A friend of mine has frequently made the point that the number of musical genres is expanding over time. He cites the Medieval period, in which he states that for over a thousand years in history, all of the music produced during that time is simply called “Medieval music.” Fast forward to the present day, and there are millions of subgenres under each genre of music: within rock, there is soft rock, hard rock, alternative rock, classic rock, punk rock, etc., and within jazz, there is smooth jazz, cool jazz, bebop, a cappella vocal jazz, modern jazz, latin jazz, etc. As one who is constantly discussing and finding new music, I thought I had heard of all the genres there possibly are, but through the magic of Queens College I’ve learned of yet another one- Gamelan.

Gamelan is a genre of music native to Bali that utilizes native Indonesian instruments, which our class got a private tour of during class with professor-for-the-day Michael Lipsey as a precursor to the gamelan concert on December 5th. We all had the chance to play these gamelan instruments and learn about how the music is constructed. It uses a pentatonic scale, meaning that there are five basic notes (excluding different octaves) on which the music is built. During the class in which we got to try out the instruments, I confess that while it was fun to play, the sound of the music got boring and repetitive after a while.

Could this be why gamelan ensembles always supplement their performances with other facets like dance and costume? Could be. The concert began very interestingly with a queue of drummers walking on stage from the back of the LeFrak concert hall, clad in traditional Balinese dress. At the center of the stage was a girl at the gongs (she is in women’s chorus with me, her name escapes me). The command and firmness with which she hit them was very cool to see- in my opinion she looked like some sort of musical empress.

While gamelan music is arguably limited with the simplicity of the scale it employs, the variety of instruments used and the way the music is performed makes one forget about its “boringness.” Some of the songs featured musicians on gamelan “flutes”, which had a piccolo-like sound. Another song featured two hypnotic and beautiful dancers who tossed flower petals like confetti as they danced. Another song began with a duet between two players on a metallophone-like instrument. It reminded me of a cappella jazz solos that usually precede big band or combo jazz tunes. The gamelan tradition also definitely allows for soloing and individual creativity, though admittedly I could not distinguish solos from the rest of the instruments. The problem with gamelan, even though I like the sound of it and may even consider joining the gamelan ensemble one year, is that all of the instruments are obnoxiously loud. It makes the music sound like a wall of sound; to an untrained ear, it is simply a racket, and to trained musicians, it can take patience to try and distinguish where exactly the music is going. All in all, it is a very communal genre of music that doesn’t stress strictness in notation and rhythms as severely as classical music. It is meant to be fun music for everyone to participate in, and judging by how welcome we all were to try out the instruments for ourselves- even those of us with no musical experience – it is a great testament to that!