Playing in a gamelan has opened high, carved doors for me to enter Bali in a new dimension. Not as a tourist, not as a resident tamu, but as a functioning member of a respected cultural activity. I find myself praying in remote temples under the full moon, clashing my tjeng tjeng under the critical eyes of villagers and sampling an array of traditional and sometimes alarming snacks.
Gamelan Gado Gado, as it’s informally known, is a group of about 22 women from seven countries. Female gamelans are no longer uncommon in Bali, but I believe we’re the only women’s community gamelan with a mixed membership of Balinese and tamu players. This intrigues the Balinese, and we’re increasingly invited to play gigs at temples, factories and private functions. Small children goggle at us and the old men sometimes catch our eye and give us a thumbs up. We entertain the audience and they entertain us.
After a year of banging the wrong keys, missing cues and watching our teacher sadly put his head in his hands at the end of practice, we are finally getting it. We are actually pretty good. Things became easier once we tamus stopped trying to learn the music intellectually. There is no conscious, cerebral path to playing the gamelan. You just practice and practice until the music becomes part of your cell structure, a component of your energy field. It has nothing to do with your brain. Maybe that’s why we Westerners, most of whom had never done anything musical, enjoy it so much.
Now that we are performing professionally (ahem), we don our uniform of sarong and lace kebaya about once a month. We’ve become quite expert at dressing ourselves, although our Balinese colleagues generally give us a few tweaks before we pile into borrowed Kijangs and head off into the unknown.
I don’t know who organizes our performances. We’ve played in little family temples, in huge, awesomely decorated ones and in a factory courtyard. Next week we’re playing at the local police station and there’s a wedding coming up in January. It’s all enormous fun, and generates a warm feeling of community between the women that transcends religion and ethnicity.
At one odalan in a banjar that shall remain unnamed, we filed demurely onto the stage in our tight sarong kebayas of unsubtle turquoise and took our places. Immediately we were aware of a very nearby pigsty, complete with flies and interesting smells. The assembled throng stared at us expectantly. As I lifted the cymbals of the tjeng tjeng, I noticed that my sarong was already dotted with flies. The drummer tapped our cue and we began to play.
Legions of small, determined flies instantly gathered around us. Soon we were vigorously shaking our heads to get them out of our ears and noses (it seemed strategic to keep our mouths firmly closed). They strolled across our foreheads and tap-danced along the backs of our hands as we played. For some reason they were particularly attracted to the harmonics of the tjeng-tjeng and landed on it as if drawn by an irresistible force. Inevitably some were caught in the flying cymbals, and a little pile of bodies began to collect in the upturned cymbals attached to the instrument, bouncing with each clash. It was quite mesmerizing.
I was trying hard to behave myself but the torment of all those tiny feet was impossible to ignore. Every woman in the gamelan was twitching wildly and shaking her head to dislodge the flies, since it was impossible to remove our hands from our instruments. Our audience watched impassively. Apparently all the flies were on the stage with us.
We took a brief break after the first set to compare casualties. I helped Nyoman remove a bug from her eye; Wayan had one in her ear. Several of us had numerous visitors in our cleavages which were difficult to remove unobtrusively. Then during the second set, a large cockroach made its way determinedly across the stage heading directly for me. A bystander tried to head it off, but it veered quickly under my instrument, only to abandon its position after a particularly energetic riff. Our teacher smacked it to oblivion with a packet of clove cigarettes, and it joined a growing number of dead and dying flies on the frayed red carpet around us. I think we played pretty well, considering the distractions.
That performance ended with the usual bungkus, refreshment to nourish us after our exertions. These cardboard boxes invariably contain a piece of fruit, a mound of rice and half a hard boiled egg, some mie with vegetables, a splash of incendiary sambal and some kind of meat. On lucky nights it’s a savoury morsel of fried chicken. That night it was little glands on a stick.
Playing in the gamelan has given me a new identity in my own neighbourhood. Recently the big temple near my house had a major ceremony. Clad in full pakain adat, I inched my battered Suzuki through a seething crowd of worshippers to the end of the jammed lane, where a pacalan ordered me to turn back. Then a neighbour recognized me and asked where I was going. In creditable Indonesian (I had been practicing) I told him I was playing gamelan at an odalan in Gianyar. Broad smiles appeared, and a path was made for me through the crush of vehicles. I notice that more men nod and smile at me now when I pass the bale banjar.
That particular gig took us well beyond Gianyar to a banjar whose name I never learned. We were shown to a very small stage inside the temple itself and crammed ourselves onto tiny stools or minute patches of carpet. With the first two bars it became agonizingly clear that the gamelan was badly out of tune. We clashed on through our party pieces while toothless old men stared at us unblinkingly. Then a squadron of lovely children, dressed as dancers, filed in to pray. When they filed out again our whole audience followed them. Philosophically we played our last piece to an empty house, and were rewarded with an unusually savoury bungkus.
As I drove home that night through the moonlit rice fields with my car full of joking Balinese, I realized that playing the gamelan is not just about making music together. It’s about sharing the experience, sharing food, taking bugs out of each other’s eyes, making sure each other’s sashes are on straight — being a community within a community. With every gig I play, I love it all a little more.
