The weekend Balinese Gamelan course at the SouthBank Centre was absolutely brilliant. I really can't thank Steph enough for mentioning it on her blog some weeks ago. It was a weekend of celebration of Indonesian music, and the first time in many years that the SouthBank had hosted three different styles of Gamelan orchestra in one performance venue. Jim and I signed up for Balinese Gamelan, while Steph was studying Sundanese, and a further group played the Javanese Gamelan that I learnt on as a child. From about age 9 to 13, I played with the Javanese Gamelan group at the SouthBank on Saturday mornings, so it was a real trip down memory lane for me!
Metallophones make up one section of the orchestra. We played a style of Balinese Gamelan called Gong Kebyar (there are many, many different styles even on a small island like Bali).
One of the many brilliant things about Gamelan is that you learn lots of different parts. You don't just pick an instrument and play it all weekend, you swap around. In the performance I played Kendang (drums) for the first piece. It was a processional piece with lots of Ceng-Ceng (cymbals) playing complex interlocking rhythms, and I had to beat to a mnemonic of "I had lunch with Carol Vorderman". So I have that stuck in my head for the rest of the week - for sure!
The Ceng-Ceng players sat at the front with the Suling (flute-like instruments). I'm pulling one of my many concentrating faces...
Then in the second piece, called Baris, I took the main melodic part on the Ugal (a metallophone with 2 octaves of notes). There were two different main tunes to master, along with transitions between the two. I didn't get it totally right on the night, but it was excellent fun.
You can see I have another concentrating face on here, and you can just see Jim at the back, who's playing gongs. Our teacher, Andy, is playing Kendang here - he was brilliant!
The gongs are really important, as they mark the cycles of the music. If you get lost you listen for the gong and you know where to start again. The group that we worked with were excellent - everyone mucked in to explain your part if you weren't sure. That's one of the great things about swapping instruments so much. There's usually someone else who can help you to remember how it goes!
Our final piece was called Hujan Mas (Golden Rain) and was super-loud with fantastically off-beat interlocking rhythms.
For the finale, we swapped round again, and Jim played Ceng-Ceng, and I moved on to Gangsa Pemade where I played polos (the direct tune). The girl on my left is playing sangsih (the differing tune that fits together with mine like a jigsaw). This was my favourite piece. The rhythms and tune will be firmly lodged in my liver for quite some time I think. In this work, we alternated between playing, and listening to another tune played on the Reyong (pot-like small, horizontal gongs that sit in a wooden frame and are struck with beaters). We had to keep our ears open for the signals that the tune was going to change - this is no mean feat when the volume of Balinese Gamelan is mostly loud or louder!
And what is the only other thing that could have made this weekend more perfect? Yes, you guessed it... Great food! We did knitting with friends over dinner on Saturday evening. Thanks Lucy, Nora, Michaela, Mélanie and Steph!
And also met up with Will (Jim's brother) and Issy on Sunday. They came to the concert - thanks guys - and then we had dinner at the British Film Institute. A perfect weekend all round! I even finished my cowl... More on that tomorrow.
