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Intercultural Transfer and Balinese Gamelan Preservation

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Intercultural Transfer and Balinese Gamelan Preservation International Journal of Interreligious and Intercultural Studies (IJIIS) ISSN: 2654-2706, Volume 3, Number 1, April 2020 Intercultural Transfer and Balinese Gamelan Preservation Emma Lo Humboldt University Berlin, Germany <[email protected]> Abstract The influence and spread of traditional Balinese music over time and across regions has been conducted through a number of different channels. In addition to locally-focused efforts, cultural transfer has also contributed to the preservation of traditional Balinese arts. From the self-interested, strategic support of gamelan music by Japanese occupational forces to the global experimental music scene today, Balinese arts have been shared, supported, translated, and appropriated in various ways by a number of different actors to political, artistic, and commercial ends. Building on Michel Espagne’s definition of cultural transfer and Stephen Greenblatt’s concept of cultural mobility, this paper aims to outline different modes of cultural transfer (or “bridges,” as Espagne would say), with explicit attention to power dynamics and multi-way flows of influence. Several key historical and contemporary examples of the transfer of traditional Balinese music will be discussed in an effort to better understand the relationship between cultural transfer and preservation. Keywords: cultural transfer, tourism industry, music preservation, digitalization I. Introduction genre. Starting with the trajectory of This paper examines several Bali’s tourism industry, followed by an instances of the intercultural transfer overview of intercultural collaborations of gamelan, and discusses potential in contemporary music, the paper impacts these instances have had on concludes with a probe into how new the preservation of the instrument and digital technologies make the sounds 27 Intercultural Transfer and Balinese Gamelan Preservation of gamelan more available and more of rootedness” (Greenblatt et al 2009). malleable than ever in the global The tension between self-identity and marketplace. With each instance, the branded identity becomes an issue for author analyzes the conditions under Bali’s cultural agents, and is discussed which the transfer is taking place, using later in this paper. Michael Toggweiler primary source interviews, secondary and Manuela Rossini (2014) explain literature, and recordings to examine that “cultural transfer does not mean what might be lost or gained in transit. transfer between static and essentialized ‘cultures’ or the transfer of ‘Culture’ II. Theoretical Framework but, rather, a differing game and its Cultural transfer emerged as a term very real yet unstable discursive effects in the 1980s through Michel Espagne (differences, identities) within the and Michael Werner’s scholarship analytical framework of the ‘cultural’”. on the transfer of literature and art In this contribution to the ‘differing between France and Germany in the game,’ the term ‘transfer’ is used to 1900s, and has gradually developed contextualize cultural mobility, and into a field of study over the last several emphasize the factors that enable decades. Jin-Ah Kim (2015) made the Balinese gamelan, or aspects of it, to case to broaden the field beyond its move between cultures. Borrowing from focus on printed media and culture, to Toggweiler and Rossini’s framework connect the study of cultural transfer (2014), the author will interpret with the fields of music sociology instances of cultural transfer as sets of and music anthropology. Although “conditions and dynamics of selection, the terminology is still contested and translation, adaption or mutation within therefore loose, the author employs highly asymmetrical power relations.” the following definitions for the Musical exchange and collaboration do purposes of this paper. The working not happen in vacuums, but rather, are definition of ‘culture’ here leans on made possible by specific historical, Stephen Greenblatt’s concept of cultural political, and economic conditions. mobility, which identifies dynamism Those conducting intercultural as an intrinsic quality of culture, and transfer may try to decontextualize moves away from strict, geopolitical the transaction in the name of cultural delineations of culture by nation-state relativism or universalism, but this (Greenblatt et al 2009). Understanding merely obscures the living legacies culture as dynamic, however, can of colonialism and late capitalism be at odds with the performance or that enable such interactions. In marketing of said culture, as tourism differentiating contexts for several “often depends on a commodification examples of the transfer of Balinese 28 Emma Lo gamelan, this paper will examine the 1930s, Bali was attracting several agents, funding structures, site, and time thousands of tourists, mainly artists and of transfer. anthropologists, who returned home to The spread of Balinese and project orientalist images of “the last Javanese gamelan over the past paradise” across Europe (Picard 1996). two centuries has been extensive, Although Japan’s occupation of the conducted through both intracultural Dutch East Indies from 1942-1945 saw and intercultural channels of transfer. a period of reduced tourism, Japanese At the core of gamelan’s preservation occupational forces strategically and evolution are local efforts, which promoted the preservation of Balinese can be categorized into different types arts in hopes of consolidating power of intracultural transfer: through state- through a political and cultural funded music academies and annual campaign for Asian solidarity (Cohen music festivals, intergenerational and 2010). In 1967, General Suharto’s interfamilial education, as well as the “New Order” regime rapidly reopened more recent incorporation of female Indonesia with the construction of performers into coed ensembles and hotels and a new international airport, formation of female ensembles (Harnish leading to an explosion in numbers 2005). While these mechanisms of local of visitors (Picard 1996). In response transfer are vital to the preservation to this sudden influx, new legislation of gamelan, this paper will focus throughout the 1970s solidified Bali’s on recent instances of intercultural commitment to cultural tourism and transfer, understood as transfer attempted to address its challenges. conducted between native and non- In trying to separate agama (religion) native musicians, communities, and from adat (tradition), and constructing markets, and will enumerate some of the categories for types of dance (sacred, complex implications of these activities. ceremonial, and secular), these policies aimed to protect certain aspects of III. Early Intercultural Encounters Balinese culture from foreign influence with Balinese Gamelan and secularization, and commodify The most well-developed and other parts for foreign consumption highly visible site of intercultural (Harnish 2005). transfer of gamelan is Bali’s tourism Bali’s cultural tourism industry industry. Michel Picard (1996) continues to expand and to influence characterizes the birth of Bali’s cultural Balinese identity construction (Ardhana tourism industry as a Dutch attempt 2017). Harnish (2005) elaborates on its at appeasement after their conquests impacts on Bali’s musical identity over of 1846-1908. By the end of the decades of transfer conducted through 29 Intercultural Transfer and Balinese Gamelan Preservation the tourism industry, arguing that “the “Modernisation has quickened the pace of life and altered tourist industry, foreign researchers, values of the arts. The resulting and global market have forever changed compartmentalisation-along with tourism, telecommunications and arts Balinese perceptions of themselves and entities-has triggered modifications their arts.” Not only have non-local in music and theatre forms. Music is often faster with greater ornamental interferences affected local perceptions, parts (kotekan) and theatrical they’ve also influenced the evolution of performances shorter. In many styles of theatre, the shorter length has gamelan music. In this way, the cultural reduced the number of compositions tourism industry has dual qualities, and the language preferences have shifted from archaic Javanese (Kawi) viewed as both the cause of ‘cultural to common Balinese while humour is pollution’ and an agent of ‘cultural more emphasised than philosophical teachings.” renaissance’ (Harnish 2005). Fallout from colonial policies supposedly The adjustments to ensemble, influenced the innovation of new styles length of piece, and content seem of gamelan, according to Harnish: to have been influenced by cultural “The twentieth century gong kebyar, exchanges between Balinese performers the style that catapulted Bali into and tourist audiences, and these changes the international eye, developed as a result of colonisation. With most have endured. of their revenue terminated in the early colonial years, the court centres could not support their gamelans, IV. Contemporary Intercultural and so pawned them to village Collaboration and Hybridiza- organisations that transformed and tion decontextualised gamelan music for new aesthetic ends. The kebyar Connections made through style first emerged by 1915 at competitions in north Bali, and, Bali’s cultural tourism networks have by the 1930s, was dominating and supported the emergence of intercultural defining Balinese music locally and internationally. Musicians and collaboration on musical projects. dancers, many of them commoners, From
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