week 4

What is the relationship between arts and audiences?

1)What is the tradition behind Gamelan from Indonesia?
The gamelan predates the Hindu-Buddhist culture that dominated Indonesia in its earliest records and instead represents a native art form. The instruments developed into their current form during the Majapahit Empire. In contrast to the heavy Indian influence in other art forms, the only obvious Indian influence in gamelan music is in the Javanese style of singing, and in the themes of the Wayang kulit (shadow puppet plays).

2) How is the music used for Shadow Puppet plays?
The music s used for the Wayang performance. The music is played in the background of the performance and it changes over time by volume and repetition etc. This changes the audience's mood and emotions.

3) How does it involve the whole community?

It involves the whole community since everyone gets to play an instrument and have different notes for their own part. it enables everyone to be involves as well.

During today’s lesson we learned how to play a piece of Gamelan. Gamelan is the traditional ensemble music of Java and Bali in Indonesia, made up mostly of percussive instruments. first, we were split into random groups for each instrument.  I was in the kenong group. We learned to play Lancaran Cobowo as a class and played it together as well. Then we split into our music groups and decided who is going to play each instrument. We noticed that the parts had varying levels of difficulty because there is a specific beat to play and it was hard to identify it at the start and play it on the correct beat as well.