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The Music of Bali

The Music of Bali. A special paradise…. Balinese gamelan Cudamani. And ubiquitous means?.

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The Music of Bali

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  1. The Music of Bali A special paradise…. Balinese gamelan Cudamani

  2. And ubiquitous means? • “Music is ubiquitous in Bali; its abundance is far out of proportion to the dimensions of the island. The Hindu-Balinese religion requires gamelan for the successful completion of most of the tens of thousands of ceremonies undertaken yearly.” • --Michael Tenzer: Balinese Music

  3. Music is everywhere • “It is part of everyday life. A young boy plowing the fields on the back of a water buffalo plays a small bamboo flute. Street vendors play gongs to indicate whether they are selling noodles or shrimp chips. Martial arts are accompanied by drums, gongs, and oboes, and bull-racing has its own appropriate rhythmic accompaniment.”

  4. Tongtong CD Music for the Gods, cut 3 example of bull racing

  5. Music for... • Rituals. More rituals. And, yes, even more rituals. • entertaining the gods in lavish ways during festivals • for offerings at the temple or blessing a house • for spilling cremated souls’ ashes into the sea (kelod) • for the exorcism of evil spirits • for the ritual filing of teeth gamelan for tooth filingexample of tooth filing • for nearly everything...

  6. for DANCE! for DANCE! Balinese dance

  7. In Bali, music and dance are WEDDED in spirit, nuance, structure--even terminology. • Balinese choreography is a manifestation of the music that accompanies it. • Music and dance present a “reflective duet”. • They are “two realizations of the same abstract beauty”.

  8. For the gods, dance is as important as music.

  9. Performers? • To participate in music and dance is a very fortunate thing for a person. • It is, in fact, a coveted privilege.

  10. Gamelan • The linguistic root of the word is “gamel”, which means to hit or to manipulate with the hands • A gamelan is a group of instruments, most of which are bronze percussion instruments. • suspended gongs and kettles, xylophone • some strings and winds • singing by both men and women • DIVERSE BODY OF INSTRUMENTS

  11. Perhaps even the kitchen sink...

  12. The gamelan “orchestra” then includes... • instruments which are linear in function, such as the voice and the suling (bamboo flute), which elaborate and ornament the melodies • and... • instruments which articulate and punctuate the structure of the melodies in a vertical way (gongs)

  13. Tuning systems for Java’s gamelan • Usually one of two possibilities: (text p 283) • Slendro: a 5 tone system, nearly equal intervals • Pelog: a 7 tone system, large and small intervals • Some gamelan are entirely one or the other • Some are double, with a full set of instruments for each tuning

  14. Tuning systems in Bali • Scale tones are named as follows: • ding, dong, deng, dung, and dang • Full range is 21 tones, from a low ding to the high ding four registers above • Larger gaps (350-450 cents) between deng/dung and dang/next octave ding • Smaller intervals (80-200 cents) between others

  15. Pitch…..okay then • The absolute pitch for ding varies within a range of about 300 cents (100 cents in a Western minor second) • It’s usually close to the Western C or C#, but it can vary up to or beyond a D# • Range is about 130Hz to 2080 Hz • GONGS are outside the gamut…near 65Hz to match the ding

  16. Just when you were getting it... • Java’s term pelog is used to label Bali’s gamelan types, but the Balinese call it saih piut. There are often only 5 tones, not 7, but they are subsets (patutan) of the full collection • Saih pitu is often called tetekep pitu (seven fingerings--wait, weren’t we just talking about 5 tones?

  17. Other tuning considerations • The patutan of saih pitu are called saih lima. To extract a patutan from the 7 tones, you take any origin tone, go three conjunct steps, skip one, take two more, skip the remaining degree • patutan selisir uses 123(-) 56 (-) • patutan tembung uses 456(-)12(-) • ding is always the first step of any patutan • (moveable…..that is, WAAAAAYYY moveable “do”)

  18. Shimmery quality • Instruments are tuned in pairs, with one intentionally tuned slightly higher than the other. • This results in fast “beats” in the overtones. • We might say these are “out of tune”. • In Bali, these are “in tune”.

  19. After all of that…. • The tuning systems work primarily at a conceptual level. • “Acoustically speaking, all of these notions are, to varying extents, fictions.” Tenzer • Ah, tuning: let’s leave it to the masters, members of the Pande clan who work in one of three main areas in Bali.

  20. Text mentions….(p.315) • 1) strictly instrumental--not exactly • 2) characterized by changes in tempo and loudness (often abrupt) • 3) dazzling technical mastery • 4) fast interlocking rhythms with asymmetrical groupings

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