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Taught by Prof. of Anthropology Liz Coville and former head of the Schubert Club Gamelan Ensemble Joko Sutrisno, Indonesian Music and Culture offers a chance to celebrate and participate in the nation’s unique style of music, while learning about the culture of the land that created it.

The music style taught in the class is called gamelan, and consists of several percussion instruments of different styles and ranges. The style is practiced primarily in the southeast Asian islands of Java and Bali, where Sutrisno hails from.
Interlocking melodies performed on each of the instruments form the basis of each song, and no one instrument is featured. Gamelan is performed from memory, and students in the class spend hours learning and practicing their parts for a performance at the end of the term.

“I loved the class because it’s a genre of music I’d never heard before. At first it was really awkward, but then after you listened to it and played it a while it was really pretty, I really liked it,” said junior Midge Selva, who took the class two years ago.

According to Sutrisno, “the most important thing is to prepare to make music in many different ways.” He said that his students “were amazed to discover that they were a good musician, they don’t realize it until they try.

The class is divided into one and a half hours of practice in the gamelan, and one and a half hours lecture about Indonesian culture. The cultural element brings in novels and biographies about Indonesian characters, political history, language, food, dance, and some religion.

Tri Sutrisno, Joko’s wife and dance director at the Indonesian Performing Arts Association of Minnesota, is like a third instructor in the class, according to Coville. She teaches a session about language, dance, masks, rice, and food.

“I think the most important part is the hands-on experience. Learning something directly from a person from the culture,” said Coville, “and knowing the context of where it comes from It’s a really interesting pluralistic country that’s gone through a lot of changes recently. I think it’s a country that Americans would benefit from knowing about because it’s so similar to us, and in some ways really different, but it’s so pluralistic and has so many different religions.”

“It’s a good class because you get to do different kinds of stuff, it’s not just books and stuff, multiple disciplines were brought in. It’s a good class to learn about different cultures,” said senior Brad Gausman.
The students of the Indonesian Music and Culture class will perform in Sundin Hall on Jan. 26.

For more information about Gamelan and Indonesian culture, contact IPAAM at www.ipaam.org