Gamelan Sekar Jaya

Bay Area group reignites gamelan

San Jose Mercury News

Friday, March 05, 2004

Bay Area group reignites Gamelan

ENSEMBLE’S IMPACT HAS BEEN FELT IN U.S., ON BALI

By Andrew Gilbert

Special to the Mercury News

Bali’s most esteemed contemporary composer, Nyoman Windha, recalls the pleasant shock he felt upon hearing Gamelan Sekar Jaya during the El Cerrito ensemble’s first trip to his homeland in 1985.

“I was very surprised that they learned our culture,” says Windha, the group’s guest artistic director, who is studying at Mills College for a master’s degree. “It made me proud. They collected people to play gamelan and practice three times a week! They are very serious and want to learn about the different styles.”

Several styles of gamelan will be on display at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts on Saturday, when Sekar Jaya kicks off its 25th anniversary season with a program of traditional pieces as well as new works by Windha and Wayne Vitale, the organization’s general manager. A percussion orchestra composed of instruments made of bronze, iron, wood and bamboo, gamelan is found throughout Java and Bali, a largely Hindu island in the midst of the archipelago of Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation.

With about 50 members and five distinct ensembles, Sekar Jaya has become the most respected gamelan orchestra outside of Bali. Windha is one of many Balinese artists with whom the group has established close ties. As part of its silver anniversary season, for instance, Sekar Jaya is holding a 10-day summer intensive workshop series in Balinese music and dance, supported by an National Endowment for the Arts grant. On a scale unprecedented in the United States, the workshop will bring together seven of Bali’s most acclaimed musicians and dancers, experts in various fields of Indonesian arts and participants from many of the 100 or so U.S.-based gamelan orchestras that have sprung up since Sekar Jaya was formed in 1979.

The group’s impact has been felt far from the United States. Sekar Jaya has toured Bali five times and helped spark a cultural renaissance on the island.

“It’s not an exaggeration to say that Sekar Jaya is a household word in Bali,” Vitale says. “They associate foreigners playing gamelan with our group. When we first performed there in 1985, it was a kind of wake-up call. Here we were, foreigners who were passionate about gamelan when many young people . . . were more interested in Western music.

“Balinese music and dance is thriving now,” Vitale says. “They have gamelan competitions every year, and 6,000 people will show up.”

Like many Bay Area arts organizations, Sekar Jaya has collaborated widely, performing scores for silent films and with symphonies, dance troupes and improvisational ensembles.

“The bottom line is that none of us can explain it: You get hooked, or you don’t,” says Deborah Lloyd, a health-care facilitator at the University of California-Berkeley, who helped found Sekar Jaya and who, like the rest of its members, is a volunteer. Though she dropped out for a long stretch after having two children, she has been active in the group for the past five years.

“It’s group music,” she explains, “and it’s not notated; so you learn it by rote, and it’s a very physical experience. It gets into your body. We may have learned a piece six or seven years ago, and we’ll hear the introduction, and we just start playing it, though we won’t remember the name of the piece.”

Most gamelan orchestras in the United States are associated with university ethnomusicology programs. Sekar Jaya’s independence has proven to be one of the group’s strengths. Embraced by the Balinese people, Sekar Jaya has facilitated an ever-deepening cultural exchange.

“We have created a conduit with another culture that’s incredibly strong and vibrant, filled with a lot of goodwill on both sides,” Vitale says. “This kind of scene is hard to attain in an academic setting. Universities just can’t provide the continuity."

“Artists come from Bali and live here for months or years and have contact with a lot of different artists. We hang out, cook meals, go on tour. It has the most local, community, homey feeling and this international aspect. It’s like having a sister city.”