In Tune With Indonesian Music : Music Students Bang Different Kind of Gong

Mike Pievac likes to think the gamelan music he plays is some of the oldest New Age music in existence.

Pievac, 24, will perform with CalArts’ Javanese and Balinese gamelans--performance ensembles that sometimes include singers--in the institute’s World Music Festival, which begins Thursday with a performance at William S. Hart High School in Newhall.

The festival is an extension of CalArts’ world music program and reflects one of the school’s fundamental premises--that requiring music students to take performance classes in non-Western music helps build a global awareness.

In the case of Pievac and Ed Dorsey, 32, the festival’s production consultant, the result of their education is evident. Both of them not only discuss Indonesian music with ease, but African and Indian music as well, the way most Americans would discuss rock ‘n’ roll, country-Western and jazz.

In fact, rock, country and jazz were the backgrounds that the two brought to CalArts when their studies began. Dorsey, originally a composition major, played banjo, mandolin and “very bad electric guitar,” while Pievac had been studying drums since elementary school, playing rock and jazz.

Learning about Indonesian music, which sounds like a cross between a steel band and an ensemble of wind chimes, requires flexibility; a student must develop a different way of hearing. Unlike Western music, in which the notes are named after letters of the alphabet, the tones are numbered. And there’s no standard like A-440 (in which the A above middle C is a standard 440 cycles per second).

“It took me a year before I could stand listening to the singers,” Dorsey said. “The singing ‘out of tune’ drove me nuts.”

And then there are the instruments (xylophones, gongs and brass kettles): their names, their sounds and the way they are tuned make for a challenging cross-cultural experience.

Instruments are given names that imitate their sounds, the most obvious being “gong.” (An exception is siter , which comes from zither.) Each gamelan takes its name from that given to its largest, suspended gong. CalArts’ Javanese gamelan is actually Kyai Kumbul meaning “famous gamelan.”

Balinese gamelans also take their name from the large gong, although there is only one, which is usually placed at the tip of a “V” formed by two rows of instruments. In some ceremonies, the gong is moved so dancers may enter from a temple door and through the center of the “V.”

In addition to mastering the instruments, Dorsey and Pievac said, they had to learn how to perform without being nervous. Instead of focusing on a solo and what mistakes might occur, there is an emphasis on playing together in a gamelan. The group rather than the individual is stressed.

And there are other lessons.

“One thing you learn is to be totally content to play the same dance pieces,” Dorsey said. “Westerners are demented about getting new things every day of the week.”

Compositions range in age from the archaic, written about 200 years ago, to those by CalArts’ Javanese gamelan teacher, K.R.T. Wasitodiningrat, or his son-in-law I Nyoman Wenten, who teaches Balinese gamelan. (Wenten’s wife, Ninik, teaches Javanese and Balinese dance at CalArts).

“The bottom line is they don’t waste their time thinking ‘I gotta do a new album,’ ” Dorsey said.

If the sight of Americans playing Indonesian music seems unusual in the United States, imagine what it’s like when they travel to Balinese or Javanese villages to study.

During one of several visits to Bali, Pievac sat in with a village gamelan one night because he knew the music they were playing. “Right away, I had a crowd . . . ooooohh, white man,” he said. “They were so close I

didn’t even have room to play.”

Other CalArts students have studied in Indonesia as well. During the festival, Maria Bodmann will give a performance with Balinese shadow puppets, which she mastered during a Fulbright fellowship in Bali. The puppets, large, flat leather figures on sticks, are pierced to cast shadows as they move behind a screen.

When she and fellow student Cliff DeArment returned, they taught the music that accompanies the puppet shows to other CalArts students, giving Pievac a chance to study gender , which is one of the most difficult Balinese group of instruments because of the fast, interlocking parts.

“The Balinese consider gender one of the hardest ensembles to play in,” Pievac said. “In other ensembles, there’s the gong and drum to keep you together. Here you can crash and fall apart.”

“It’s grotesquely ornate, but wonderful,” Dorsey said.

If it really is a small world, there may still be limits. Dorsey and Pievac say they had learned a more global approach to music from studies at CalArts. While Dorsey rarely plays Western music anymore--”once in a while I drag out my 12-string guitar and drive my wife nuts”--Pievac has found a crossover between his world music training and the rock and jazz drumming he has continued.

Still, when Dorsey described the ceremony in which the gamelan’s large gong is named, he couldn’t help expressing hesitancy. He said that according to tradition, three or four renowned musicians get together for a night, each of them dreaming the same dream independently. “I don’t know about that,” he said. “Not that I’m a total cynic, but I’m still an American.”

The festival opens at 8 p.m. Thursday with Balinese, Indian and African music at William S. Hart High School, 24825 Newhall Ave., Newhall. Tickets are $6, $3 for students and seniors. Balinese music and dance will be performed at 8 p.m. Friday at Barnsdale Art Park Gallery Theatre in Hollywood, 4800 Hollywood Blvd. Tickets are $6 and $3.

From 2 to 7 p.m. on Saturday, African, Javanese, Indian and Irish music will be performed at Barnsdale Art Park, and ethnic food will be sold. Bracha, a band that performs multicultural music, will perform at 8 p.m. Tickets are $6 and $3.

On Sunday, events at CalArts, 24700 McBean Parkway, will include a children’s show of Balinese shadow puppets at 2 p.m., Indian music from 3 to 6 p.m. and Balinese shadow puppets at 7 p.m. It is free.

African music and dance will be performed at 8 p.m. April 29 at the Japan America Theatre, 244 S. San Pedro St., Los Angeles. Javanese music and dance will be performed at 8 p.m. April 30 at Japan America. Tickets are $10.

In addition, the Balinese gamelan will perform a 30-minute concert at 11:30 a.m. Sunday at Valencia Summit Park, 26147 McBean Parkway.