Ambassador Spirit of Gamelan Sekar Jaya
20th Anniversary Show Celebration at Cowell Theater
By Ruth Yfonne Chen

What began as a short-term Balinese music workshop in a borrowed Berkeley living room has flowered into a 20-year legacy of Balinese music and dance in the Bay Area and abroad.

Founded in 1979 by UCLA graduate dance ethnologist Rachel Cooper, world-renowned gamelan musician I Wayan Suweca, and composer and Balinese music professor Michael Tenzer, Gamelan Sekar Jaya quickly became a hit in Bali in its earliest days. Last month American audience support was so overwhelming from its inception that even three farewell concerts were not enough to drive them away. Gamelan Sekar Jaya celebrated its 20th anniversary Sept.24-26 at Fort Mason’s Cowell Theater. The entire four concert weekend offered a multi-dimensional palette for the senses -- a wide range of Balinese and Balinese American premieres created by seven invited Balinese guest masters and American members of the group, along with select traditional pieces.

The darkly mystical, exotic sounding music of Nyoman Windhams Kali Sengaran opened the evening with a sunburst of intense collective energy, intricate scales and melodies, revealing a most mysteriously charged angelic exotic sounds from the full orchestra. The gamelan orchestra of instruments, including sections of tuned gongs, drums, flutes, and bamboo marimbas is joined by the somewhat melancholic and sweet song of women ensemble singers, calling for prayer and purification in response to a conflicted world.

Sacred models of stately gamlean music combine with traditional ritual dances to create Selat Segaran, a temple dance in which six women move in procession with mesmerizing, head-tilting, hip-swaying step walks, complemented by angular arm gestures and smooth shoulder shakes. The reserved yet dramatic dancers interpret the music of Wayan Rai S. and choreography of Gusti Ayu Srinatih with highly detailed sharp gestures and darting eyes.

The traditional piece Terungtungann featured a superb traditional gamelan Caucasian ensemble with six ornately painted bamboo marimbas in varying sizes. The tune begins softly, in slightly dark mood, drumming on the bamboo wood, alternating in series with a very loud, intense pounding, interlocking musical notes that brought out the hypnotizing quality of these Balinese instruments used for calling village audience to a performance by traveling groups.

Soloist dancer Kompiang Metri in Kebyar Dudukn, based on an influential 1925 work, displays with impeccable technique and incredible energy a flamboyant and temptutous firebird character. Bedecked in gold attire, with a very sure and powerful presence, she moves rapidly in a half-seated position, using intricate angular arm gestures and dramatic facial expressions to show rapid mood shifts.

The most mesmerizing of the traditional pieces on Saturday night's program was Telekn, which was chosen to end the program. A famous ritual drama between divine demons barong (protective) and rangda (destroyer), Telekn portrayed four dancers in red and gold strips attire and smiling white masks moving in refined abstract patterns with their angular arms, beautifully arched flexed feet, and swaying hip walks.

What makes Gamlelan Sekar Jaya memorable is their deep sense of tradition that is blended in unpredictable configurations with other music styles of the West, whether pop, classical or rock.

There is, for example, the simple but easily understood Never Neverland, where Lars Jensen adapts a familiar American pop song to Balinese music, which Laura McColm sings in English with a haunting dreamy quality. Using the high pitched Balinese music tone and style, to the full accompaniment of the gamelan orchestra - the piece demonstrates what popular Balinese gamelan music must sound like to Balinese ears.

Girahann, composed by American member Wayne Vitale and choreographed by I Wayan Dibia, portrays a group of Calonarang witches expressing their demonic joy in the middle of the night. Inspired by the masked dance of the Jauk, a demon-like figure in Balinese ritual drama, four women in black unitards and brown skirt wraps with wild flowing hair and extremely long yellow spidery fingernails, dance in awkwardly stiff wild jungle-like abandon, before they are joined by the bold and ferocious Jauk dancer with extremely large hands, danced by the distinguished Wayan Dibia.

Another experimental piece, Bridegroom of Blood (1998), arranged by Carla Fabrizio, featured the a gamelan ensemble with a classical violinist Monica Scott and cellist Sarah Willner with the alternative band, The Residents. Two eyeball-headed men in black tuxedos, two bass guitar players join two crow looking vocalists rasping in English verse. The strange configuration of Western classical music, Balinese music and American rock music stretches the limits of audience comprehension, but the younger crowd applauded this multi-sensory bazaar of sights and sounds.

Gamelan Sekar Jaya has truly earned its name, which means Victoriams Flowern -- flowering success. Sekar Jayams six differing gamelan ensembles form a rich cultural tapestry that maps their history, which is reflective of the creativity and cultural fusion of the Bay Area.

Gamelan Sekar Jaya will appear next in Los Angeles to continue their 20th anniversary year celebrations at UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall with Cambodian ensemble Danse Celeste on Saturday and at the World Festival of Sacred Music iniated by His Holiness the Dalai Lama to be held at Hollywood Bowl on Sunday.

For more information on Gamelan Sekar Jaya, call (510) 237-6849 or the music hotline (310) 208-2784.