a tree, with the low instruments as the trunk, the next layer as the branches, with the busier melodies as the leaves
nice. i was told that some of the larger bass gongs should be struck only once every performance.
and the largest one in the temple, only once a year.
I'm sure the exact moment when it is struck coincides with their calender of seasonal cycles, holy days and such...
it's very interesting in Gamelan the individual players melt into a whole, the band of up to 30 or 40 players moving as one, behaving like a school of fish, or a flock of birds... all of them changing direction (and tempo) at the same time --- psychic connection. absolutely wicked to witness live. chills down the spine.
a very different construction of subjectivity and the self than the western individual:
and after 30 minutes of jamming, the audience is lost in a trance... and the dancers enter. fucking hair raising.
usually a group of girls first:
and for some shows, after quite a long time, this demon enters the stage:
one show i saw, i didn't notice the demon who was standing in a doorway doing his freaky dance for a long time... and all of a sudden i see him and literally jumped out of my seat.
it's really sad that all the true masters from the past generation have passed away. and that even thought the knowledge remains, their kind of mastery is forever gone. not many young indonesians are interested in Gamelan, and it is only foreigners, Germans, Chinese, Koreans, in indonesia that try to preserve and study the tradtion...
more pictures: