In 2017, I assisted my Masters’ supervisor, Jan Mrazek, as he led a dozen undergraduates on a sailing expedition around Riau. “Pak Jan”, as everyone called him, was my first teacher in Javanese Gamelan after I stumbled upon his ensemble while an undergraduate myself. So it felt only natural that we would bring on board a Javanese ciblon—a double-barrelled drum whose name derives from making rhythms by slapping the surface of the water—supplementing it with a makeshift saron fashioned from seven beer bottles tuned by drinking various amounts from each one, and struck with a spoon. One day, after playing “Gambirsawit” together in this skeletal configuration—perhaps evoking its memory within ourselves rather than sounding it out for our listeners—he remarked how strange it felt to play gamelan while sailing: to bring a music so firmly tethered to the land of central Java—its mountains, paddy fields, villages, cities and courts—onto the breathing surface of the water, where new islands would creep out from the horizon and drift away by our sides; and beneath us always the rise and fall of the sea.
It is tempting to start an essay about Javanese gamelan on the island of Java, discussing how the culture runs through the music like the tree of life on a kayon, with gamelan in Singapore as one of its branches. But here, I want to paint a different picture closer to my own experience: not so much rooted in place but floating on a sea that connects ensembles and practitioners scattered across the globe. I want to follow the currents beneath me, tracing their fluid paths, their chance connections, everything at once so international, yet drawing back to Central Java: its culture, its landscape, its musicians.
I embarked on this musical journey in 2007, 10 years prior to that sailing trip. A post-army holiday to Cambodia and Bangkok in 2005 inspired me to study Thai at the National University of Singapore (NUS), a turn away from the fixation I had on the UK as a student of English Literature. This connection led me to a Thai classical music workshop where I befriended several musicians from the university’s Singa Nglaras Javanese Gamelan Ensemble. They asked if I wanted to drop by one of their own latihan. I agreed, though I had only the vaguest idea of what that might involve—I could just about recall them performing at a small cultural event, but somehow the music had left little more than a vague memory of tinkling percussion.
As a new player, I was given some notation and told to try and follow along on one of the instruments that play, in unison, a melody called the balungan—a skeleton on which other parts flesh out, dress, and adorn. (Balung is Javanese for bone, equivalent to tulang in Malay.) Although playing it appeared relatively simple—the instruments had only seven keys, the notation was a straightforward sequence of numbers, the pace was slow—I found myself lost in the waves of sound that surrounded me. The music seemed to follow a pulse of its own, speeding up then slowing down at whim: even mimicking the experienced musicians was difficult. Other parts appeared to float alongside the balungan with a logic I couldn’t discern, until finally the music gave one final swell, then slowed towards the deep rumble of a final gong. A collective sigh of satisfaction; then the talking and laughing of the musicians resumed.
This experience of playing the music—as opposed to just listening to it—left a deep impression on me. Beyond the inevitable confusion and frustration, I remember a deep admiration for how the music and its players stayed together without any apparent conductor, playing their different parts, moving through the sections, and navigating changes in speed as casually as a group of friends out on a stroll, rather than a contingent on the march. This musical easiness was mirrored in the atmosphere of the latihan itself, at once relaxed yet motivated: a far cry from my memories of school leaders threatening the choir with poor CCA (co-curricular activity) grades if we did badly during the Singapore Youth Festival central judging; or feeling that the years of study and technical virtuosity needed to be a musician were out of my reach. I think I had always wanted to have music at the centre of my life, and finally a door had opened for me.
When I began playing I had embarrassingly little idea about where the music came from, simply that I enjoyed it as music. In my mind, it was something vaguely “Malay” (after all, Indonesia is kind of Malay right?) and I had no real idea where “Javanese” really fit within that cultural category. It took a much longer journey into the music—learning about the culture that underpinned it, meeting musicians and enthusiasts, studying in Java myself—to undo the blinkers that I had worn until that point in my life.
Today, I’m more forgiving to my younger self: in Singapore, many people who watch me play will ask if I’m Chinese or Malay; or express some surprise (either positive or negative) that a Chinese person is playing “Malay” music. Sometimes they talk about how much they enjoyed their last trip to Bali where they heard gamelan in the hotel: they probably did, but when I try to explain that it’s a different variety, most insist that it’s all Indonesian and therefore the same. So I comfort myself that my initial ignorance was typical of a certain Chinese Singaporean worldview bounded by the CMIO (Chinese-Malay-Indian-Others) model, the Causeway, and Changi, intensified by an angmorpai orientation that drew my sights towards distant linguistic relations rather than nearby regional neighbours.
But another element to this might be that Singa Nglaras doesn’t conduct its activities in a self-consciously “cultural” way, making it different from a group that foregrounds the ethnic or heritage ties of a local or diasporic community. One thinks of the Pachitan Gamelan Orchestra, named for the former Kampong Pachitan whose residents were resettled into HDB (Housing Development Board) flats in the 1980s, itself recalling the Pacitan region along the south coast of Java. The group, supported by the People’s Association, was founded in 1991, a period which, writes musicologist and cultural historian Pow Jun Kai, saw the Association receiving directions “to foster renewed interest in the traditional culture and heritage of Singaporean citizens.” The Orkestra Melayu Singapura was later founded, as were an increasing number of ensembles in community clubs and schools. Gamelan remains one of the categories for instrumental ensembles available at the Singapore Youth Festival.
In Singa Nglaras, however, there’s never been a feeling of anything especially noteworthy about people from different racial categories playing together, since the music doesn’t feel “ours” in the same official way that a Chinese or Malay musician in a traditional ensemble might be able to claim. At the same time, it’s not a “universal” artistic heritage as how Western Classical music is often, problematically, regarded. The active members of Singa Nglaras, who come and go with the tides of their lives, have always reflected a smattering of different ethnicities and nationalities, with usually one or two Indonesians who remark how odd it is to pursue their own culture in a foreign place. The ensemble could be described as an “affinity group”. Members are brought together through active participation in the music via a “particular blend of social, cultural, historical and personal circumstances” (Mendonca, p.5). In this, it resembles many other Javanese gamelan ensembles in global cities such as Berlin, Hamburg, London, Paris, and Tokyo, where members’ connections to the music and the ensemble are often more idiosyncratic and varied.
Such affinity groups, wrote ethnomusicologist Maria Mendonca, owe “a largely unacknowledged debt to a group of Dutch teenagers, who formed the first long-term European gamelan group, Babar Layar, in the prohibitive circumstances of Nazi occupation.” Their name, loosely translated as “spreading the sails”, takes after one of the very few pieces about sailing. The group, founded in 1941 by then 15-year-old Bernard Ijzerdraat, contacted Jaap Kunst, the Dutch ethnomusicologist, to access musical records and written resources. It then constructed its own set of bronze instruments, an incredible feat under any circumstance but even more so in wartime Europe. Rehearsing and performing throughout the war—often in secret, away from the German-established Kultuurkamer (cultural institution)—the group continued until the mid-1950s when Ijzerdraat emigrated to Indonesia and the other members moved to the rhythms of their own personal lives, “getting older, marrying, and pursuing careers.” Mendonca noted the range of motivations for their participation: although Ijzerdraat had a fanatical devotion to the music, for the rest it was a gradual swell. Some described how their involvement grew with the slowly deepening understanding brought about by listening and studying the music, and the sense of communitas established by what Kunst described as their “dedication and perseverance”. She also noted that members were “aware of the ambiguities and contradictions of representation in these circumstances”—that is, the mid-20th century twilight of Dutch colonialism in the East Indies—“but stressed that at the time, their interests were for the most part apolitical and strongly focused on their teenage camaraderie.”
Mendonca has suggested that interacting with Babar Layar was a key source of inspiration for Mantle Hood, the pioneering American ethnomusicologist who introduced the actual study and performance of non-western musical ensembles as an integral, rather than merely supplemental, practice within the field. With this shift, various gamelan study and community groups were established in universities and music schools across the US. It was in this American university context that Pak Jan, who had been listening to gamelan in Prague via the LPs and cassettes owned by his father, studied gamelan in the 1990s with visiting Javanese artists. Later, taking up a position at NUS, he brought in the set of Javanese gamelan that Singa Nglaras plays on today, a move that was proposed as both grounding the university in South-east Asia and styling it like an American university. But I had no knowledge of this when I joined, and set my sights firmly on a musical horizon, a swimmer in the sea knowing nothing of where the water had originated.
Graduating from university, I decided to take a gap year, applying for the Darmasiswa programme, offered by the Indonesian government, which aims to promote interest in the language and culture of Indonesia. Started in 1974, it’s part of Indonesia’s repertoire for cultural diplomacy: alongside participating in world fairs; the gifting of gamelan sets to foreign institutions; as well as placing instruments in embassies and allowing their use.
As a participant in the Darmasiswa I chose which art form to study and where to pursue it. After a few months of classic Singaporean stress when faced with Indonesian bureaucracy I found myself in Solo, Central Java, a place where, as an aunt reminded me, I should never forget that I am Chinese. Officially, I was attached to the Indonesian Institute of the Arts’ karawitan (gamelan music) department; this I supplemented unofficially with my own lessons outside the institute, and attending the many community latihan taking place all around the city. Beyond my musical education, the experience was pivotal: the longest continuous stretch I had spent outside of Singapore, and in a much smaller city where I had only a tenuous grasp of the language. Packed into a train heading east from Yogyakarta, where my plane had landed, I watched the alternations of tropical thickets with swathes of paddy fields, the horizon in the distance lined by rising mountains, an expanse that felt so different from everything I had known up to that point.
One thing that struck me in Solo was how familiar I found the atmosphere of its community latihan: the same blend of socialising, music-making, and learning that Pak Jan had introduced to Singa Nglaras. The players would often be of mixed proficiency, with seasoned musicians and students playing alongside less experienced amateurs, and would generally be neighbours, colleagues, family, or friends. There would be a pelatih to guide the session, usually a professional musician, who might be one of the social group, or invited in. All of these latihan had at least a tea break: in some a full-fledged meal.
Another surprise was encountering the global community of musicians and researchers who gravitated towards this Mecca for Javanese arts and culture, giving the city an international character that belied its size. Several of them had been returning since before I was born, learning, researching, and also visiting their friends; I would hear their names mentioned as often as the Javanese masters I was eager to study with. From July to September, university holidays and Java’s dry season combine to facilitate these travels, the way one imagines sailors gliding on the monsoon winds. Talking with them during the breaks in latihan, I learned of the scenes in various cities, each with their own quirks, histories, gossip and inevitable politics, though it would be only later that I could visit them first-hand. I felt a remarkable sense of freedom in these expanding horizons: a place, I felt, where my desire to pursue this music was never interrogated, at most curiously questioned; where I was never asked “you Chinese or Malay?”; simply treated as a foreign student (albeit a non-white foreign student) dedicated to the craft. It was where I learned, first-hand, that other ways of living were possible; a departure from Singapore from which I have never truly returned.
Before going to Java, I had a notion that I would study all I could before returning to build up a Javanese gamelan scene in Singapore, starting with Singa Nglaras, and then forming a separate ensemble of my own that could pursue the music more seriously together. Like all naïve journeys plotted out in youth, this didn’t go to plan. Singapore has a scene that largely understands gamelan as a cultural activity, one that is rooted in the regional cultures that make up its Malay racial category. Consequently, many of the ensembles, practitioners and performance contexts are, broadly speaking, Malay: ensembles in community centres, for example, tend to be administered by MAECs (Malay Activity Executive Committee); some of them state their activities will be conducted in Malay. This informs the expectations of audiences as well: as an ethnic Chinese practitioner I’ve often felt like an outsider, more so than as a foreigner in Java, and have had to negotiate challenging questions of representation and positionality which, while I recognise the importance as a privileged Singaporean, also felt alien to me coming into the music from a different direction. As recently as 2022, a participant in a workshop I conducted asked the organisers why the instructor was “orang berbangsa asing”, “bukan orang Melayu atau pun Jawa”, a question that striked me as both frustrating and fair. One way to negotiate these expectations would be to place myself firmly in a “contemporary” space, either working with Javanese elements to create something new, like The Observatory or Rosemainy, or something Singaporean, like Alunan Enterprise. But this was a different sonic landscape from where I began, one that, I have to admit, I didn’t have the inclination to steer towards.
In the end, I found myself limiting my musical activities within Singa Nglaras, keeping to an island where I felt more at home. Having played and taught in the ensemble for the past 10 years or so, I often find myself in two minds. On one hand, I deeply appreciate the power of an affinity group to bring people together: a musical space for those who have never thought of themselves as musicians; a community space that runs outside of Singaporean boundaries of ethnicity. At the same time, I’ve also seen how the proficiency of the group swells and ebbs with the rhythms of its members’ lives: people get older, marry, or turn to their careers, leaving the ensemble with newer musicians to be gradually trained up again. But at least one measure of success—our pantry—has kept growing over the years as members contribute snacks and cakes for the break. Occasionally, we also host overseas musicians, some of them traveling to or from Java, who have made attending a gamelan practice an item on their itinerary.
I had given serious thought to moving to Java and, in 2018, was able to participate in the Darmasiswa programme again, given the dearth of Singaporeans who apply. But re-immersing myself in Solo after many years surfaced to me the limits of this plan. The music was keeping up with the times, and the long, gentle, classical pieces that I loved were giving way to faster, contemporary works that were both more popular and more suited to the cultural spectacles increasingly organised by local sponsors. Some of the latihan I attended had disbanded after key members had passed away. And I quickly learnt that being there as a foreign student of the music was one thing, but being there as a foreign musician was another: I neither had the proficiency nor the connections to survive in the scene. I could have tried to find a day job in Indonesia to support my music-making, but a practical inner Singaporeanness surged up against the precarity and the uncertainty that would entail. I was navigating my way through all these considerations when the pandemic marooned me in Singapore.
Late last year, realising I could finally fulfil my urge for some overseas air, I did what seemed the most natural thing to do: plan a trip to visit friends I knew through playing gamelan. The last time I did this was in 2015, in Japan, where I navigated through a Chinese person’s knowledge of Kanji, and speaking Indonesian with the people I knew from Java. This time, I charted a course for Germany, to visit a friend I had met briefly in Java, whom I came to know better during the pandemic as we practised together over Zoom, forming a routine that gradually became the highlight of our week.
That friend, now my partner, is beside me on the train as we head to play at the Rumah Budaya Indonesia in Berlin. He is planning a future concert with his own group in Hamburg, listening to recordings and making notes on a score, both resources he downloaded from the online repository curated by Barry Drummond, an American who studied in Java in the 80s. “I’ve been looking for a piece,” he says, “that is quiet but ends with a louder section. I prefer the softer classical pieces, but these are more accessible for the average German audience and players.” In between the writing, I open Duolingo. I still can’t say much, but I can recite “sechs funf sechs drei” to guide other balungan players through the opening of Babar Layar. Outside, the passing birches stand in tight formation recalling the rubber plantations along Malaysian highways, their thin trunks displaying a vertical regularity so different from the overflowing foliage seen from Indonesian trains. How strange to be here having followed the sound—the pale Northern sun, the rapeseed fields, the wind turbines turning noiselessly beyond the glass.
Damien Thow Xin Wei graduated in 2009 with a degree in English Literature, and, more importantly, a love for Javanese gamelan which has shaped everything thereafter. In 2012, he spent a year in Java pursuing the music, a trip from which he arguably never returned. He is interested in the arts—especially music and literature—ethnography, cooking, travel, and memory.
Letters in response to this piece can be sent to sudhir@jom.media. All will be considered for publication on our “Letters to the editor” page.
