As it happens, we were on our honeymoon, five weeks in Thailand and Indonesia. Laurel had tricked John by only agreeing to marry him if she got to plan the honeymoon. Thailand was fabulous and Bali – planned as a relaxing reward for all the roughing it that didn’t actually happen in Thailand – was even more easy and fun. In Indonesia we stayed mostly in Bali. Kuta has great beaches but we’d heard that it was very touristy, so we opted for Ubud instead, known as a centre for art and crafts. (It was a different kind of touristy, but we enjoyed it very much.)
We bought the crafts, like crazy, and looked at the arts, mostly performing. The people who ran our guesthouse and also the people at the cultural center were extraordinarily friendly. Each of them insisted, separately, that we attend a local performance, so we booked two. The first night it was a gamelan performance, with dancing; the second night some kind of all women’s performance. What we knew about gamelan was literally nothing. It could have been monkeys riding pogo sticks, or singers doing acrobatics, or a magic show with flames all around.
Gamelan Music
But it wasn’t any of those: it was a kind of drum music. Wikipedia, which has a lot to say on the topic, calls gamelan music percussive, noting that the instruments are primarily metallophones and that the islands of Indonesia each have subtly different traditions. It is played at religious ceremonies, weddings, funerals, and also accompanies dancing and puppet-shows. Though we had never heard of it before, we were to hear it at least once a day during our stay, live, on the radio, informally in the street.
We have since learned from various sources that some of its importance and beauty come from the fact that it comprises many individual players harmonising with one another in the interest of a larger whole. That its non-linear rhythms are meant, in part, to remind us of the cyclicality of everyday life. That Debussy heard it in Paris in 1889 and it changed his music forever.
Here’s the thing: we struggled to like it. Even more so the following night, when the ‘female performers’ played gamelan music, with dancers whose stylised movements also left us cold. We stayed both nights, all the way to the end. The fact that there was excellent and very cheap pink bubbly wine was only marginally relevant. After all, we thought, this is an Experience; we may never hear music like this again! (At least the first night we thought that. The second night we had a feeling we might run into gamelan again, as indeed we did.) But we were seated at a table right up at the front and we didn’t want to be rude.
What We Learned
Believe us: we tried. We don’t know much about music, so it’s probably us. In fact, we’re sure King Crimson is right (like Debussy) and we’re wrong on this one. We are well aware of the tendencies of westerners to be culturally imperialistic, and we deplore the unfortunate and creeping spread of all things American. Bad culture, like bad money, drives good culture out of circulation. Also, we like lots of things we didn’t like the first time around (arugula, for one); some things take a while to grow on you. So we wholeheartedly want traditions like gamelan music to continue. We might even buy tickets to another performance, to support it (though there’s a good chance we’d give those tickets away!). We’ve reached the point where we are not sure what is to be gained by going out of our way to not enjoy ourselves. After all, we also know we don’t like country music, and we feel just fine about that. So, while we’re always willing to try something new, we’ve stopped beating ourselves up about not liking some of stuff we do try. There are, we hope, plenty of people out there who will like it, whatever it is.
