The city of Jakarta, capital of Indonesia, is more than 10,000 miles from Virginia, but the traditional music of that country has taken hold in Richmond and Charlottesville, where locals rehearse and perform on drums, brass gongs and xylophones. Sandy Hausman reports on the allure of the gamelan orchestra.
In the basement of Cindy Benton Groner’s Charlottesville home, beside the washer and dryer, the boxes and books, a dozen people sit on the floor, legs crossed, warming up for a rehearsal of the Javanese gamelan orchestra – a collection of about 20 gongs, drums and xylophones. As a graduate student in ethno-musicology, Benton Groner brought many of these heavy brass instruments home from Indonesia and introduced them to friends like Chris Tyler, a local inn keeper who’s been playing for more than 20 years.
“Well you have to hear it. It’s just absolutely enthralling," he explains. "It’s totally different, and it’s very mesmerizing and very ethereal, but it’s a really interesting music form.”
Others, like Bob DuCharme, have wanted to play since they learned about gamelan in a music appreciation class.
“So I did some web searches and found out that Cindy lives two miles away from me.," he recalls. "I probably could have walked had it not been so hot.”
And Cindy welcomes them all
“Traditionally, Indonesians believe that anybody has the capacity to make music," she says. "Of course there are instruments that can be very challenging and have complicated things, but for a simple eight beat rhythm, you can have an experience that takes you into a different world. It’s like learning a new language. Music has been described as a babbling brook or rain falling down. Each sound is percussive and is played by itself, but together it has this magical realization.”
At the University of Richmond, Andy McGraw teaches music and conducts the other gamelan in Virginia. Working with students, he’s concluded we all have a gift.
“When I ask them to clap a beat, within about thirty seconds they’re all clapping the same beat, which is not something any other animal can do. Music evolved as a particularly human activity,” he says.
And he loves the gamelan, because there’s a place for people of all ages and levels of skill.
“Some people are just happy to hit a gong and count for eight beats, and some people want meatier parts, and so you can accommodate that range of people that you find in any community.”
Hannah Standiford is one of those skilled performers. She had studied classical guitar and traditional Appalachian music before attending one of the Richmond gamelan’s concerts.
“And I was just like – this is the coolest. I think I had heard recordings before, but it just didn’t hit me in the same way. There’s something about being there that really struck me.”
She joined the group and played for two years – then got a scholarship from the Indonesian government to study gamelan on Java. Now she’s turning others onto the sound – performing last month with McGraw and the rest of the orchestra at the Smithsonian, hosting musicians from Bali at the Richmond Folk Festival October 7 through 9th and playing October 16th at a Richmond restaurant called Balliceaux.