Gamelan Manikasanti : One Ensemble, Many Musics

Preamble

This article represents the ideas of one of Bali's most knowledgeable and widely respected musicians, I Wayan Sinti.¹ The process of bringing Sinti's ideas to this journal began in February 2005, when I spent a week with him at the University of Washington in Seattle. During that visit he entrusted me with a manuscript written in his own hand, which he asked me to work on and make available to the broader scholarly community. The information in that manuscript forms the basis of this article. For my part, I have organized and, in some cases, articulated his ideas, as well as attempting to provide them with a degree of context to make them more accessible to all ethnomusicologists—both Bali specialists as well as those working in other cultures. The many drafts and discussions along the way are testament to a dialogical process that confirmed, clarified, and elicited new information. My own hope is that this text will do justice to Sinti's vision, style, and enthusiasm so that readers may hear firsthand from a unique and important voice in the music of Bali today.

In many ways, this article breaches the boundaries of more conventional ethnomusicological presentations in scholarly journals. It is a very personal, albeit immensely authoritative, first person account of one man's knowledge, passion, and vision, and it does not aim to represent the "Balinese" viewpoint as a whole (if there is such a thing). It also does not aim at objectivity, and in many ways expresses views that are thought by many Balinese to be archaic. Instead, this is an important story of a new gamelan created primarily for the purpose of saving a repertoire that is in danger of becoming obsolete: gamelan manikasanti, in a real and practical way, embodies a lifetime of knowledge about traditions that Sinti himself treasures deeply, and it represents a creative endeavor that has occupied him over the last twenty-five years.

Annette Sanger

Introduction

Readers may remember an Asian Music article by Andrew McGraw about a new kind of Balinese ensemble—gamelan semara dana—invented in 1987 by the renowned composer and teacher, I Wayan Beratha.²Gamelan semara dana combines the tunings and instruments of the five-tone gamelan gong kebyar with the seven-tone gamelan semar pegulingan. This article introduces the gamelan manikasanti, another "combination" ensemble that I have developed along similar lines. Having said that, there are also many differences both in concept and instrumentation, as I will discuss below. I would also argue that manikasanti extends the capabilities of the "all-in-one" gamelan by being even more inclusive in terms of its capacity to play repertoire from many different traditional Balinese ensembles.

Gamelan manikasanti dates back to 1994, though the idea came to me some thirteen years earlier. Why was it so long in the making? To start with, I presented my concept in 1981 for a multipurpose gamelan to the Bali Post, Bali's chief newspaper that publishes many articles on the arts and culture of the island (including a number by, and about, me). At that time, I called it gong gede saih pitu (gong gede refers to the large ceremonial gamelan ensemble, and saih pitu to the seven-tone tuning).³ Despite having front-page exposure in the newspaper, there was no response from the musical community or the government at that time. Two years later I heard that I Wayan Beratha had built a new kind of gamelan, genta pinara pitu, combining gong kebyar and semar pegulingan instruments and tunings (addressed in more detail below). However, since his concept and purpose was different from mine, I still thought it necessary to build a new ensemble of my own. Nevertheless, this took several years due to both financial and musical issues.

Financially, I did not have the money to pay for the instruments to be built. As a teacher at a high school for the arts I had only a moderate income, and a family with five children to support. Nevertheless, I eventually came up with the money through...