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Different Temporalities: The Time of Balinese Gamelan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2019

Andrew Clay McGraw
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On my first research trip to Bali, Indonesia, I brought along a reasonably expensive digital metronome with the wrongheaded idea that it would somehow aid my learning gamelan music. In a completely uncharacteristic mistake, Singapore Airlines lost my luggage containing the metronome. More than once, my Balinese teachers suggested (only half-kiddingly) that the goddess of music, Saraswati, had probably had a hand in this. Many Balinese teachers have commented that their greatest pedagogical challenge is in helping their foreign students develop a sense of the fluid, flexible nature of Balinese musical time. The differences between Balinese and Euro-American musical time and their representations have partially blinded theorists to its shape, function, and significance. In his magnum opus Music in Bali (1966), Colin McPhee describes a performance that particularly delighted him:

With no rhythmic support of any kind, the players must follow the leading gangsa, partly by watching, partly by ear. They must all feel in the same way the flexible, rubato nature of the passage. The charm of this episode, as played by the gamelan at Jagaraga in 1938, was irresistible. It lay partly in the melody itself, sounding thinly chiming octaves and stressed at intervals by the vibrant tones of the jublags and jegogans. But perhaps most enchanting of all was the lovely pliancy of the passage, and the perfect accord of all the players. (McPhee 1966:350)

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Articles
Information
Yearbook for Traditional Music , Volume 40 , 2008 , pp. 136 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 By The International Council for Traditional Music

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