Free gamelan lessons bolster Chicago’s Indonesian music scene

You don't need a degree from Juilliard to play music in Hyde Park.

You can simply head down to the Union Church Tuesday nights, where free beginners lessons in Javanese gamelan offer an ensemble music-making experience to anyone who can hold a mallet.

"I'm a dedicated amateur," said Anne Northrup, a television documentary producer who co-teaches the classes with Carolyn Johnson, an administrator and lecturer at the University of Chicago.

Northrup and Johnson are board members of Chicago's Friends of the Gamelan, Inc., a not-for-profit corporation that sponsors the lessons. "Gamelan offers a different way of playing music," said Northrup, who has been playing since 1982. "I can do it on a regular basis without practicing four hours a day."

The word "gamelan" is an Indonesian verb meaning "to strike." It is also the Indonesian name for the ensemble of drum, gong, xylophone, metallophone and flute instruments used in traditional Indonesian music for hundreds of years, or "a long, long, long, long time," according to Ngurah Kertayuda, Culture and Information staff at the Indonesian Consulate General of Chicago. Like Johnson and Northrup, Kertayuda is also an amateur performer. He performs as "master dancer" with Indonesian Performing Arts of Chicago.

Friends of the Gamelan's free lessons are taught using one of only three playable sets of gamelan instruments in Chicago, a bronze ensemble acquired in 2000 for about $18,000, according to Midiyanto, a visiting artist in residence at the University of California Berkeley. The Friends of the Gamelan hired him in 1999 to design and tune a new set of instruments for them.

Chicago's second set also belongs to the group, a collection of lighter, iron instruments made in the early 1980s. Today the Friends of the Gamelan use them mostly for performances and keep the heavier, less transportable set in the church basement for lessons and practice.

Chicago's third set sits in the Indonesian Consulate General and is played only once a year on Indonesia's Independence Day, Aug. 17.

There is a fourth set of gamelan instruments in the city of Chicago, one with some history to it. The Field Museum's Anthropology Collections house the gamelan from the 1893 Java Village at the World's Columbian Exposition. Today the instruments are too frail to be played but in the late 1970s they were used for a time to teach lessons, said Johnson, who is a research assistant at the museum.

Friends of the Gamelan's beginning lessons attract about 10-15 people each week from across Chicago. Students remove their shoes and sit on cushions behind one of 27 instruments. First-time players might sit at a small mallet instrument called a "saron," which plays the core melody in gamelan music, or a larger "gender," which is used to play semi-improvised background patterns. More experienced students play small bronze kettles called "bonang" or heavy, hanging gongs called "kempul."

No prior knowledge of music theory or music notation is required to participate. "Intellectually, it's not that difficult," said Johnson. "People do not need to have any formal musical training." At the start of each lesson, she lays out specific patterns of keys for each student to repeat on their instrument and counts off a few beats.

The music that follows is somehow both metallic and organic, like a blaring music box built from living parts. Each instrument has an appointed spot in the rhythm. Students must listen to the beat and play their pattern at the right time so as not to muddy the sound. When it works, Johnson describes gamelan music as a "woven tapestry."

Students play together for a few minutes until Johnson signals them to stop. Everyone then swaps instruments, learns new patterns and begins another piece.

Brian Ashby, a former University of Chicago student who once played in Friends of the Gamelan's performance group, enjoys learning new scales and techniques at the beginners lessons. "There are sounds here that you don't find in Western music," he said. The opportunity to make music as part of a group is also very appealing to him.

Matt Dunning, a bouncer at the Cactus Bar and Grill, found the lessons after a Google search for "Chicago gamelan." He too enjoys the music's accessibility. "It's like you kind of melt into the music. When you play I try not to think about it too much," he said.

Johnson hopes the lessons provide "an experience producing musical sounds in a group setting, where the sounds initially sound little like anything they have experienced before."

In addition to offering beginner lessons, the Friends of the Gamelan are gearing up for two performances this weekend. First the ensemble will join Indonesian Performing Arts Chicago, the Indonesian Performing Arts Association of Minnesota, and Gamelan Mitra Kusuma from Washington D.C. in a collaborative performance in the University Auditorium of Northeastern Illinois University at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 28.

On Oct. 29, select members of the group will perform a piece of Thai music at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art's Fall Humanities Festival.

The next free beginners lesson will be held at 5:30 p.m. Oct. 31 in the basement of Union Church at 5600 South Woodlawn Ave. in Hyde Park. Lessons will continue on Tuesdays until Nov. 14.