EVERY GENRE PROJECT - October 21 - Gamelan gong gede

Genre of the Day - Gamelan gong gede 🇮🇩

Album of the Day - Gamelan Music From Bali by Gong Kebyar of Sebatu (1972)

How better to ring in a celebratory week than with the momentous sound of a massive gong ensemble, I suppose? Excuse me for narcissistic self-promo, especially when I’m not even marking the actual day yet, but my birthday is indeed coming up later this week and this feels an appropriate musical beginning to the period. I also appreciate that gamelan gong gede can conveniently abbreviate to GGG if so needed, auspicious synchronicity like our insurance friends at Triple AAA, a delightfully cheap sushi restaurant near me called Roll Roll Roll (RRR), and the World Wide Web the Substack gets to exist on. 

I know I’m in for an adventure, like I am climbing into a very narrow cave in my research path, when I look up the genre and the only sources are RateYourMusic and one stray academic paper on the musical phenomenon (shoutout to Gamelan Gong Gede: Negotiating Musical Diversity in Bali's Highlands). Gamelan gong gede is now our fifth foray into Indonesia’s classical music ensembles, hailing specifically from Bali, a place many travelers consider to be—and travel agencies work overtime to advertise as—close to paradise. The island, religiously Hindu, is also culturally distinct from the rest of the archipelago and brims with different gamelan arrangements, a couple of which we’ve covered already in the luxurious, royal gamelan semar pegulingan and the unique timbre and mass of the bamboo-based gamelan jegog. 

Gamelan gong gede, the gede referring to the grandeur of its massive gongs, is ironically a declining tradition, mostly surviving in isolated pockets in the mountains. The sizable ensemble, which dates all the way back to the 1600s, required around forty musicians to man and strike its two dozen metallophones, rows of smaller kettlegongs, and the regal gong. Some of its instruments were also uniquely large and egg-shaped—this type of handicraft reflects gong gede’s importance as an ensemble for the highest purposes of state functions of the local kingdoms, royal visits and weddings, and religious dances. Its melodies and timbral focuses were clearer and more consistent throughout a piece, reflecting its refinement and setting. Gong gede seemed too big to fail and remained at the highest level of the gamelan hierarchy in terms of official purposes, but social changes in the century came to challenge its dominance. As Indonesia began to more aggressively shake off the Dutch colonial entity, even gamelan ensembles reflected this pivot; a new form known as kebyar, more musically intense and confrontational with rapid melodic changes, swept the island. It’s a reminder that music relies on access to tangible materials as much as creativity, as kebyar melted down many of its drums for this new repertoire and style.  

That being said, today’s top album is classified on RYM as both gamelan gong gede and gamelan gong kebyar. Based on the sound of the album, I'm guessing that it is more the latter. Given this, perhaps I should’ve just written the article about gong kebyar, but just as with marking a birthday, it offers an exercise in observing subtle and overt changes over time and ringing in a new era. This album is defined by its five-tone melodies’ speed and suddenness; the timbre is strikingly unique. Some metallophones sparkle where others’ staccato strikes blare like horns. The flutes spiral and the motifs are constantly changing—each melody never overstays its welcome. The textural layering in such rapid yet interlocking form is incredible sonic satisfaction, genre distinctions aside; may all one’s celebrations possess the grandeur of these intricate, immense ensembles’ music.