Orders from Bali keep gamelanmakers afloat

Orders from Bali keep gamelanmakers afloat

Text and photos by Ali Budiman

SURAKARTA, Central Java (JP): Thirty-five-year-old Harwanto
does not care about the dust which makes his face and body black.
His strong hands hold a long pair of pincers to pull out a red
hot sheet of copper mixed with tin. Assisted by two partners,
Harwanto lifts the hot object with a swift movement and moves it
to a stone mold to be forged.

As the proverb goes, "strike while the iron is hot", three
workers, without waiting for his instruction, rhythmically strike
the red hot sheet, which is about 500 degrees centigrade, with a
long hammer. The banging of the hammers does not stop until the
bronze turns blackish again, a condition showing that it should
be heated once more.

This is the beginning of the gong-making process in Mojolaban
village, Sukoharjo, Surakarta. Harwanto, as a "senior", does not
talk much. However, after the sheet was forged seven or eight
times and assumed the shape of a gong, he began to give
instructions amid the noisy sound made by the striking hammers.
He told his co-workers which part had to be struck more and which
less.

To make gongs, nine thin but brawny men forge a sheet weighing
some 50 kilograms, with the ratio between copper and tin being 10
to 3, so that the sheet, originally the size of a frying pan,
becomes a gong with a diameter of 77 cm.

They all work from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. and use 360
kilograms of charcoal, the fuel in the simple pumping furnace
system. The forging process ends when Harwanto thinks the shape
of the gong has been perfectly formed. Then he holds the hot gong
with steel wire to ensure that the spherical shape of it will not
change when the it is put into a pool of water, the final stage
of the forging and also the cooling phase.

These gongmakers, sweating all over and dusty, eat a simple
lunch of rice plus cooked vegetables, egg and a condiment
containing chili peppers. They drink tea and have one plastic bag
of fried slices of tempe (soyabean cake) and cassava as a snack
during a break.

That very afternoon, Harwanto was happy when he received his
payment of Rp 20,000 as a reward for his hard work for the day.
For the past 15 years he has taken up a job as a gongmaker.

"Dust will settle all over our bodies. Look at me. My body is
all dark. By doing this, you will sweat and spend much of your
energy," he said. "Besides, you must know the technique as
otherwise it will be dangerous because we are dealing with hot
objects."

Harwanto, who graduated from the Technical Vocational
Secondary School in 1982, used to spend a short time in farming.
Later, just like the other young men in his village, he switched
to a job in a gamelan factory, which enjoyed its heyday from the
1970s up to the 1990s.

It is hard to imagine how gamelanmakers in Mojolaban village,
a place known as the center for making bronze gamelans, would do
at this time of economic difficulty if they did not receive
regular orders from art troupes in Bali.

Harwanto was grateful that despite the present economic
difficulty, orders for gongs from Bali continued to come to
Werdhi Sedono, a factory which he depended on for his living.

He said he could have a decent life with his wife and two
children, a 12-year son and three-month-old daughter.

Harwanto's boss, Jumadi Hadiwiyono, a kind and hospitable
middled-aged man with six children, agreed with Harwanto, his
chief employee. He said that prior to the onset of the economic
crisis, a kilogram of copper was Rp 6,000 and a kilogram of tin
was Rp 25,000. When supplies became low, the prices would rise by
300 percent, he said. Today, the prices for the material are not
so high. Tin, for example, is available at Rp 52,000 per
kilogram. As for copper, he said, he can always place an order
for leftover sheets from factories using copper, at prices lower
than usual.

Bali

Due to the economic crisis, Jumadi, has rarely received an
order for the Javanese gongs, bende or kempul. Jumadi's buyers
were the government agency for art, the Javanese gamelan music
and singing school, the Yogyakarta and Surakarta palaces and
certain government agencies where money could be easily obtained.

However, in the past two years such orders have virtually
ceased to come. But the Balinese do not seem to be affected by
the economic crisis. Every month, Jumadi said, he receives up to
30 orders for Balinese gongs. Balinese gongs are usually without
decoration, he said, adding that they are usually collected by
art collectors from abroad, particularly from the Netherlands,
Suriname and the United States. Jumadi, however, has never sold
his gongs directly abroad. The gongs must first go through his
agent in Bali. In fact, according to the marketing manager of the
factory, in a foreign currency, the price can be four times
higher than Rp 1,350,000, the amount received from Bali for one
standard gong.

There is a very important phase that all gongs have to go
through: tuning. This job is handled by Jumadi. He uses a piece
of rope to hang the gong with and then beats several parts of it
so he can listen to the echoing sound made. If some part needs
improving, it is marked with wet earth. This part will be forged
again until it becomes perfect. The tuning-up skill is a
determining factor to show whether or not the sound of the gong
is exactly what the buyer has asked. Bali, Yogyakarta, Surakarta
and the Northern coast of Java have their own uniqueness.

Jumadi claimed to have inherited the art of gong-making from
his late father, Resowiguno, who in 1958 began as a gamelan or
gong master in the modest village, which is located not far from
the Surakarta palace.

Jumadi's feeling of pride does not come from owning a new
model of Honda Accord or a Suzuki Carry, but because his business
can run well, all his children have gone to university and there
is always a job and Idul Fitri bonuses for about a dozen of his
employees. In addition, he feels a sort of spiritual satisfaction
when he realizes that he has helped conserve the legacies of his
ancestors with the sets of traditional musical instruments of his
own making.