- While I was aware of the collectivist nature of Indonesian culture and the ways in which it contrasted with American culture, I was unaware of the statistical extent to which these two cultures differed. According to Dr. Hofstede, Indonesia was rated at 14 (very collectivist) whereas the US was rated at 91 (extremely individualist). This has many implications in the cultural practices of both nations, and I witnessed many such cultural phenomena while researching music in Indonesia.
In Bali, the gamelan ensemble is considered by the performers to be one large instrument being played by many, and each musician is contributing to the cohesive sound through their playing. Due to the large skill range in playing the 25 or so instruments in the ensemble - from hitting a large gong once every 4-32 beats to performing complex rhythmically interlocking melodic elaborations at the 1/4-beat level - the music is able to be played by both young and old, novice and expert. The melodic elaboration instruments play so fast that the melodies are split in two and each fragment is performed by two people, such that when they play together the melody comes together like a zipper to form one cohesive pattern. I was able to sit in and listen to rehearsals of several gamelan groups, and the performers evoke a very positive, familial atmosphere, sharing food, coffee and cigarettes between pieces. To perform a style of music that requires such rapid temporal and dynamic shifts requires frequent and exhaustive rehearsals.
Adjusting to the culture of Indonesia was quite difficult, as I would consider myself to be a rather restrained person. At first my natural instinct was to avoid intruding and making a situation uncomfortable, only to find that my restraint was in itself uncomfortable. A personally important milestone in my research came when I was in Java for a week towards the end of my research. I was walking down a street while exploring the city of Yogyakarta when I heard a gamelan ensemble playing inside a building. I stopped for a while to listen to the music, until a passerby beckoned for me to enter the building. I walked in the entrance and, after waiting at the door for a while, walked into the room in which the gamelan was playing. The leader of the ensemble greeted me, invited me to sit and listen and continued his instruction of the new piece. Soon after, the gong player had to leave, and the instructor began to try to play gong while juggling leading the ensemble. I offered to play the gong and he gladly accepted, showing me the basic pattern for the piece before moving on to assist other performances. The rest of the rehearsal flew by, and the whole time I was basking in the sublime feeling that I had gotten over a personal hurdle of apprehension and had made new Indonesian friends as a result.
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