Indonesian gamelan music is like nothing you've ever heard before. And its intricate structures are often misunderstood in the West. Martin Gordon takes the slow boat to Bali, and is initiated into the Gamelan tradition complete with its attendant social ceremonies...

Indonesia stretches from Singapore to the northern tip of Australia, and Bali is the only Hindu island in the whole (mainly Muslim) archipelago. The sound of Indonesia in general, and of Bali in particular, is the gamelan - a distant cousin of our vibes and xylophones, with keys of bronze or bamboo, played with hammers. The word gamelan comes from the Javanese gamel, to hit, and refers both to the instrument itself and the collection of gamelans that form the gamelan orchestra.

I first discovered the music of Bali after fetching up there a couple of years ago, en route to Australia. I had heard the music of the gamelan before, but never at such close quarters - "the stirring mystery of a thousand bells" spluttered composer Colin McPhee, obviously moved. He was one of the first Westerners to move to Bali, and ended up staying for ten years. When he finally returned to California, his notions of musical structure and harmonics were so radically revised that his music proved unlistenable to Western ears.

Nine feet of bamboo

I came back to the UK after my visit determined to find out more about this inimitable music. I dug up tales of the gamelan jegog, made from whole bamboo trees which only grow in the west of the island, of the gamelan gong bheri, played by bowler-hatted musicians on Chinese-style gongs which they had salvaged from a shipwreck, and of the gamelan genggong, featuring curious instruments made from palm leaves which sounded like frogs.

In fact there are as many gamelan styles as there are vacant hair follicles on Brian Eno's head - and I also found that one particular style, gamelan gong kebyar, has been so enthusiastically adopted by the young musicians of Bali that these other older styles are in danger of dying out. There is plenty of information available of the older styles but, except for kebyar, recordings are either non-existent or impossible to come by.

Earlier in the year I had been recording Berber nomads canoodling in the Sahara desert. This time, filled with a burning desire to experience these recondite Indonesian rhythms, I suggested to the company who sent me to Morocco that I go to Bali and record them for myself. If you want anything done properly these days, you've got to do it yourself, I pointed out helpfully. They agreed, as did the BBC World Service, keen for me to fill them in on the Disappearing Gamelans of Bali. I packed my DAT and took off.

On the plane, we were handed small cartoons on a piece of card - they depicted two sets of couples. One set were wearing frankly casual clothes - T-shirts, jeans and sandals - and had been enthusiastically crossed out with a large red X. The other couple were soberly attired in suit, shirt and tie, knee-length skirt and sensible shoes. For their efforts, they had been awarded a red tick and were being greeted by a bureaucrat with outstretched hand. The message was clear (I think) - for official business in Indonesia, ya gotta dress nice.

World music 0 - Shell suits 1

I arrived and considered my outfit, as I'd arranged a meeting with I Made Bandem, the Rector of the College of Performing Arts in the capital, Denpasar. Mr. Bandem is in the frontline in the battle to defend Bali against the ravages of the modern world. Was I dressed suitably, I asked my friend Kadek? No I wasn't, she told me frankly, Mr. Bandem would be appalled, and so we spent a day scouring the shops of Kuta for respectable clothing.

The scent of incense and frangipani was hanging in the air as we arrived at the campus for the rendezvous, but a less pleasurable sensation came over me when I saw students and teachers alike wearing tracksuits and trainers. Resplendent in a bright green shell suit, Mr Bandem noticed my puzzled expression. In Bali, he explained, Fridays are now official 'casual attire days', and you can wear what you like. Yes, it was a Friday. I tried not to think of the week's worth of DAT tapes my sensible new wardrobe had cost me.

Made Bandem kindly introduced me to appropriate people and supplied me with phone numbers and info. I first of all hooked up with Ketut Swentra, leader of Suar Agung, Bali's leading gamelan jegog. When I told him of my quest to record the music of the jegog, he suggested we went to his home in Negara where he would assemble the rest of his group.

Max Wall's rubber mallett

When we arrived, the instruments of the gamelan were sitting in their permanent home, a little house with no walls and a large raised platform in the centre. Pictures of his father and three brothers, all prominent members of the local jegog dynasty, were displayed. The instruments were of all sizes, from the eighteen-inch calung to the nine foot long bass jegogs. The musicians appeared and took their places. The huge jegogs were set inside brightly painted wooden frames carved into depictions of terrifying monsters, in order to protect the gamelan from evil spirits. They reared over the-heads of the fifteen players. The front two rows seated themselves behind the the smaller instruments, as the back row climbed up onto the instruments themselves and prepared to beat hell out of them with rubber mallets.

"The basslines sounded like stoned Gregorian monks after a hard night's chanting"

It takes a lot of force to get nine feet of wood resonating, so there were two identical jegogs and the bass part was divided between two players, each hitting alternate notes. The basslines sounded like stoned Gregorian monks after a hard night's chanting - a constant low chiming rumble that carried the main melody, and one that would no doubt have provoked anguish in the cutting room in pre-digital days.

The music was rhythmic and dense, full of syncopations and outrageous tempo changes. In other gamelan styles, one person plays the simple (polos) part and another the more complicated sangsih - here each musician played both parts simultaneously. They demonstrated another style (jegog bumbung) which had absorbed elements of Japanese music from the days of the Second World War, when the Japanese military headquarters was situated in nearby Negara. The music was even faster than before, full of dizzying twists and turns and changes of pace. The musicians were rocking now, and the event had turned into a full scale band rehearsal.

Logic, form and structure

The music of Bali is constructed entirely differently from that of the West. Structurally, it sounds as though dozens of interlocking circles of different lengths are all moving around independently, sometimes joining up and sometimes spinning off eccentrically. Musically, each instrument has its twin - each part is played by at least two players - and one of each pair of instruments is tuned sharp to the other, giving Balinese gamelan music its unique quality. I'd been given the name of Bali's leading genggong player (genggongist?). The genggong is described by some Balinese as the oldest instrument in the world. Made from a dried palm-leaf, it's similar to a Jew's harp. It sounds something like a musical frog, and in fact the genggong gamelan traditionally provides the accompaniment to the kodok (frog) dance.

For those of you who like a bedtime story, in the Balinese version of the Frog Prince, he is able to speak the language of humans. He goes to the princess's father, the King, to ask for her hand in marriage. The King is unimpressed and has the frog killed. Mr Frog comes back to life, however, and asks again, but is killed once more for his pains. He returns for a third time, by which time the King admits defeat and agrees to the marriage. Shortly thereafter the frog goes off to the highest mountain to meditate, and lo! he becomes a handsome prince and they live happily ever after. To this day, the legend reverberates through Gamelan music.

Kadek and I arrived in his village on the back of my rather battered rented motorbike and were directed to I Made Jimat's home. Dumping the bike in the alley, we barged into a make-up session for a Japanese film crew who were making a promo for his imminent tour of Japan. Hang on I thought, just what kind of moribund gamelan is this? Obviously not as infirm as I had thought, preparing to embark on a gruelling tour of the land of the rising sun. But no matter - throwing conceptual continuity to the four winds, I announced my mission and Mr. Jimat invited me to the next performance of the gamelan.

Retrieving my bike from the alley, and reluctantly turning down the offer of frog masks from two enterprising little girls ("good price!"), we wobbled uncertainly off. In addition to the recording gear, video camera, mike stand and accessories, we'd now acquired an enormous melon. It was nestling in Kadek's haversack and as I was driving the bike, our centre of gravity slipped about two feet behind us. We made uncertain progress towards the gig.

The gamelan featured five genggong, small brightly-painted red ovals, played by five venerable musicians sitting cross-legged in a row. To compensate for the tiny amount of volume produced by the genggongs, the other players (percussion and flutes) played as quietly as they could. I parked my mike in a convenient bush and captured the whole thing for posterity.

"no-one plays this music today, only the ancient"

Baby bouncing

The next day, someone uttered the magic phrase "what is your programme for tomorrow?" which invariably means that an invitation is to be issued. Sure enough, I was invited to participate in a baby-naming ceremony which would feature a gamelan waying and the wayang kulit puppet show. (In brief explanation - babies in Bali are not named until they are three months old, and the gamelan wayang perform as the accompaniment to wayang kulit, the Indonesian shadow puppet play which tells tales from the Ramayana, the great Hindu epic).

The festivities were being held in Seririt, my friend's village in the remote north-west of Bali. It was flattened by an earthquake in the late sixties, but still perches precariously in the foothills. We arrived early for the day long festivities, and joined the eating and drinking which had already started. I caused great amusement by consuming the tableware (it was a banana leaf - I couldn't tell where the food stopped and the plate started).

In the evening, the whole village assembled outside the family home for the puppet play. The puppet master had a mike suspended from a tree into which he intoned his characterisations. It was augmented by a cheap little combo amp perched in the branches, which reproduced his words and gave them a harsh, alien tone. I set my gear up to record and video the event, which prompted every interested person for miles around to rush up and practice their English. Suddenly, towards the end of the play, the audience of four hundred stood up and rushed off. I asked my friend about this. "The end is coming", he said. "They know the story, you see". The puppet master performed the baby-naming to a gamelan accompaniment, and we all retired to bed.

The musical parts which the gamelans play in an ensemble are ordered and tightly controlled - the only instrument that plays an improvised part is the flute, or suling. The idea of a suling gamelan was almost a contradiction in terms, and sounded worth checking out. We had a name, and I knew he lived in the area of Batuan - we asked people in roadside warungs (bars) and eventually (there are a lot of warungs) located him.

The maestro was an old man, and looked frail. He told me, in disconsolate tones, "no-one plays this music today, only the ancient". His group had just lost a regular contract to play at a hotel in Kuta - "because of jealousy", he muttered darkly - and were now widely scattered, with no plans to play again. We talked about the music, and he tried to paint me a picture in words. The flute imitates birdsong, he told me, and he had twenty four flutes in his group - but they had never recorded any of their playing, and I could only imagine the sound that the old men made. It's still on my list.

Monkey business

In Ubud I found kecak, a vocal style with no instrumental accompaniment. It's not exactly obscure, but has a strangely international pedigree for a definitively Balinese art form. Pronounced 'kechak' the music accompanies a tale from the Ramayana. Singers and dancers perform the story of Hanoman the monkey god, and up to to one hundred men play the role of the monkey army.

Vocally, it's based on fragments of old Balinese exorcism rituals, although the presentation and scenario were concocted in the 30s by a Russian-born German musician/painter and an American choreographer, for a Hollywood production filmed on the island - quite an anthropological melting pot. The performers surround a flaming tree, which burns throughout and throws an eerie flickering light onto the upstretched arms of the monkey dancers.

I set up in the shadow of the temple gate, hoping to be inconspicuous. I was so successfully inconspicuous that a large Balinese musician didn't see either me or my gear - and crashed into the video camera, before stumbling onto the DAT and kicking it a good ten feet, where it landed in a large pile of sand. Muttering my own form of obscure English ritual oath I retrieved it, but doubtless the benign influence of Hanoman was at work, for it was still functioning.

"for official business in Indonesia, the message is, ya gotta dress nice"

Shortly after packing up, I was presented with another opportunity to encounter Balinese culture first-hand. I fractured my foot while running away backwards from a mad dog. Following a display of friendliness, its slavering jaws suddenly snapped shut on my leg, whereupon I retreated and fell down a hole. Kadek seized the moment and took me to the dukun, a white magic doctor. He massaged my foot for an hour and then applied a green paste to my lower body, until I began to resemble the Incredible Hulk.

When it fell off after a few days (the paste), I went to find a gamelan angklung teacher who had previously offered me some tuition. I play in Britain's only gamelan angklung (the SOAS-based Gamelan Kembang Kirang) in London, and Sanding is home to a respected angklung teacher.

The angklung, one of the oldest gamelans, is used today to accompany cremations and tooth-filing ceremonies - the energy in the music provides a source of strength for the listener in times of distress or pain. My tutor was pleased that I had made the deferred visit, and taught me some of his new pieces. We sat in front of the temple in his garden, as he taught the group of four by demonstration and repetition, over and over until we had all mastered the piece.

Womans' hour

Finally I came across gamelan gong gede, the old-style court gamelan from the days of the Balinese kings. Each king (there were eight kingdoms within the island) had its own gamelan orchestra, and the music was slow and stately. The ensembles were huge, anything up to fifty strong. When the days of the monarchy came to an end earlier this century, economics meant that many of the gamelans were melted down and recast as kebyar gamelans, which were much smaller. At the College, there was a gong gede group, and unusually it was a womens' gamelan.

Until recently, gamelan was a male occupation. This group numbered about thirty, playing gamelans of varying sizes, kendang drums and a large assortment of cymbals, ranging from the tiny ceng-ceng finger cymbals mounted on a board, to the huge kempur gong, sitting majestically within its own scarf-bedecked frame. Of course the volume produced by the individual instruments varied radically, so I spent ten minutes walking around, listening from various spots to find a good place for a stereo mike. Unlike my recent experience in Morocco, these musicians weren't playing especially for me - there was a religious temple ceremony taking place - and so I could take my time in setting up.

Of the other styles, some I traced, while others remain to be discovered - the gong bheri had disbanded, it appeared, and the kendang maburung, with its twelve-foot long drums carved from whole tree trunks was locked up in a shed and no one had the key. Next year is the 50th anniversary of the Republic of Indonesia - there will be a number of opportunities throughout the year to check out this fascinating music. Don't let the chance pass you by! And if you want to show respect to the musicians - dress nice!

There's no point in us trying to describe what a gamelan sounds like - you just have to hear it for yourself...

...although we can't afford to fly every single reader of the mix out to Bali, we can do the next best thing - by bringing those exotic sounds to your living room. So get your Jellynut and hammock out, lie back, and try to imagine you're on a tropical island...

- Bali gamelan music