Gotta love double meanings – say it with a hard ‘g’ as in ‘get’ (the standard ‘g’ in Bahasa Indo) and roll your rrrrrrr.
Yes, it means gender, no shocks there. But, as a friend of mine once pointed out at an ultra-geeky dinner party (we moved on to alphabet-based word games later in the evening after a strong hit of teh hijau – green tea – and all in all it was a good night), gender is, of all things, also the name of a small gamelan percussion instrument.
Read more about these instruments on the UK Gamelan Network website, which I’ve just discovered at: http://www.dcgamelan.com/ensembles.html
It’s been a while now, but I first had a crack at gamelan back in high school. Our Indonesian teacher back then made eclectic use of your average public school resources. We had xylophones, recorders, a triangle, random cymbals and to top it all off, metal cricket wickets for a gong. Not exactly the ornate, 80 piece East Java-bequeathed set I got to play with years later in the fledgeling Murdoch gamelan group, but it did the job. In a way. Well we got the theory and none of us knew our genders from our gong kebyars at the time.
We started out at Murdoch in 2002, playing out the back of the environmental science precinct and gaining a small run in the Melville Times until the Joglo Rahayu pavillion was built closer to the Asian Studies action with a temperature controlled annex to to house the instruments. Practices were led by an Indonesian dalang (puppet master), and inevitably noisy so late in the day for the sake of those having tutorials around us. They usually followed a very relaxed pattern going something like this – wait for a while, say hello to each other, slowly get the instruments out, stop for a beer or cigarette, play a few tunes, rest, and so on… years later, Java put the laid-back waiting in context for me…
Here’s a really quick Gamelan excerpt (Javanese Style):
If you’re youtube surfing, try searching Wayang Kulit - gamelan orchestras play at these epic shadow puppet performances which can be stunning if slow moving…
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