Maira Clancy
March 11, 2009
Fraser Ethno100
Listening Journal # 5 – Response to:
Gamelan Sekaten: Ladrang “Kembang Lintang,” from Music in Central Java #6

The background for this song is extremely atmospheric and adds a lot of cultural personality to this composition. The busy, bustling sounds of the country can be heard to complement the tonal rings and chimes of the gongs and it says so much about the environment in which this music was produced.
The song starts out slowly and minimalistic with instrumentation, with seemingly random strikes of different gongs building up upon each other until an even slower hand drum comes in to get the piece rolling. Then, the bells start to speed up and they come together in very dissonant, odd harmonies that make me feel like I am trapped in the ticking mindset of a crazy person. This music is beautiful because it reminds me of a cuckoo clock from Indonesia, which gives the song an eerie, dream-like quality to it.

Maira Clancy
March 6, 2009
Fraser Ethno100
Listening Journal # 4 – Response to:
Talempong pacik: “Sidi” from Gongs and Vocal Music from Sumatra: Talempong, Didong, Kulintang, Salawat Dulang, Music of Indonesia Vol. 12.

I love how this song sets out in the beginning with the same pace that continues through the whole song. Within seconds of the song’s start, layers of different gongs chime in (literally), and they set up an entire percussive and melodic orchestra that never slows down nor falters. The interlocking of the lower and higher pitched gongs with the simple yet driving rhythm of the hand drum is really beautiful and works really well for me.
However, I am not a big fan of the wind instrument in this song. I believe it is made out of a palm leaf of some kind and the pitch is varied by the motion of your hand blocking or allowing the passage of air through the “horn” of this traditional instrument. It sounds like a mixture between a snake charmer’s clarinet and a kazoo – the tone is pretty irritating. Also, it seems so difficult to control the pitch that one produces that the melody played seems out of tune with the gongs. I just don’t think this instrument blends well with the resonant and metallic timbre of the talempong gongs.

Minangkabau 1 (from BlackBoard) Before Reading: The instruments sound like hollow bells being struck like gongs or glockenspiels– I will assume these are Talempongs, as that seems to be the Indonesian instrument of favor in our studies. It sounds like there is a large ensemble of these Talempongs, with several playing each specific part in the music (rhythm, melody, harmony, bass, etc.) The arrangement sounds much more westernized than most indigenous music we’ve listened to in the past– it follows a melodically simple chord progression that is recognizable in most cheesy western music. I also hear some harmony in melody, from the highest-pitched talempongs; there are either two sets playing homphonically in thirds, or the resonance of the talempong simply picks up the overtones of thirds. Regardless, this piece certainly evokes the “island vibe” that chintzy four-star hotels utilize by their pool bars– “Indigenous Indonesian Music For Dummies”, if you will. After Reading: I couldn’t help but laugh as I saw the chart on the instrumentation of ‘orkes talempong’– the four functions outlined (melody, harmony, bass, rhythm) were the exact four I hypothesized earlier! The instruments were, naturally, Talempongs, and a large ensemble of them as well (orkes talempong, akin to an orchestra.) The piece sounded so Western to me because it is a Talempong Kreasi– a genre that essentially creates ‘new style’ music with indigenous instruments, like the Talempong, in order to appeal to a broader national (and international) audience. Talempong Kreasi utilizes a diatonic scale and typical harmonic structure, all Western devices, to “remix” classic indigenous Minangkabau music.  It is the epitome of cultural reformation to suit the cosmopolitan audience.

As a pianist with years of indoctrination into the formats and ideas of European and American music, I found it odd to listen to a piece with such a limited range of notes. I believe 5 separate gongs are used, two to keep a rhythm and three in a varying pattern. If my compositions were limited to five notes, and improvisatory sections to three, I would probably end up with a terrible-sounding piece! Somehow, the performers vary the rhythms and patterns enough to keep things new and interesting, and to keep the audience listening.
The other thing I’m not used to is rhythm being in the same register as improvisation. In Western music, repetitive, tempo-keeping phrases are usually found in the lower register (left-hand piano, tuba, bass, etc.) or in the higher register if something low is meant to be heard. In this piece, the repetitive two-gong phrase is in the same register and at the same loudness as the other three gongs. This similarity allows the audience to hear all the ways in which the rhythms mesh and play off each other, something that might be absent if the players had a wider range of notes to work with.
It’s hard to keep track of the progression of the piece since everything sounds much more similar than I’m used to. I have a feeling that if I was playing this type of music I’d have no idea when to stop.