Javanese music comes to Greensburg, courtesy of Pitt ensemble
Feb. 22—The music of the Sundanese people of the Indonesian island of Java is coming to Greensburg, courtesy of the University Gamelan of the University of Pittsburgh.
The ensemble will play a free concert at 4 p.m. Sunday in the Seton Hill University Performing Arts Center, 100 Harrison Ave.
A gamelan is a set of mostly percussion instruments including tuned gongs, metal-keyed instruments and drums, along with bowed lute and voice. Gamelan music often accompanies dance, theater and martial arts performances, and is played for special occasions and important life-cycle events.
"The program at Pitt is special, but the University Gamelan ensemble is less esoteric than you would think," said director Jay Arms, a teaching assistant professor of ethnomusicology at Pitt. "Presently, there are close to 200 such ensembles throughout the U.S."
The Pitt gamelan is comprised primarily of gongs and metallophones, percussion instruments that produce sound when metal bars are struck by mallets.
"The sound has a bell-like quality," Arms said. "Each gamelan is completely its own, tuned to a unique scale, so it won't sound exactly like any other gamelan in the world. The tuning is unique, the way the instruments relate to each other is completely unique and non-interchangeable.
"Structurally, all the instruments play their own elaboration of a sort of core melody, so you have this real complex polyphony that comes from that," he said.
The concert will feature music written for the gamelan in the 20th century, going back to about 1920, Arms said. Vocals will be featured on one piece.
Another will be a contemporary piece written by Undang Sumarna, a teaching professor of music at the University of California Santa Cruz and musical director of its West Javanese Gamelan.
Worldwide interest
A Sundanese native whose grandfather was a gamelan drummer, Sumarna has been instrumental in popularizing the music form in the United States, said Arms, who studied under him at UCSC.
"I needed an ensemble credit for my major, and my adviser sent me to Undang's class," he said. "I had never heard of it before, I'd never played these instruments, I barely knew anything about Indonesia, even.
"But I sat down at an instrument called the panerus, Undang got me going and here I am some 15 years later, directing this ensemble," said Arms, who has been at Pitt since 2019.
Worldwide interest in gamelan "started in late 1960s when the field of musicology started incorporating the actual study of performing music from different cultures as part of studying these works," Arms said. "Part of that was to start these ensembles, and gamelan was one of the first that was used to practice and experiment."
One reason gamelan has become popular is the relative ease of performing it, Arms said. "You take a little mallet and hit a key, and it sounds pretty good."
"Gamelan is really an international thing at this point. Pretty much anywhere you go, you can find a gamelan," Arms said. "I think there are over 200 groups in the U.S. and a similar quantity in Europe. There's a major scene in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore. The Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing has a gamelan. There's a group in Moscow."
Gamelan influences can be heard in the music of Icelandic singer/songwriter Bjork and British progressive rock group King Crimson, he said.
The University Gamelan was founded in 1997 by Pitt Professor and Director of Graduate Admissions Andrew Weintraub. It currently includes 13 players, both students and community members.
Each year, the department of music sponsors a large-scale gamelan concert and invites Indonesian musicians to serve as artists in residence.
The program at Seton Hill was organized by Seton Hill voice instructor Kelly Lynch for her world music class. For information, call 724-552-2929 or visit setonhill.edu/events.
Shirley McMarlin is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Shirley by email at smcmarlin@triblive.com or via Twitter .
