined by the planting of the kayon or gunungan (tree or mountain) in the center of the stage, thus marking the line between the forces to the dhalang's right, usually positive, and the forces of left, usually negative. (The Javanese are, of course, too subtle to imagine that human nature is all bad or all good -- even the great heroes have certain weaknesses, and some of the villains have a great nobility.) The division of the wayang play into three sections is paralleled in the accompanying music by its corresponding division into three pathet (modes). The dhalang is in a complete charge of the performance. Before it begins, he meditates; during the performance he manipulates the puppets, delivers all the dialogue in many voices, describes the scene, comments on the meaning -- often drawing on events of the day -- and signals the orchestra what and when to play. He must know the stories and characters of more than two hundred puppets. A good dhalang may be able to perform as many as two hundred lakon (wayang episodes). In Java, he is often revered for his deep  understanding of life and his role as a teacher and spiritual guide. Through him, one is initiated into the "secrets of earthly existence" and educated in the philosophical and mystical composition of life: the nature of order in the world, of cosmic justice, and of the laws of the universe.

GAMELAN
A gamelan (orchestra), using various combinations of instruments, is traditionally and essentially accompaniment to puppet shows, dances, feasts, and ceremonies in Java. Most of the instruments are bronze: tuned gongs, suspended vertically or horizontally; and instruments with tuned keys, suspended over tubular resonators or a resonant cavity in the base of the instrument. Other instruments include a two-stringed fiddle, xylophones, flutes, and drums. A full Javanese gamelan comprises two sets of instruments, one in each of two tuning systems: sléndro, with five tones per octave, and pélog, with seven. The three pathet used in the course of the wayang all have their distinct manifestations in both tuning systems. In the overall sound of the gamelan, no instrument predominates: each has an important function that relates to the whole. As for the music, rather than harmony and development in the Western sense, the primary organizing feature is  locally-inspired modal polyphony of a highly melodic character. Gendhing composition) are quite formal, for all their quality of ethereal improvisation. Every gamelan piece is cast in one of a small number of forms defined by the mutually subdividing cycles of certain of the gongs, most prominently, the gong ageng (great gong). The cyclic organization allows great flexibility in the creation of pieces of differing character; even within a piece, subtle (or dramatic) shifts in feeling occur as cycles slow down or speed up.  The Wesleyan Gamelan Ensemble has been in existence since the early 1960s and is one of approximately 100 in the country.

DHALANG
Born in Dander, East Java, in 1944, Sumarsam took part in an all-night performance of Indonesia's traditional, percussion-based gamelan music when he was 7, sitting in for a sleepy drummer. He joined that ensemble at age 8 and stayed with music, studying gamelan at a performing-arts high school and later at the college level in Indonesia.  He went to Wesleyan in the early 1970s as a visiting artist, earned his master's degree there in 1976, and in 1992 earned his doctorate in ethnomusicology and Southeast Asian studies at Cornell. Today he is an adjunct professor of music and director of graduate studies in Indonesian music and theater at Wesleyan

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Contact Genevieve Tauxe (genevieve.tauxe@yale.edu) or Claire Owen (claire.owen@yale.edu) for additional information