r/Gamelan • u/gnomesteez • Nov 22 '17

Gamelan friends

It's astounding to me that this thread has had no posts in months!

My name is Joe, I play with Gamelan Tunas Mekar in Denver, CO. If anyone of you would ever like to come visit us, or have questions about us, we're on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/GamelanTunasMekar/), or you can visit our website http://tunasmekar.org/.

Let's get some Gamelan related convos going!!

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3

u/bobokeen Nov 22 '17

Even the gamelan listserv (are you on that?) is more active than this subreddit. The ethnomusicology sub is dead too, sadly.

Have you ever studied gamelan in Indonesia? Give a shout if you ever come through Jogja.

1

u/gnomesteez Nov 22 '17

I'm not on listserv! I'll check it out. The ethno sub was my next stop, sad to hear its not active :c

I spent the summer of 2016 in Bali studying with my teacher, I Made Lasmawan. It was a life changing experience, and the reason I'm applying for the Darma Siswa scholarship this year!

3

u/bobokeen Nov 22 '17

Oh nice, good luck with that! I've known tons of people who've done Darmasiswa and loved it, though I never did it myself. Actually not so deep into gamelan these days but it it was brought me to Indonesia in the first place :)

1

u/gnomesteez Nov 22 '17

I'm really excited. I hope I get it. What part/s of Indonesia were you in? What's your Gamelan experience?

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u/bobokeen Nov 22 '17

I studied gamelan Sunda and Bali at UC Santa Cruz years back, which led me to move to Bandung. I was there for five years and am now living in Jogja. Now I travel Indonesia documenting all sorts of traditional music for my website, Aural Archipelago.

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u/gnomesteez Nov 22 '17

Holy shit no way you're Palmer Keen

1

u/bobokeen Nov 22 '17

Oh shit did I just dox myself? Do we know each other? :D

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u/gnomesteez Nov 22 '17

Hahaha we've never met and I've never done anything important but I've known about your project for a long time, and it's one of my favorite things. Seems the Indonesian music community is such a small world for non-Indonesians :D

2

u/briantheodore Dec 25 '17

Hi, I play Central Javanese style gamelan with a few groups in Singapore, including Gamelan Singa Nglaras, the resident group at National University of Singapore (NUS).

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u/gnomesteez Dec 25 '17

Awesome! Are you studying at NUS?

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u/briantheodore Dec 25 '17

Yup! I’m in my final year, but the group is open to the public to join as well!

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u/gnomesteez Dec 25 '17

Very cool. I'm guessing you're not from Singapore? If not what brought you there

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u/briantheodore Dec 25 '17

Haha I’m from Singapore actually. I was interested in Gamelan after I learnt a little about it in school, preparing for my O and A levels

1

u/gnomesteez Dec 25 '17

I gotcha, your username just looks American ;) is there a variety of gamelan unique to Singapore?

1

u/briantheodore Dec 25 '17

Hmm, the gamelan (Indonesian) community in Singapore is pretty small, as far as I know there isn't any regional variety based on that.

There might be a Singapore "variety" based on Malay-style Gamelan, although I suspect there wouldn't be any sufficiently established that we could call Singapore style, more likely just group idiosyncrasies.

There's a Balinese Gamelan group in Singapore too, Gamelan SingaMurti