Kadapat: Merging Gamelan and Electronics

I Gede Yogi Sukawiadnyana and I Gusti Nyoman Barga Sastrawadi make up the two halves of Kadapat. The musical pair is as comfortable performing gamelan instruments at “traditional” ceremonies held by their local communities as they are presenting their hybrid compositions to the stunned audiences of techno clubs. Kadapat’s first self-titled debut meshes the sonic profiles, techniques, and dramaturgy of Balinese gamelan with the eerie drones, wobbling oscillations, and glitched sampling of electronic synthesis. Kedapat met with members of the EastEast team in Denpasar to reflect on gamelan and electronics, breaking binary expectations, and the specific roles their respective instruments play in their lives, their composition process, and performances.  

SIMILARITIES, OPPOSITES, AND ELECTRONIC PEDAGOGY

I Gede Yogi Sukawiadnyana: We were in the same college but somehow didn't speak so much about music until the last semester, when we suddenly realized we had a lot in common with our interests in music, the way we use technology and electronics with music; not many other people were working in this way, especially our fellow gamelan musicians. It was seen as almost polar opposite to gamelan, which is so organic, so natural, so religious, and the electronics were seen as something “un-organic” or “synthetic.”   

But something we were both considering at that time, and still consider to this day, is the ways in which electronics came to help us to think differently about gamelan; it brings out different dimensions, helps us to consider how the sound is produced but also how it can be manipulated by a DAWDAWAcronym for "Digital Audio Workstation," such as Ableton or Protools., by effects.

But initially, we were composing using electronics for practical reasons—we used Ableton and other DAWs simply to save time, as an educational tool. With gamelan, you are always writing for a large ensemble, and you then have to teach each individual part that you compose to each member of the group. We don’t have the most descriptive tools for writing this down—we have a number system, but it doesn’t illustrate contours, tempos, etc. and the DAW helped me to actually present the composition. 

I Gusti Nyoman Barga Sastrawadi: it’s hard to find musicians that are always available, that’s why I started using Ableton to teach parts of my compositions to students who couldn’t make it to rehearsals. I was studying electronics and composition while at college, and I realized that I wouldn’t have access to the same kind of musicians back at home, those that understood these kinds of materials, so I needed to simplify the ideas and make them accessible. 

YS: Barga and I started to discuss this tactic and it turned out he was using electronics the same way. And of course, we started to discuss more of our influences, some “weird” music, and found out we shared a love for asymmetrical rhythms, for example, for odd meter. When we heard electronic music that experimented with these elements, we both were blown away. 

But we also share this background in gamelan. As a couple of indigenous Balinese guys, we‘ve played gamelan since our childhood. In our banjarbanjarSmall residential neighborhoods or villages in Bali., rituals are taking place all the time, and they all require gamelan accompaniment, whether it’s gong kebyargong kebyara style or genre of Balinese gamelan. Kebyar means "to flare up or burst open," and refers to the explosive changes in tempo and dynamics characteristic of the style. or belaganjur. 

Since I was a kid, I tried to learn these traditions from my father. It’s funny because at that age, I feel like we were kind of discouraged from doing it—adults would say “Don’t touch that gamelan, you are going to break it!” My father likes gamelan, but he’s a nurse and I think he was expecting his children to grow up and become doctors. But I can’t do that—I stick to gamelan. How to describe it? I just feel joy playing gamelan. 

This music is always changing, and music needs space to change.

We really started to see the potential of electronics and wanted to blend that with gamelan. As we started, it also helped us to question this idea of the binary between them - why were people saying there can not be a connection between electronics and gamelan? For us, this was not the case. We’ve already become accustomed to using sound systems in certain scenarios, or recordings, and people don’t seem to have the same issue with that. 

BS: We keep thinking, “What if belaganjur musicians played a different type of music, what if they played jazz? Is that not ok?” This music is always changing, and music needs space to change. Technology can “help” gamelan, it means we can analyze and speak about the music more clearly, illustrate our work better, and teach it easier. 

YS: Kadapat is about Barga and me still sticking to gamelan as a base, and thinking about how technology can improve it—as long as the technology works for us and we don’t work for it! 

JEGOG AND GENDÈR: AN UNLIKELY PAIR 

YS: The funny story of our setup is that we didn’t have instruments to play for our first gig, so I just borrowed what was around, a random jègog jègog Jegog is an instrument made from bamboo, used to play a genre of gamelan music by the same name. It has origins in Jembrana, a region in Western Bali., and Barga happened to have a gendèr gendèr A type of metallophone used in Balinese and Javanese gamelan music. It consists of 10 to 14 tuned metal bars suspended over a tuned resonator of bamboo or metal, which are tapped with a mallet made of padded wooden disks.at his house. The jègog has become the main source of my artistic practice because of the tuning, which is very unique from other gamelan. It’s one of the main instruments of the Jembrana region where I am from. I often go to my hometown to play gamelan for ceremonies on that instrument. 

Unlike other gamelan ensembles, which are tuned to in pairs to create this special beating sound (ombak), the jègog is tuned to three different tunings. This means the waves should be amazing, but it’s made of bamboo! This means the material has no sustain, you can’t hear what those waves actually are. When I asked an instrument maker to explain it to me, he said that it still creates more “raméraméIn Balinese, ramé stands for something that is at once both chaotic and joyful.,” more crowded. There is something deep inside the instrument that I am trying to discover; it's a constant source of curiosity. I hated it at first, it was too loud. But I was forced to play it and that changed things. 

BS: I joined an ensemble when I was 6 and I remember watching my teacher playing the gendèr, with these techniques and improvisation. It really inspired me—unlike other gamelan instruments, you can play two notes, you can harmonize, and use these dampening techniques. 

We aren’t just making new pairings with electronics and gamelan, but with instruments from the gamelan tradition.

YS: And besides the instruments not being played together regularly, you would of course never see them in a club! So it’s next-level crazy. The instruments already come from different contexts, gendèr is a ritual thing, for when someone has passed away, for ceremonies. jègog is more for entertainment, and for social events, but still—neither has even been seen in the club, let alone together. 

BS: We aren’t just making new pairings with electronics and gamelan, but with instruments from the gamelan tradition. jègog and gendèr alone—one is made from bamboo and one from bronze. We realized this is an interesting pairing. When an instrument is not made from metal, it means it doesn’t come from royalty, from rulers of a kingdom, it means it came from the people. The gendèr has a connection with god, a meditative quality, and jègog has a connection with people—you need energy to play it. We enjoy this contrast. 

YS: And it’s all part of our mission to prove that technology and gamelan can work together. We aren't trying to just smash together some electronics and gamelan. We are trying to show how it can be one individual world. We don’t want the sounds of gamelan to be used as some exotic sound by some DJs. In our case, the gamelan is the foundation of what is there. 

The sounds of the album are all from gamelan—almost all of the sounds on the album are sourced directly from gamelan sounds (with a few small exceptions). We haven’t rejected gamelan for electronics, it’s not something different. We still play traditional ceremonies in our hometowns using gamelan and we play in clubs as Kadapat. Just different technologies at different times. 

When I’m playing football, I wear cleats. When I go to the beach, I wear sandals. For us, it’s the same thing. 

COMPOSING, SAMPLING, AND RECORDING

BS: We do a lot of sound design with the gamelan, some sampling. We then use these samples to form a draft of an idea, and then from there we decide if that’s what we were really imagining or not, whether or not it has the potential to make something really good. For our first album we did a workshop with the gamelan and just spent days recording everything, tons of sampling, focused on scales of the jègog and gendèr—we searched for the best scales that worked between the two, because they don’t share the same tuning system. 

Yogi: We just record in our home studio, but the instruments are too big and have to stay in storage areas, which is alright once we have the samples—we don’t need the natural sound of the space. 

TRANSPORTATION 

YS: Our instruments are quite big and when we went to play some shows in Vietnam they were 36 kilograms. But on the way back, there were these rules that, yes, you can bring 50 kilos, but they have to be separated into two bags. We had to abandon our instruments in Vietnam until they could be sent back to us. 

BS: There is also the issue of transporting organic material, such as bamboo and other materials. There are lots of problems transporting gamelan because of insects, fungus, etc. One group I know brought an entire gamelan to Europe, and were coming back from tour, but the customs agents at the border in Indonesia stopped them and wouldn’t let them through, insisting they had to confirm the origins of the instruments, to make sure they weren’t “made in Europe.” Everyone thought that was hilarious. Of course not, Balinese gamelan is only made in Bali. 

We don’t want the sounds of gamelan to be used as some exotic sound by some DJs. In our case, the gamelan is the foundation of what is there. 

YS: For tours, we’ve been customizing the instruments to make them easier to travel with, but in a way, they keep the sound but lose the form, so can we still call them jègog and gendèr? It doesn't have the carvings, no ornaments. I’ve also built my own box to house it and to kind of make it my own. 

BS: And I can’t travel with my proper gendèr because the bamboo resonators that sit under the metal keys, those are seen as organic products and could be confiscated! So I’ve now resorted to using electronics to add digital resonance, while I still bring the metal keys with me. I do what I can when the material is not available. 

PERFORMANCE AND RECEPTION 

YS: We can’t control what audiences see—this exotic point of view comes from the audience, not from us, so that’s their problem. We are Balinese and this is Balinese music. We just play. But hey, if they want to talk about it, to hear more about the context, we can talk about it. We also want people to be able to just hear the music as music, and enjoy it.