Gamelan festival boasts 10-year grand design

Sri Wahyuni, The Jakarta Post, Yogyakarta

Gamelan lovers will find it worthwhile to be in Yogyakarta this week with the 10th Yogyakarta Gamelan Festival (YGF) 2005 being opened on Tuesday with a two-day, pre-festival concert at Misty Multimedia Gallery, Jl. Pandega Karya 290, at Jl. Kaliurang Km 5.5.

The main concerts are to be held at Taman Budaya Yogyakarta concert hall on Jl. Sri Wedani, next to the well-known Beringharjo traditional market, for three consecutive evenings from July 7 through July 9, 2005.

"The number of participating groups is fewer than last year. The number of individuals, however, it greater than last year," coordinator of the YGF organizing committee Sapto Raharjo told The Jakarta Post.

That, said Sapto, who is a contemporary gamelan musician, was because most of the participating groups are quite large in terms of supporting personnel. Kabumi of Bandung (West Java), for example, has 55 players in its gamelan group.

One People Voice (OPV) of the U.S., similarly, will bring with it 47 performers for its scheduled performance on July 8. It is scheduled to perform the well-known kecak dance from Bali.

"This will be quite unique, especially as it requires the performers, who come from quite a different cultural background, to utter the "cak-cak-cak" Balinese sounds that a kecak performance requires," Sapto said.

Other foreign groups or individuals scheduled to participate in the festival include Veronique and Friends of France, Motohide Taguchi and Friends of Japan, Trio Dingo of Australia, Prof Rene T.A. Lysloff of the U.S., and Chris Miller of Canada.

Domestic groups include Michael Asmara and Friends (Yogyakarta), Anane (Yogyakarta), Kelompok LOS (Surakarta), Sanggar Pepasak (Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara), Keras Tanpa S (Surakarta), Gang Sadewa (Yogyakarta), Gobah Contemporary Music (Riau, Sumatra), Vertigong (Yogyakarta) and Kyai Fatahillah (Bandung, West Java).

Some of the groups or individuals from foreign countries have brought with them compositions to play at the festival. Others, however, will prefer to create collaborative works here with local groups or musicians.

As a consequence, they have had to come earlier to work on their compositions and interact with the designated local groups or musicians.

"I see this as a positive sign, in which people of different backgrounds work together for the creation of new cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary collaborative gamelan works," Sapto added.

Collaborative performances will also end each of the scheduled concerts, during which all participating groups and musicians will play together on the stage.

Apart from the scheduled concerts, a supporting program, Gaung Gamelan (Gamelan Echo), whose main objective is to actively involve people throughout the province to participate in the annual event, will also be held during the pre-festival and main event.

Via the program, gamelan players from across the province are called to play their instruments at their own places and their own convenient times from July 5 through July 9, in the morning, at noon, or in the afternoon.

"In the evenings they are invited to enjoy the concerts, through which they are expected to enrich their insights and views about gamelan and its development worldwide, so that they will also be able improve their artistic appreciation," Sapto said.

Prior to the Gaung Gamelan program, the YGF organizing committee has also issued calls through the regental and municipal tourism and culture offices in the province for owners of gamelan instruments to clean and tune their instruments.

"Slendro and pelog are ours. It's our responsibility to maintain them," said Sapto, referring to the five- and seven-tone tuning system of Javanese gamelan.

Sapto added that so far the festival was considered more a medium for cultural exchange. As such, therefore, it had minimal commercial potential, making it relatively difficult to develop, especially with regard to fund-raising.

For the next 10 years, however, a 10-year plan has been drawn up to turn the festival into a prestigious, world-class event for gamelan music.

"It will be just like a Northsea Jazz Festival for gamelan," Sapto said.

As a preparation, a company named PT Gamelan Hangeka Buwana (which literally means "gamelan unites the world") has been established to ensure the annual festival is both better and more professionally managed, starting next year.

"My own personal experience teaches me that a legal entity is needed for an event with sponsorship worth more than Rp 100 million. That's why we decided to establish the company," explained Sapto, who is the director of the newly established company.

Sapto, however, also said that establishment of the company would not mean the festival would be 100 percent profit-oriented. Rather, it was intended to make management of the festival more financially accountable.

"We do not wish to be dependent on the local government's budget," Sapto said.

Held for the first time in 1995 as part of the month-long Yogyakarta Arts Festival (FKY), which usually starts on June 7, YGF was initially a government-funded event.

Only in 2000 did YGF start to finance itself after surrendering its budget to other FKY programs, mostly due to FKY's small budget. Since then, YGF has been self-financing. The following year, 2001, it was held as an independent festival, no longer part of FKY.

So far, according to Sapto, to manage the festival the organizing committee has been dependent on what is called the Friends of YGF, a network made to accommodate donations to conduct the festival from gamelan lovers from all over the world.

"Frankly, the Friends of YGF network has enabled us to maintain the festival thus far," said Sapto, adding that this year's main festival (July 7 through July 9) required expenditure of some Rp 250 million, mostly on accommodation for participants.

Also part of the 10-year plan for YGF is the establishment of a gamelan academy in 2015, in which a proper gamelan educational system will be applied and developed according to the needs of the era.

"One of the considerations for preparing the 10-year plan is the fact that gamelan has been acknowledged as the world's second symphony orchestra, after the Western model. It is also found in 31 countries; none has elevated it to the level of a science," Sapto said.