Our Founders

I Wayan Suweca

The late I Wayan Suweca was one of Bali’s most brilliant musicians. He was born in 1948 in Kayu Mas, a banjar (hamlet) in Bali's capital city, Denpasar. Along with his siblings, Pak Suweca began studying Balinese music with his father I Wayan Konolan, a renowned performer and staff musician in the “all-star” resident gamelan at Radio Republik Indonesia. Growing up Pak Suweca met and learned from many musicians in his father’s generation, from all over Bali. He internalized their styles, and became an expert with broad experience. Known for the fluency and endless variations of his drumming techniques, he was also a master of the intricate music of gender wayang, gamelan accompaniment to shadow puppet theater and many rituals. Pak Suweca studied formally at the national performing arts academy in Denpasar. He performed throughout Asia, Europe, and the United States. In 1974, he received a Rockefeller grant to teach Balinese music at Brown University and taught at the Center for World Music, UCLA, UC Berkeley, San Francisco State, Loyola University and the University of Montreal, as well as in places all over Bali. In 1979 he co-founded Sekar Jaya and was its resident teacher for two years, until he returned to Bali in 1981 to take up a teaching post at ISI. In Sekar Jaya's collective memory, it was Pak Suweca’s commitment and belief in the group during its formative years that inspired so many, and accounts for Sekar Jaya’s staying power. After his retirement, his daughter Putu Hartini carried on his legacy as a teacher at ISI. Up until his recent passing, Pak Suweca remained active as a performer, teacher, instrument merchant, and composer of new works for gamelan. He passed away on May 22, 2023. Friends, family and the broader community will always hold him with great esteem and gratitude in their hearts.

rACHEL COOPER

Rachel Cooper studied at UCLA in World Arts and Cultures and Dance Ethnology and then lived in Indonesia from 1981-88. She co-directed the Festival of Indonesia In Performance 1990-92, bringing together over 200 performers on 12 different tours across the United States. She is widely recognized as a leader in arts and culture and was the head of Asia Society’s renowned performing arts and cultural programs department for 27 years prior to taking her current position as the Director of Culture as Diplomacy. She has produced and toured over 1,000 performances and developed new collaborative projects between Asia and the United States. Cooper received the Global Citizen Diplomacy Award for Best Practice in the Arts , Dawson Award for Programmatic Excellence, Manhattan Award for Preserving Cultural Diversity in New York City, and a Rockefeller MAP award for choreography. She serves on the boards of Cambodian Living Arts, and American Indonesian Cultural Foundation.

Michael Tenzer

Michael Tenzer studied at Yale University and UC Berkeley. He was Sekar Jaya’s Musical Director from 1983-86. From 1986 to 1996 he taught at Yale before becoming Professor of Music at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where he teaches ethnomusicology, composition, music theory and gamelan performance, and co-directs the doctoral program in ethnomusicology. He composes for Balinese gamelan as well as for western orchestra and chamber ensembles, and is the author of Balinese Gamelan Music (Periplus 2011), Gamelan Gong Kebyar: The Art of Twentieth Century Balinese Music (University of Chicago Press: 2000) and other books and articles on the musics of the world. In Vancouver he has directed Gamelan Gita Asmara since 1996, a community ensemble modeled after Gamelan Sekar Jaya.