Balinese suling have six holes, which are spaced fairly evenly. By covering the holes, the player can produce four- or five-tone modes taken from a basic seven-tone scale. To create slight variations on each tone, a hole or holes can be partly uncovered. Suling produce many other overtones and harmonics, and this is particularly noticeable on the large flutes. Balinese flute playing is characterized by a quivering sound made by wiggling the fingers over the holes and by embellishments known as ngelik.

There are thousands of flute players in Bali and many experts who will not hesitate to proudly show you their collection of suling and the different nuances of each instrument. Many people ornament their flutes with jewels, tassels and even inlay them with turtle shell. These flute fanatics will carry their instruments wherever they go, in case they feel the need to spontaneously break out into song!

Copyright © Vaughan Hatch 2013

Due to the success of this performance, the troupe was commissioned by an enthusiastic member of the audience to perform at a further spiritual event that took place a week later. This event was a rave success with members of the audience going into trance due to the atmosphere created by the music. Mekar Bhuana sold many CDs and DVDs, and captivated members of the audience gave additional donations to the troupe that will be used for further study of this ancient repertoire.

On May 24 at 3-6pm Mekar Bhuana’s selonding troupe will perform again at their local banjar in Kertalangu, Denpasar (400m from Mekar Bhuana). Contact us for further details and also about commissioning our troupe for a performance.

Our set is a duplicate of the set from Besakih Temple, the mother temple of Balinese Hinduism, and it is the first orchestra of its kind in South Bali. Since the blessing of the set in January 2012, Mekar Bhuana has immersed itself in serious study of this wonderful, rare music. Read more about this unique set of instruments and watch a video of the set being played at a Brahmin family temple in Sanur.

Thank you for your interest and support!

Mekar Bhuana Founders

Vaughan Hatch & Putu Evie

The physical representation of a banjar is a large pavilion which may or may not have enclosed walls. Normally the wall facing the street is open and has a gate on it. To the side of the gate on a post or hanging from the pavilion roof will be a number of signboards. These boards tells the public that there are a number of organizations and groups that fall under the banjar structure. One organization that most banjar have is a gamelan group, known as ‘sekaa gong’ in Balinese. The word ‘sekaa’ may be spelt in a number of different ways: seka, sekaa, sekehe or sekaha – they all mean the same thing. ‘Gong’ refers to the entire gamelan orchestra, all its instruments and the members of the group, not just a round thing called a gong.

There will be a structured organization within a sekaa gong. This may consist of: a leader (kelihan), vice-leader (wakil kelihan), a secretary (sekretaris) and a treasurer (bendahara). For really big events like a calonarang dance drama performance, the sekaa gong will also structure a committee to carry out tasks like food and drink at practices, hiring teachers, organising costumes, the venue, lighting and stage decorations.

A banjar sekaa gong will play at temple festivals and banjar anniversaries. They may also be asked to play at ceremonies of members of the banjar or even the village. Some sekaa gong will play at festivals, and also do paid gigs at hotels and ceremonies outside their village, if there are commissioned.

Members of a sekaa gong were traditionally all men, but now in many banjar you will find women’s groups (sekaa gong wanita) and children’s groups (sekaa gong anak-anak).

In the old days, the nights would be alive with sekaa gong practices nearly every night. However, these days sekaa gong only practice when there is an event to prepare for. If the sekaa gong is chosen to represent their regency in the highly competitive gong kebyar festival at the annual Bali Arts Festival, however, the group will practice intensively for several months. A festival winning banjar group will be the pride of the banjar for many years.

This is what really stands out about Bali – its traditional culture and way of life. There is nowhere else in the world like it. Let’s take the Balinese performing arts as an example. At the last government estimate there are more than 40 different types of gamelan ensembles and perhaps more than a hundred dances. These numbers are on the increase all the time as people think of new ideas and concepts. In terms of performers, there must be more musicians and dancers per capita in Bali than any other island, nay country, in the world. Impressive stats, I hear you say. It’s not all sunny days however. Amongst it all there are in fact a number of important forms of traditional performing arts which are gravely endangered. Ironically, rare art forms such as legong, gambang or gambuh are seen as a fundamental part of music or dance in Bali.

Yet all the time I keep reading articles in glossy tabloids exclaiming: ‘What is all the fuss about “Ajeg Bali” and “cultural preservation? It’s alive and happening in front of our own eyes – they still have the ceremonies, don’t they?’ Apart from not doing there homework (one writer interviewed ball boys and scrabble players as part of his ‘in-depth’ survey), they are tragically missing the point. For sure on the surface, there are still lots of ceremonies and pretty offerings. Yes, kids are still learning gamelan and dance at community centres around Bali. What is not being asked, is the details: What are they learning? Is there any depth in the understanding? How long do the kids learn for? Is there any continuity? You’ll find that most kids who learn dance these days are only scratching the skin of tradition. Most of them will learn Tari Kelinci (bunny rabbit dance) or Tari Cendrawasih (bird dance) which in the Balinese world of dance are very simple dances. Anything traditional requiring years of practice and discipline, such as Legong, is not attempted.

Journalists who suggest that talking about ajeg is unwarranted are simply doing more harm than good. Such claims can only breed apathy and complacency. People will start to think that all is fine and dandy and nothing needs to be done. If this were the case, gamelan repertoires and dances wouldn’t be disappearing. If Balinese culture wasn’t under threat, why would Ida Pedanda Made Gunung even waste his breath going on Bali TV every day to talk about the dilemmas of Ajeg Bali?

“What can I do to help?” I hear you squeal… Get involved! Learn some gamelan, learn some dance, ask your friends to teach you how to make offerings or write Balinese script. Put aside a little time to learn about your cultural environment. When the Balinese see that outsiders really care, they will realize that their culture and traditions, not nightclubs and shopping malls, are their most valuable assets. Ajeg Bali, oi, oi, oi!

© 2012 Vaughan Hatch

Like most other Balinese gamelan instruments, rindik are tuned in pairs, one being tuned slightly higher than the other. This is what produces the characteristic humming sound. A rindik is played with either two or three beaters, one held in the left hand and one or two in the right. Normally, the left hand carries the melody and the right plays a pattern that creates interlocking configuration between the two right-hand parts. Although it may look effortless, playing rindik is a masterful skill that takes many years to learn.

Hundreds of compositions have been composed for rindik, and each region—even each village—in Bali reveals different styles and repertoire. Most of the compositions were inspired by nature and have been named after flowers and animals. I love some of the more humorous ones, like Caplok Bangkung (Snapping Pig) or Dongkang Menek Biu (Tree Frog Climbing a Banana). It never ceases to amaze me how many compositions some of these “lobby musicians” know, and they’re all committed to memory!

Since the onset of tourism in Bali, traditional musicians such as rindik players have been undervalued and terribly underpaid compared with say rock/jazz/fusion or pop musicians. This is a real tragedy because it is yet again another example of cultural imperialism and the lack of value place on indigenous art-forms. Generally, this is a worldwide phenomenon.

However, Mekar Bhuana Conservatory is trying to fight against the trend by training musicians who are professional, reliable and an adept to the challenges of the tourism industry. Over the past 12 years, the conservatory has been providing professionally managed rindik groups as well as other gamelan orchestras, such as pelegongan, semar pegulingan, Gambuh, gender wayang, selonding, baleganjur and genggong for quality performances. You can support their efforts and these musicians by hiring their troupes.

If you are interested in purchasing rindik instruments or recordings of bamboo rindik music, you can visit www.mekarbhuana.com – an online store that specialises in professional Balinese gamelan music and dance products.

© 2012 Mekar Bhuana

To increase awareness of and exposure to this beautiful art-form and the orchestra, Mekar Bhuana has opened selonding lessons for the general public of all ages. A minimum of 6 people are needed to play the instruments, with a maximum of 8 when playing gambang style music. Mekar Bhuana has engaged a young teacher from Karangasem, Pande Widiana, whose father is a selonding guru, and whose great uncle, Sri Mpu Tusan, is an authority on selonding in Bali and Java: author of a 535-page book on selonding that was published in 2002. Sri Mpu Tusan is the founder of the Selonding Foundation (Yayasan Selonding) which actively studies, documents and reconstructs selonding sets all over Bali. So far, the foundation has reconstructed more than four sets under the guidance of Sri Mpu Tusan and with funding from the Karangasem Regional Government.

Mekar Bhuana’s selonding set was made in Denpasar at Tapa Karya, and was the last set of selonding instruments made by the famous blacksmith Sri Mpu Ketut Sandi. Like the Besakih set, the tuning was modeled on the Bugbug set, but due to a discrepancy in the regularity of the tuning between each instrument, the tuning was altered slightly according to the taste of Mekar Bhuana Co-founder, Vaughan Hatch.

When Mekar Bhuana’s selonding set was blessed in early January 2012, when young members of Yayasan Selonding (boys and girls around 10-12 years old) played the set. Mekar Bhuana recorded the ceremony and the music for posterity. The group played repertoire from five different villages in Karangasem and Bangli: Bugbug, Bungaya, Ngis Manggis, Tenganan, Kedisan and Batur. The music was serene and peaceful, yet powerful and mystical.

Mekar Bhuana hopes that through education and study more people will soon have the opportunity to appreciate the surreal beauty of these ancient art-forms.

Balinese dance dates back more than 1000 years and there are hundreds of different dances that have been created and developed over the centuries. With origins in Indian, Chinese and Javanese dance, Balinese dance movements are highly stylised and closely interconnected with gamelan orchestral music. Each movement, position, transition and mimic has a specific name, and students learn these as they study with a teacher, who will chant these words in a sing-song manner.

Whilst the terminology is well documented in text form, little has been produced in other media – such as video – which is now a much more popular media than the written word. Award-winning dance instructor and co-founder of Mekar Bhuana Conservatory in Bali, Putu Evie Suyadnyani, saw the need for both documenting the Balinese terminology in video form; whilst at the same time producing a tutorial series to help students study prior to or as they learn.

The first in the series is entitled ‘Balinese Female Dance Movements Part I’ and explains some of the most basic positions, transitions and mimics for those with no or little prior experience of Balinese dance – basically a ‘Balinese dance for dummies’, ‘Balinese dance for those with two left feet’ edition to get you started from absolute zero.

Filmed at Mekar Bhuana Conservatory in Denpasar, the tutorial takes students on a dance journey step by step to the peaceful looping melodies of Mekar Bhuana’s 100-year-old semara patangian (pelegongan) gamelan orchestra.

The video is narrated in English with Indonesian subtitles and English translations of the Balinese dance terms. Evie believes that having all three languages is important in making Balinese dance more global, and more easily accessible to people all over the world.

A bonus feature in the DVD is a dance performance by the conservatory’s professional dancers accompanied by their antique seven-tone semara pagulingan set (this DVD, entitled ‘Semara Pagulingan with Gambuh Dances’ is available on www.mekarbhuana.com. This dance, called Gabor, was filmed in a beautiful historic temple in central Denpasar that dates back hundreds of years.

Evie hopes that this DVD tutorial, and later its downloadable version, will help to spread the beauty of this ancient art-form further around the world – after all, Mekar Bhuana in Balinese means just that: ‘to blossom around the world’!

Released in 2011, the DVD is available on Mekar Bhuana’s online store, as well as at numerous CD stores in Bali.

Dutch occupation meant that the palaces lost their power and many court art-forms, including wayang wong, were left to the villages carry on. In a few villages it was sanctified and subsequently well preserved, presented at temple ceremonies in the outer courtyard as an offering to the gods.  However due to the sheer size of the troupe, there are still a number of villages that have dormant traditions.

A wayang wong performance is completely different from the tourist Ramayana performances which you can see in most hotels in Bali, as it is not copied directly from the Javanese Ramayana tourist performance you find in Prambanan and other parts of Java. The dance movements, adopted from Gambuh and wayang kulit, are also highly stylised with the characters introduced slowly with much reverence by their servants.

In the Ramayana version, the characters all wear masks, thus their utterances are not clear. The Balinese have dealt with this performance issue by added a narrator, called a ‘juru tandak’ who not only speaks for the characters, but also narrates the story in a typical Balinese singing style.

What is particularly attractive about the Ramayana version of wayang wong is the brightly coloured, delicately carved masks that transform the human dancers into other worldly beings. Add to this the musical dimension of the lighter sounding gender wayang and bebatelan gamelan accompaniment, the tourist version that employs a regular, noisier gong kebyar gamelan orchestra pales in comparison, with less dramatic spirit and atmosphere.

Unfortunately, these copy-cat performances are what are generally on offer to your average tourist. In fact, in the 1970s, the explosion of Ramayana ‘sendratari’ performances in the the tourism industry in Bali sadly led to the destruction of many beautiful court gamelan sets, such as semara pagulingan, pelegongan and bebarongan, as they were melted down to become gong kebyar ‘Ramayana’ gamelan orchestras. All this in spite of the fact that a traditional wayang wong performance presents much more of a Balinese twist on these wonderful epics.

© 2012 Vaughan Hatch

It is not entirely clear when this art-form first appeared in Bali. Professor Made Bandem, author of Wayang Wong, presents evidence to suggest that it could have existed “…as far back as the 11th century.”  The drama adopts excerpts of stories from India’s two greatest epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, with the key difference in the performance being the use of masks: for a Mahabharata performance the actors don’t wear masks apart from the clowns; whereas for the Ramayana all the performers are masked.

A wayang wong troupe involves a large number of characters, which may range between around 20 to 60 depending on the story chosen. With each dancer costumed in gold-gilded cloth and leather, as well as colourful, exquisitely carved masks, the upkeep such a troupe can be a financial concern for many villages that have inherited a wayang wong tradition.

The traditional accompaniment for wayang wong are a quartet of 10-keyed gender wayang metallophones. These instruments are played with wooden mallets called panggul using a difficult two-handed technique, and are tuned to a 5-tone scale called selendro, which is fairly even tempered compared with the other tuning system in Bali called pelog. There are two mid range instruments called gender gede or gender pemade and two higher instruments which play another octave up called kantilan. The quartet is augmented by drums and gongs, including kendang kerumpungan wadon (female drum) and kendang kerumpungan lanang (male drum), kajar (boss-less handheld gong), kelenang, kempur (main hanging gong at medium pitch) and gentorag (bell tree). Sometimes a flute (suling) is added for the fast fight scenes called batel.

A vocalist singer called a juru tandak sings and speaks for the masked dancers who cannot be heard under the wooden masks. In modern performances he will be well equipped with a microphone (which is often at a higher volume than the rest of the ensemble).

A wayang wong performance is presented in multiple languages (Bandem, 2001): Sanskrit, ancient Balinese (Kawi) and different levels of Balinese high, medium and every day, depending on who is talking to whom). Characters are introduced by either the servants (for good characters) or the clowns (for evil ones) in a typically formal manner that would seem repetitive and overdone to modern audiences, but this is typical of ancient drama in Indonesia. Therefore, a performance may last for several hours. Some active wayang wong troupes are still found in Tejakula (Buleleng), Telepud (Gianyar), Tangkup (Gianyar), Mas (Gianyar), Tunjuk (Tabanan) and Sanur (recently reconstructed).

© 2012 Vaughan Hatch

One translation is that the word is made up of two words. Lega meaning happy and Ing wong meaning person –put them together and you get: “something that makes people happy”. Another one is oleg meaning dance and gong meaning gamelan, the music that accompanies the dance.

Interestingly enough, it is said that the original legong was danced by young boys in the courts and it was named Nandir. There is a possibility that legong is even older. The legong of Ketewel village in Gianyar traces its origins back to around 1825 when a prince named Dewa Karna Agung saw beautiful heavenly nymphs dancing the legong in a vision whilst in deep meditation in the local temple. Based on his vision dancers were sought to fit the part but as no girls in the village were beautiful enough to fit the part masks were made to cover the faces.

What is certain, legong developed during feudal times and it is not a new dance.

Unbeknownst to most people, including the Balinese, there are more than fifteen different stories in the legong repertoire with names such as Jobog (monkey kings), Kuntul (pied stilts) and Lasem (a Majapahit King).

Today the most common legong dance is Legong Keraton, so named by the Sultanate of Keraton Surakarta when the music and dance composer and genius I Wayan Lotring from Kuta was invited to perform in the 1920s with his pelegongan group in the keraton (palace) in Surakarta. Around a decade before, the Condong part of the performance was added by composer and musician, AA Peririt from Sukawati. A complete Legong Keraton performance is made up of more than ten parts. However, these are customarily cut for tourist performances; today it is very rare to see a complete Legong Keraton performance.

© 2012 Mekar Bhuana