I asked Julie for a recommendation for an Indonesian movie to watch, and she recommended "Nagabonar 2", a 2005 sequel to a movie from the 1980s about a pickpocket during the Japanese invasion of Indonesia during World War II who (through quite funny and zany means) ends up a general of the Indonesian army. Being a sequel, it took reading some of the plot of the original movie to understand what was going on; a lot of the plot of the second one is based on the gravesite of Nagabonar's (the main character) mother, uncle, and best friend, the land surrounding which Nagabonar's son wants to use to build a large tourist resort. The clash of modernity and sentimentality/tradition is very evident throughout, and the character of Nagabonar is very lovable and very funny. I watched with English subtitles, but made sure not to spend too much time looking at them, and was able to figure out a good amount of the dialogue. It definitely makes me want to watch the original movie, if I'm able to find a better copy than the pixelated version on YouTube. 

Julie helped me draft a message to Danis Sugiyanto, an Indonesian master musician who teaches at ISI Solo (in the city I would like to stay in for most of the Darmasiswa) who was here for the Spring 2018 semester teaching us in the gamelan ensemble. I gave him some updates on how I and the other members of the gamelan were doing, and expressed my desire to study in Solo. His response was very enthusiastic, and he said he would see me soon in Solo City. It feels very reassuring to have someone there who I already know pretty well and who will be able to help me acclimate to the city's and the institute's culture. 

I continued working on my Bahasa skills over the Winter break, because at the beginning of this semester we had Gusti Sudarta, a Balinese master musician, dancer, and shadow puppeteer, his wife and Wayang assistant Jenny, and two Javanese master musicians, Darsono and Sumarsam, here at UR for about a week for a collaborative performance with the Richmond Symphony. I was happily surprised at being able to hold short conversations using only Indonesian, although I had a tough time adjusting to Gusti's accent because the Balinese dialect of Indonesian is rather different than the Javanese dialect. Gusti and Jenny will be here for another week, and I plan to cook them a Brazilian dinner using my mom's recipes at Julie's house. 

With Julie we continued discussion of the effects of the 1965-66 genocide, and some of the long-term effects of Dutch colonial rule that continue to affect Indonesian (especially Javanese) society today. Julie shared some of her perceptions of lived experiences as a Chinese-Indonesian from Jakarta, and the stigmas that this group faces even in a city as multi-cultural and metropolitan as Jakarta. She also shared some Indonesians' perceptions of white people and the impact the tourism industry has on Indonesians, and I hope to allow this information to inform my interactions with my future teachers in Java. I appreciate that Julie shares this information with us because for my future research, I hope to represent myself as a representative of my own culture and actively work against the perpetuation of behaviors that allow stigmatization of westerners in Indonesia to persist. 

With Thalia we continued incorporating Bahasa Gaul into our learning, using "textbook" language and slang terms side-by-side to look at the ways in which conversation ought to be adjusted according to context. In my free time I have been looking up "blog" videos by Indonesians on the subject of food, music, pop culture, etc. and have been hearing some of the bahasa gaul we have been learning sprinkled throughout these videos. This makes me feel a lot more connected to my goal of immersing in Indonesian culture, and although I'm usually able to only grab a few words out of each sentence (a lot of the narrators/bloggers speak very quickly), I'm able to pick up more and more of the "gist" of what's being expressed. 

In our first session with Julie we began to discuss the history of Indonesia, beginning from ancient times with the original migration of peoples and trade from India through southeast Asia and the resultant influences on Indonesian mythology and religion. Our homework for this week is to research and summarize in one page the history of Indonesia from 1900 - 1950. I expected it to be difficult to fit all that I considered important during this time, and that it was! However, it gave me a good theoretical background to continue researching Indonesia's rich and complicated history, and it was even more of a challenge to, for the next class, compile a one-page history of Indonesia from 1950 to 1998, the year of the fall of Suharto's military dictatorship. Julie shared insights about her experiences during this time, including leaving to study in the United States. We began to discuss the October 1965 revolt and the subsequent mass killings of suspected communist party members, and Julie recommended some good resources for further research on the subject. 

With Thalia we began our study of slang terms, and she presented us with a great resource on "bahasa gaul" (language for socialization". A lot of these terms are region-specific and are influenced by the local language, so I look forward to getting both Julie and Thalia's input on common bahasa gaul phrases. We utilized these terms in conversation and pre-constructed dialogue, and for homework Thalia had us check out a facebook page devoted to Indonesian slang terms, originally made by an Australian college student, that has grown increasingly popular with Indonesians and students of Indonesian language and culture to facilitate learning this element of language that, while receiving little attention in formal academia, represents a crucial aspect of cross-cultural communication. 

With Julie we continued learning descriptors for time and dates, and learned more about asking questions and the many positions "apa" (what) can take within a question depending on what one wants to ask. I am beginning to get more of a handle of dates; my next thing to work on is building large numbers (such as years), because it's quite a slow process currently. We worked on some more culinary terms as well, learning vocabulary for different types of meat; Julie extended this by sharing some of the dietary restrictions that exist related to religious identities throughout Indonesia. 

With Thalia we began working on vocabulary related to housing and amenities, building of some of the introductory terms from Let's Learn Indonesian 1. We incorporated terms for different parts of the house by describing their relative positions, before taking turns asking for and giving directions to the bathroom, the bedroom, etc. Next we worked on tourism locations (tempat wisata), and learned about some of the activities Indonesian youths partake in during their free-time. Thanks to my time as a researcher (and tourist) in Bali, I was able to connect some of the vocabulary I was less familiar with then in this activity. 

During our first lesson with Julie, we began with descriptive terms for people, ways of addressing younger and older people, and terms for relatives/family members. We engaged in conversation about our families using these new vocabulary terms and asked each other questions about our respective families. During the second session we continued with terms for dates and times, delving slightly more into numbers from 1 to 100. Most of the information for numbers and dates is review for me, although I am still having a tough time getting the days of the week in the right order. 

With Thalia we continued working on familial descriptors, and performed role-playing for a conversation between two Indonesians over a family photo. For homework we were assigned to create a fiction about the family of Wayan, an Indonesian man with a large family. We continued our study of the textbook to build this text and I made my text into a description partially based on my drum teacher in Bali so that I could focus on Indonesian words for artists/musicians. We have all expressed interest in learning some slang words and vernacular language from Thalia, and as a younger person she considers herself more "in the know" about such vocabulary than Julie. I very much look forward to learning more about this, so that my Indonesian language skills can extend beyond sterile textbook language. 

For our first two weeks, we met together with both our language instructors, Julie and Thalia, and discussed our goals for the semester and any prior experience we have had with the Indonesian language. Julie then "began from the beginning", utilizing objects in our immediate vicinity, focusing on articles of clothing and pieces of furniture, to immediately begin building vocabulary and teach us how to listen to Indonesian sentences and respond using the words she had introduced. 

We decided that Let's Learn Indonesian 1 would be our main text from which Bo and I would study, while Brad would continue his study with a text from further along in the same series. We began to build vocabulary lists of the words being introduced by Julie and Thalia. 

Since we have similar interests when it comes to learning Bahasa Indonesia and are at similar levels of ability, Bo and I will be learning introductory materials such as vocabulary for dates and times, useful phrases for conducting business in Indonesian, and culinary terms to begin.

Zack%20Cain%20Reflection%20Paper%20%232.docx

Babi Kecap is a Chinese-Indonesian dish made up of pork slow-cooked with onions, garlic, spices, etc. in a sauce based with Kecap Manis (kecap - 'soy sauce', manis - 'sweet'), a variant of soy sauce with added palm or brown sugar. It is my favorite Indonesian dish, and I have made it four times here in the United States, twice in a pot for about two hours, and twice in a slow-cooker for 6 to 8 hours. I have found the slow-cooker method to be far superior due to the way it liquidizes the onion, garlic and spices, penetrates the flavors into the pork chunks, and tenderizes the pork to a point of buttery perfection. 

This dish is popular among many non-Muslim communities in Indonesia, including Chinese-Indonesians, Balinese, Batak, and Minahasan ethnic groups, as well as in the Netherlands.

Ingredients:

I was able to find my spices at two Asian supermarkets - New Grand Mart and Tan-A - both on Broad St. in Richmond. For the other ingredients I went to Kroger. 

• 1.5kg boned pork shoulder, cut into 5cm chunks

• ½ tsp ground black pepper

• 1 tsp ground coriander

• ½ tsp ground ginger

• ¼ tsp ground cinnamon

• ½ tsp salt

• 1 tbsp groundnut or vegetable oil

• 1 large onion, or 6 shallots, thinly sliced

• 5 garlic cloves, crushed

• 20g fresh root ginger, peeled and grated

• 4 red bird’s-eye chillies, deseeded and finely chopped (if you like it spicy!)

• 500ml chicken stock

• 4 tbsp kecap manis sauce (sweet soy sauce)

• 2 tbsp light soy sauce

• 2 tbsp tamarind paste (the non-concentrated sort)

Garnish:

• 2 tbsp groundnut oil

• 4 shallots, thinly sliced

• 2 mild red or green chillies, thinly sliced

• green onions

Instructions:

1. Put the pieces of pork in a bowl. Mix the spices and salt, then sprinkle them over the pork, turning the meat to make sure it is all well covered.

2. Heat the oil in a large flameproof casserole dish, then add the onion or shallots. Fry them gently over a gentle heat until soft and translucent. Add the garlic, ginger and chillies and cook for a further minute.

3. Add the pork to the casserole dish and cook on a medium heat for a few minutes, turning the pieces of meat until they are browned all over. Mix the chicken stock with the kecap manis, soy sauce and tamarind paste and pour this over the pork.

4. Brown the meat for a little while, then take everything and put it into a crock pot. Turn the slow cooker on and cook for 8 hours on low (recommended) or 4 hours on high (also works), stirring occasionally if possible. Turn up the heat or return to the stovetop towards the end of the cooking time if the sauce is still quite liquid. There will likely be an excess of oil, so feel free to spoon some of it off while 

5. To make the garnish, heat the oil in a frying pan and add the shallots. Fry over a medium to high heat, stirring frequently, until the shallots are golden-brown and crisp. Remove them from the pan, drain on kitchen paper and allow them to cool. Serve the pork garnished with the shallots, fresh green onions and sliced chillies.

In process...

The delicious results O.O mixed with nasi putih 'white rice' and kacang hijau 'green beans'

In addition to being the #3 producer of coffee, Indonesia is also the #3 producer of rice, or nasi. Rice is the central food of Indonesian cuisine, and a meal without rice is considered a light snack. This dependence on rice as a base for almost all meals consumed by Indonesians of all classes, and the growing rice cultivation industry that has been developing for at least 1500 years, is reflected in the Indonesian language by a rich vocabulary of words related to the crop:

Padi - rice in the field/as a growing plant

The rice terraces in Bali featured in this photo are likely fed by Subak, a complex irrigation system which originated on the island in the 9th century CE and feeds many rice fields from one source, usually designated with a water temple. It is a cooperative system, and inhabitants of Bali work together to keep the water in the many canals and aqueducts that make up Subak flowing.

Gabah - unhusked, raw rice grains

Beras - raw, uncooked rice as one buys from a pasar 'market'

Nasi - cooked rice (in this case topped with bawang goreng 'fried onions' on a plate of nasi campur 'mixed rice')

There are other forms of cooked rice in addition to plain steamed rice, including (but certainly not limited to):

Nasi Uduk - 'mixed rice' in Betawi dialect - rice cooked in coconut milk, clove, lemongrass, cinnamon and pandan leaf.

 Nasi Kuning - 'yellow rice' - rice cooked in coconut milk, tumeric, lemongrass and pandan leaf

Ketupat Nasi - 'rice diamond' - rice cooked in a woven packet made of palm leaves

Lontong Nasi - 'rice cake' - rice cooked wrapped in banana leaves

Rengginang - meaning unknown - sweet sticky rice flattened into a disk, sun-dried, then fried

Indonesia is the #3 exporter of coffee in the world, and its many islands produce countless varieties of coffee with unique flavor profiles and processing methods. I actually never liked coffee until I began to drink coffee in Bali, and now I'm fully in the throes of addiction! :) :) :)

Coffee in Bali is usually sold as an extremely fine powder, finer ground than even espresso coffee. To prepare Bali coffee, one pours a tablespoon of this powder directly into a mug and fills it up with boiling water. After stirring for a while, one then lets the coffee sit for a while so that the grounds settle to the bottom of the cup, building up into a small layer of sludge. It is usually served without cream, but with a generous helping of sugar. 

Kopi Luwak, also called Civet Coffee, is a type of coffee made from partially-digested coffee berries ingested and defecated by a small mammel called the Asian palm civet. It is one of the most expensive coffees in the world, with prices as high as $700 for a kilogram. This is largely considered a novelty as I have heard it does not actually taste good at all. While I was in Bali I considered trying it, but stories of battery-farmed civets force-fed the berries to produce the coffee made me decide not to. 

If I were to undertake a linguistic study in Indonesia, I would begin working on conversational Bahasa Indonesia as existent in central Java. After gaining proficiency in Indonesian, I would like to focus on the Javanese poetry that accompanies gamelan music, both the lyrics of the pesindhen (singer) and the gerong (male chorus) as well as Bawa Sekar Ageng, sacred vocal music used to introduce long gendhing pieces. 

My initiative to learn Bahasa Indonesia would allow me to undertake this study with cultural bearers in their native language, allowing them to share cultural understandings in their own words. 

I would incorporate elements from the SDLAP by transcribing the Javanese texts, possibly in IPA, and would like to learn the Javanese alphabet as well. 

Languages, due to their close connection to culture, can go extinct when an ethnic group assimilates to a larger surrounding regional/national culture, when young people do not learn the language and instead learn this more popular language, and when the elder speakers of the language are unable to pass on the tradition and pass away. These processes are unique to specific languages and circumstances; sometimes this process can be more or less "organic", as in there aren't institutional power structures at play that oppress an ethnic group and suppress the use of their language. However, the much more sinister process of language erasure, as occurred to many native American languages in the 1800s and 1900s, can result in a total loss of connections between one and their ancestors. 

Language extinction is deserving of much attention today due to the fact that almost half of the currently existing languages in the world are in danger of extinction. K. David Harrison highlights the necessity of action to prevent this by presenting a hypothetical in which half of the world's great monuments or half of the world's species would go extinct. He believes that progress can be made by first presenting the digestible notion that languages are disappearing rapidly and that these languages hold much cultural value that is lost with their extinction.

Harrison argues that one of the most important dynamics that must be addressed is the idea of specialization in the sciences: when scientifically-inclined people choose a discipline such as chemistry, biology, physics, etc. they tend to sequester themselves to this field and not do much "cross-field" collaboration or discourse. Extended to the world of the "hard sciences" as a whole, Harrison identifies a mindset of 'discovery' that has western imperialist undertones that makes collaboration with anthropologists, linguists, etc. much more difficult because of this perceived lack of self-reflection.

While many languages have already entered the sands of time and will be lost forever, it is not too late to try to save endangered languages by interacting with these cultural bearers and recording their speech and language expression, so that it can potentially be learned, practiced, or simply appreciated by future generations.

While researching music in Bali during the summer of 2017, I reached out to Andy McGraw, the ethnomusicology professor at UR and my research advisor, for suggestions about what to learn. He suggested that I learn all the parts to a Gamelan Gong Kebyar piece entitled "Gambang Suling" so that I could teach it to the UR community gamelan group upon my return to the US. I loved the idea, so I began to work with I Wayan Sudirana, a member of the faculty at the Bali Arts Conservatory (ISI Denpasar) and my host in Bali, in order to learn the piece part-by-part. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ui0a-LrPBM

In the traditional method of teaching gamelan, Sudi sat on the opposite side of the gangsa (an instrument that plays fast interlocking parts and makes up a majority of the instruments in a Gong Kebyar ensemble) while I sat on the normal side, and he played the harder interlocking sangsih part while I played the more basic polos part. I began by learning the gangsa parts, then learned the simpler melodic parts on the same gangsa. I learned the parts throughout 2 months, culminating with the kendang drum part. 

Back in the US, I worked together with Andy to teach the piece to the ensemble to add to our performance repertoire. Although I made notation for the backing instruments, we made it so that the most difficult gangsa parts would be learned by ear. Here's a recording of a Balinese group playing the piece:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3vtArl2WnY

This is a typical piece of dance music played by a Gamelan ensemble in the village of Peliatan in the center of Bali, the island immediately east of Java. As you can hear, this style of gamelan is worlds away from the slow, quiet, contemplative gamelan of central Java. The gong ageng that is struck once every ten minutes in long Javanese gamelan pieces here occurs every eight beats, accentuating the short gong cycles and adding to the energy evoked by the rapid, buzzing gangsa instruments. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dtF9v7MNtM

"Kebyar", meaning 'flowering' or 'explosion', refers to the large sound ("byar") produced by all the instrumentalists in the ensemble playing at once. This style of music originated in the north of Bali around the turn of the 20th century, descended from older sacred music forms. This exciting new form of music took the island by storm, and many villages melted down the metal from their older gamelan sets to create new Gong Kebyar sets. 

Today, this music is synonymous with Balinese performing arts, and once a year, the best groups from around the island converge on the capital city of Denpasar for the Bali Arts Festival for Gong Kebyar competitions and showcases of traditional and contemporary musics from all over Indonesia. I was able to attend several Gong Kebyar competitions while in Bali, of all-male, co-ed, and all-female Gong Kebyar groups. The venue is a large Greek-style outdoor amphitheater with bench seating; vendors selling Quail eggs, small fried snacks ("gorengan"), and grilled chicken skewers mill about the packed venue throughout the performance. See a performance from this year's arts festival here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-0QK4SjI6g

This is a recording of Gamelan music from Eastern Java which, while sharing a lot of the instruments featured in my first cultural post, "Ketawang: Puspawarna", has several distinctions that highlight the complex region-specific map of traditional musics in Indonesia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCv4TlnpzYQ

The piece opens with a "pathetan", a short, rhythmically free introduction opened by the rebab (the melodic leader of the ensemble) and accompanyed by the "cengkok" instruments, the quieter instruments of the ensemble that elaborate the melodies played by the louder instruments. Following this, the rebab plays the "buka" or opening to the piece, and the drum comes in to lead all the other instruments to start at the strike of the gong ageng, the largest and lowest-pitched gong. 

Immediately noticeable is the relative complexity (read: funkiness) of the drumming compared to Puspawarna, and the sharpness of the rhythmic slowing down and speeding up of the tempo. Eventually the tempo settles to a pace at which the singer can join the ensemble and recite verses of sung poetry called "kakawin". Not long after, the drum speeds up the ensemble once again, and the other instrumentalists follow suit. 

The gong ageng, the prominent and very low-pitched noise heard intermittently on the recording, marks the beginning and ending of a gong cycle. These cycles are circular in shape, and the melody's position within this cycle are marked by smaller, higher pitched gongs; this is easier to hear at the end of the piece, when the drummer continually speeds up the tempo to mark the upcoming "suwuk", or ending. 

Wayang Orang, literally translated as "Human Wayang", is a performing arts form in Indonesia that is a variation on the classical Wayang Kulit, in which the carved-leather wayang puppets controlled by a dhalang are replaced with actors who sing and speak their own lines, analogous in some ways to a western opera performance. The earliest archaeological evidence of Wayang Wong is from about 900 CE, so the artform has been prevalent in Indonesia for quite some time, coexisting with Wayang Kulit and the many alternate forms of Wayang. 

These recordings are digitizations of 78 rpm recordings from the 1930s which I found on eBay. It was produced by the Gramophone Company of India, Ltd., a division of a British company who recorded and released thousands of performances of world music in addition to standard commercial music of the day; these world music recordings are quite rare these days, and background historical information is hard to come by.

You can listen to these recordings here: 

https://richmond.box.com/s/1klj7x4xvfplap0laicivc3qya8qhhdq

I especially recommend "Palgonadi ka 3"; it features dialogue in Javanese preceded by a short instrumental introduction, and followed by a beautiful sung performance to conclude the selection.

You can watch a short video of one of the 78s playing back on my turntable here: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmu1DEO1ECE

The woody thwacking noise at the beginning is played by the dhalang, to cue the drummer to continually slow down the rhythm until it is at a tempo for singing. 

Towards the beginning of my Indonesian study, I would write out new words Julie would introduce to us in my notebook and review the words outside of our meetings, using them to make new sentences in my head. Now I mostly type my homework assignments so that they can be shared with the rest of the group via Google Docs. I usually prefer to write free-hand for lecture notes and personal reminders, but I find it nice to type in Indonesian because Thalia and Julie can go over my work and not be slowed down by the weird style of cursive that I use most of the time. 

I have had a growing awareness of the importance of prefixes in Indonesian, and verb structures have been becoming more understandable as a result. Having English as my main source of reference for sentence structure means that sometimes my sentences are clunky to a native speaker, but this has been ameliorated through corrections of my homework assignments.

For our meeting with Julie this week, we will be continuing on the trend of last meeting's assignment (a brief history of Indonesia from 1900-1950) to complete a brief history of Indonesia from 1950-1998 using only Bahasa Indonesia. For Thalia, we completed a short description of our living situations including describing our homes and the areas that surround them using new vocabulary related to locations, businesses, and geography. For this week we are researching "Bahasa Gaul", or slang language/language for socialization, and using new-found words from a Facebook page dedicated to exploring Indonesian slang terms to incorporate them into new sentences. I am especially excited for this part because it is important for me to build up conversational Indonesian skills, and this is the style of Indonesian that is much more commonplace for everyday interpersonal communication.

Bahasa Indonesia is a member of the Austronesian language family, and is a standardization of the Malay language, which had been used in the archipelago for centuries as an inter-island trade language. The Austronesian language family is the fifth-largest language family in the world, with 386 million native speakers (4.9% of the world's population). Malaysian and Indonesian are the two widest-spoken languages in the Austronesian language family. Malay was influenced heavily by Sanskrit in ancient times, and as a result it is difficult to distinguish Sanskrit loan words as foreign by native speakers. It is so heavily influential on modern Indonesian that one could write a short story using only Sanskrit loan words. Due to its trade relationship with China going back over a millennium, Chinese loan words make up a lot of vocabulary relating to cuisine and trade. Especially since the 12th century, Arabic has influenced Malay language relating to religious vocabulary. Even the word for the Christian bible ("Alkitab", lit. "the book") is of Arabic origin. 

Since the Portuguese were the first Europeans to reach Indonesia and conduct trade, many of the Portuguese loan words have to do with the items that were exposed to native Indonesians with the arrival of the Portuguese. Such examples are Meja (from mesa = table), jendela (from janela = window, and keju (from queijo = cheese). The Dutch, who colonized Indonesia for centuries, left a big impression on the Indonesian vocabulary, including words like polisi (from politie = police), kantor (from kantoor = office) and setrum (from stroom = electricity current). Through globalization, some English words have made their way, although it can be difficult to differentiate from Dutch loan words as they are both of Germanic origin. Examples include imajinasi (imagination) and universitas (university). Bahasa Indonesia uses a latin script, and used to utilize Dutch phonological spellings; these have since been replaced ("tj", pronounced "ch", became "c", and "dj", pronounced "j", became "j", etc.).

This information can be helpful because it allows one to make a guess as to how the Indonesian language may transform words from their original language in order to be incorporated as a loan word. As I know a little Portuguese from being around family who are native speakers, certain words are mutually intelligible for me. 

It seems that languages change over time mostly to incorporate new words for things that had either previously been unnamed or had not been known to exist. I recently learned from my apartment-mate that Latin as used in the Vatican church has been constantly been incorporating new words for technologies such as Television and Cars in order to keep church edicts up-to-date. As the world around us is constantly changing, language, one of the systems we rely on to make sense of it, must constantly be growing and adjusting as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFFs81tAQhw

Ketawang Puspawarna is a famous gamelan composition from central Java, Indonesia, attributed to Prince Mangkunegara IV (reigned 1853-1881) of the Mangkunegaran Palace in Surakarta (known colloquially as Solo). Today the piece is played as the prince enters the palace, and at the end of an all-night Wayang, or shadow puppet performance. 

"Ketawang" refers to the gong-structure format of the piece, and denotes it as having 16 beats between strikes of the gong ageng (meaning "largest gong"). The buka, or introduction, of the piece is played by the rebab, a two-stringed bowed lute with ancestry from the middle east. The kendhang (drum), who acts as the rhythmic leader of the ensemble, enters soon after and leads the ensemble to slow the tempo down. The pesindhen, the female singer, enters later on, accompanied by the gerong, the male chorus; they sing during the ngelik (chorus section) and add stylistic cries to mark the ensemble's position within the gong structure. 

Within the context of the Javanese court, gamelan music is played in a Pendhapa, a large, open-walled structure similar to a pavilion (seen below). If you listen closely to the recording, you can hear birds nesting in the rafters of the pendhapa calling -  in response to, or in spite of - the gamelan music below.

Gamelan music experienced a period of flourishing performing arts practice during the 18th - 20th centuries, as four rival courts in Surakarta and Yogyakarta (both in central Java) competed to refine the art forms of music, poetry, and dance. Today, central Java is considered by the Javanese to be a major hub for performing arts, even with the diminished feudal power of the courts. Indonesian performing arts - and their many regional and island variations - are a source of national pride for Indonesians, and today, government-sponsored events such as the Bali Arts Festival and Art Jog work to maintain popular interest in traditional and contemporary Indonesian arts.

This is a blog post I have been anticipating writing for some time, as my initial interest in Indonesian culture was through the traditional gamelan music of Bali and Java. Because of Indonesia's existence as an archipelago of thousands of islands, many styles and regional variations of ensemble music have developed, and there is huge variation as far as the instruments used, the socio-cultural context of performance, its relation to local dance styles, and the overall mood evoked by the pieces. As these styles of music have often been developing for centuries prior to the standardization and nationalization of the Indonesian language, the vocabulary related to performance - and, if applicable, the language used for singing - is often the regional/island language, such as Balinese, Javanese, etc. 

In Javanese gamelan, the lyrics recited by the pesindhen (female singer) and the gerong (male chorus) are usually sung in Kawi, a standardized form of Old Javanese with a considerable amount of Sanskrit loan words. The Javanese language is hierarchical in nature, meaning that there are essentially three distinct languages within one - the lowest form is meant for speaking to a person of a lower social status, the middle form for speaking to someone of an equal class, and the highest form being reserved to speaking to priests or royalty. Kawi is considered the pinnacle language of this hierarchical structure. This language is largely esoteric in modern Java, so most Javanese listeners do not understand the lyrics being sung; rather, the music is meant to promote a pensive, meditative state for those who do not understand. 

Through my participation in the gamelan ensemble throughout most of my time at UR and my education with Indonesian music teachers, I have been immersed in the introductory language used to describe Balinese and Javanese music. For pretty much every note or sound played by the gamelan, there is a vocal representation for it, especially for the drum patterns and the cyclical "landmark" instruments, like the gong, kenong and kempul. I plan to research Javanese sung poetry at some point in the future, but I consider it most important at this point to study Indonesian, as this is likely the language that will be shared between myself and music teachers. In my learning plan, I have included learning more gerong texts and popular songs in Bahasa Indonesia.