Rasa: Affect and Intuition in Javanese Musical Aesthetics (review)

“[A]rt and the equipment to grasp it are made in the same shop” (Clifford Geertz, “Art as a Cultural System,” in Local Knowledge [New York: Basic Books, 1983], 118). Marc Benamou cites this pithy passage toward the end of his monograph on the aesthetic universe inhabiting the world of Central Javanese gamelan (orchestral) music and music making. To me, it is an exemplary summary of this startlingly erudite, culturally sensitive, and comprehensive work.

Benamou is an ethnomusicologist at Earlham College, and is recognized by cognoscenti of Javanese music (especially in the United States) as one of the foremost non-Javanese students and scholars of vocal music in the tradition (karawitan) involving gamelan ensembles. He is also a practicing musician in that tradition, and as an associate professor of music also teaches gamelan at Earlham. So it is no surprise that he would treat us to an outstanding, detailed-filled ethnography. But Benamou is clearly interested in social and philosophical issues about aesthetics too. He desires to investigate how Javanese musicians use language in systematic ways to categorize and characterize “what they hear—and above all, what they feel—when they listen to their music” (p. xi). So, then, his work seeks to offer a clear and well-reasoned discourse on Javanese musical aesthetics.

What is startling, however, is that he has managed to do both at once with sophistication and clarity, and convinces us that it could not be otherwise. Benamou must guide his readership through terminology in multiple languages (high Javanese, low Javanese, Indonesian, Arabic, English, Dutch), multiple informants (now referred to by many anthropologists as “resource people”), complex geographic and social environments, and multiple genres of vocal and instrumental music. That he is able to do so with clarity and precision is testimony to his skill as an ethnographer; that he does so with writing that is graceful, self-deprecatory, sympathetic, and intelligent is icing on the cake.

(At this point, I must disclose to the reader that I am also a non-Javanese performer and student of karawitan, both instrumental and vocal music, and my scholarly interest in this tradition is also ethnomusicological. However, I come to the topic as a cognitive psychologist rather than as an ethnographer: two different lenses through which to perceive and appreciate a complex and fascinating culture.)

Benamou has a delightful and facilitative way of addressing the crux of the many issues involved with concise and very direct writing. Consider the following example, wherein the reader is quickly informed about the point of the study, but also alerted to the complex issues involved in doing the analysis:

By attending to musical affect and how musicians talk about it, we are led to both musical object and musical activity at the same time. This is because affect is at the heart of the aesthetic experience, and yet it cannot be understood outside of a larger context. This context may be taken for granted when one is a cultural insider, but it becomes much less transparent in a cross-cultural setting.

(p. xv)

Despite all these favorable omens, Rasa is likely to be hard work for readers unfamiliar with the traditional music of Central Java. There’s a great deal of terminology required to learn about musical structure, style, and performance practice. Even more nomenclature surrounds the overlapping clusters of synonyms for aesthetic values attributed to these musical phenomena. Still, the author is aware of the challenges his readers face, and he is at great pains to provide definitions, glossaries, contextual clarification, English translations, and insightful discursive detours.

Rasa is organized into to three parts: an extended preface, the main aesthetic ethnography (supplemented by two musicological appendices) and a concluding section that returns us to the bigger picture. I shall organize my commentary along the same lines.

The prefaces in this monograph are designed to help the reader. First is an introductory glossary of key terms...