I’ve always had a connection to music. My taste has inevitably changed over the years of what I enjoy listening to, but my love of rhythm and melody has never failed. Music inspires me, fuels me, galvanizes me.
When I was in Vancouver over spring break (see my blog post Ventures in Vancouver for more photos from this trip), I had the opportunity to attend a gamelan concert with my grandparents. As I’d never even heard of gamelan before, it was as much of a learning experience as it was a musical event.
Gamelan is a form of Indonesian music that uses gongs, drums, metallophones, and xylophones (and in some cases, even more instruments). Its unique rhythm and style is unlike any other genre of music I’ve heard before; there’s just something wholly different about gamelan. I got some photos from this evening, mostly just of the instruments on the stage. The room was quite dim, so some photos are blurry from the lack of light.
We got a chance to play some of the instruments before the concert, which proved to be surprisingly difficult but satisfactorily rewarding. I tried playing both the bonang and the metallophone as a few members of the group led us through a couple “simple” songs. (It was simple to them, quite challenging for the rest of us.)
And when we had settled into our seats, the lights dimmed, and the players settled on the stage by their instruments – then the music began. And I was enamored.
There’s not a lot of words that could accurately describe what this performance sounded like, but pulling some lines from the journal entry that I wrote that night is as close as I can get.
The music was mesmerizing, dark, strange, vivid, lively, exquisite. A few times during the performance I would get lost in thought, but the music never ceased to bring me back with its rhythms, vibrations, and patterns.
What I really enjoyed seeing was the connection the players had to each other and to the music: they smiled, they swayed, they totally and completely got lost in another world. And I think I did, too.
