Suwardi revives dead 'gentha' gamelan sounds

Suwardi revives dead 'gentha' gamelan sounds

By Riyadi Suparno

JAKARTA (JP): After more than a century of silence, the
beautiful and haunting sounds of the officially extinct Javanese
gentha (bell) gamelan traditional orchestra reverberated through
the Gedung Kesenian Jakarta (Jakarta Playhouse) on Wednesday
evening.

To Javanese ears, however, the sound of gentha gamelan
performed by A.L. Suwardi for the Third Art Summit Indonesia 2001
was quite similar to the regular Javanese gamelan except that it
was played in a more dynamic way with each instrument
rhythmically played in quick succession.

Played by 13 male gamelan players, with three female singers,
the sounds of gentha percussion were comparable to a combination
of Javanese and Balinese gamelan with contemporary touches.

In one way or another, Suwardi, who is known among his friends
only as A.L., managed to resurrect the forgotten instruments in a
beautiful way.

The audience, nevertheless, were warned that the gentha they
heard at the theater was not the same as the 19th century gentha
instruments kept in the Surakarta palace, Central Java.

Suwardi, a lecturer at the Indonesian Arts College in
Surakarta, recreated the gentha especially for this year's Art
Summit based on accounts of his friends at the palace.

"It would be difficult to play gentha instruments in the
palace as they are considered sacred. I made these gentha
instruments and composed Suara Gentha (Sounds of the Bells) based
on tales about gentha in the palace. Therefore, this must be
totally different," he said.

Another problem is that no one knows how to play the palace's
gentha instruments and, moreover, several instruments have gone
missing. Only several musicians were able play the palace's
gentha gamelan, including the late Martopangrawit and
Mloyowidodo.

It took Suwardi and his assistants three months to make the
instruments themselves, at a cost of around Rp 10 million
(US$1,150), mostly financed from his own pocket, before they then
spent another three months practicing Suara Gentha.

He named the instruments -- kelenthung, kelonthong,
kelonthang, kelinthing and gong -- based on their sounds.

He hoped that his sacrifice would pay off and that his gentha
instruments would survive the challenging test of time and modern
culture.

"I want to see more people perform gentha gamelan more
frequently," Suwardi said.

In addition to reviving the bygone gentha gamelan, Suwardi
also presented his more "traditional" composition of Tumbuk,
which means bumping into each other in the Javanese language.

Tumbuk is played in a slendro rhythm (tune with five nearly
equal intervals) and tengahan rhythm (a series of two different
slendro), mostly using basic gamelan instruments of gender, rebab
and siter.

As a contemporary Javanese music composer, Suwardi inserted
two contemporary instruments for Tumbuk; one is a broken piano,
literally broken, and the other is called a Jalenthir, whose
cricket-like sound only destroyed the beauty of the whole
composition.

The Tumbuk composition, as a whole, was beautiful, with three
women and three men singing the Tumbuk verses.

In the universe, the sun, the earth and the moon undergo their
respective processes, leading to each having their own unique
cycle. When they are aligned with each other, or tumbuk, it
causes an eclipse.

In the Javanese calendar, there are days, pasaran (five-day
Javanese week), wuku (Javanese horoscope), months and years which
each have a different number of days. When the day, pasaran, wuku
and month meet, it is called tumbuk. This event holds a special
meaning for the Javanese people, so when someone's birth occurs
at the same time it is generally celebrated.

But for Suwardi, tumbuk means something different. His
definition emerged when he was faced with two difficult tasks:
one was to participate in Art Summit and the other was to go to
Australia to pursue his doctorate studies. Therefore, Tumbuk,
according to Suwardi, best described his feeling of "disarray".

The audience also has the freedom to interpret Tumbuk in their
own way.