Sukawati
I Wayan Loceng
My first teacher, I Wayan Loceng, lives in Sukawati, a large village in Gianyar district, about halfway between the capital, Denpasar, and Ubud or the town of Gianyar. Sukawati is rapidly becoming part of the suburban sprawl that
surrounds Denpasar. It has many banjar, village districts or hamlets that organise ritual and social events (see Covarrubias 1986) of which one,
Babakan, has become a renowned centre for wayang and its music. This is due to the formerly important court of Sukawati, which was founded in the early eighteenth century after breaking away from the island’s main court of
Klungkung (Wiener 1995:217-18) and became a major patron of the arts. The family of shadow puppeteers who served this court are today known as soroh dalang Sukawati (or keluarga dalang Sukawati), the family of Sukawati dalang. Most live along a road at the back of the palace and Loceng told me (in 1989) that there were at least 18 practising dalang. This concentration of specialists in the shadow play and its music is very rare in Bali and has contributed to the
development of a characteristic way of playing gender, “flashy, highly virtuosic, using rapid tempi and complex damping techniques and interlocking, with a high level of rhythmic and melodic complexity” (Gold 1998:57). Among the most influential figures to influence the style of Sukawati wayang are the gender player I Wayan Loceng (born around 1930), and two dalang: I Nyoman Granyam (c.1900-c.1975) and I Ketut Madra (1949-1979).
The following summary is based on Gold (1998:63-71); further information about the Sukawati dalang family, including family trees, can be found in Heimarck (1999 and 2003). I Wayan Loceng was first taught by I Made Cetug and his father and grandfather were both dalang. He was influenced by Colin McPhee’s friend, the composer Lotring, who taught and studied in Sukawati, and he played in Lotring’s gamelan pelegongan. Loceng’s gender wayang group, which became famous for it’s qualities of sip or kompak (tight, compact) playing consisted of Loceng, his brothers I Ketut Balik and I Nyoman Jaya and Balik’s son I Wayan Sarga. This group accompanied the famous dalang Granyam and Madra. Loceng also played reong in the Sukawati gamelan gong (gamelan in Bali are often referred to simply as gong) and was influenced by the outstanding gong kebyar style from Gladag in Denpasar that was famous at that time. Loceng later formed the group of another famous and influential dalang, his nephew I Ketut Madra.
Gold describes how Loceng likes to teach complex versions of pieces: “Each time I mastered a difficult piece, at my next lesson he would change the previous version he gave me to one more abstract or technically challenging, or merely different, for the sake of variasi (variation)” (ibid.:66). Loceng also
worries about people stealing his versions, so he “hides” them by making them very complicated. Among his favourite techniques are ngoret (ornamentation) and cecandatan/tetekanan (double damping/simultaneous damping of the struck key), techniques emphasised by his current slowing down of tempi.
Other prominent Sukawati figures are I Wayan Wija, described by Gold as “perhaps the most popular, innovative, and famous dalang today in Bali” (ibid.:70), the ISl (STSl) teacher I Wayan Nartha, and I Made Juwanda. Wija’s innovative approach to puppet making and popular style of performing has won him awards and a large following. He created a new form wayang tantri, based on animal tales and accompanied by pelog-tuned gender pelegongan and other
instruments. Loceng played an important role in developing the music for this (ibid.:71).
I Ketut Buda Astra
Most of my early information about gender and wayang was also
obtained from Loceng, who had been my teacher since 1987. However, when I returned to Sukawati in 2000 to 2002, I was able to interview and record many other musicians. One young musician in particular, I Ketut Buda Astra, was able to explain much about improvisation in the genre and relate it to compositional technique. Buda was born in 1969 and so was 33 at the time of the main interviews in 2002. He is a graduate of ISI and a composer of contemporary Balinese music, who has made a name for himself as a gender player capable, despite his youth, of creating his own versions of pieces. Other players who gave me important information include I Wayan Sarga, the other main player in Loceng’s group, and his brother I Wayan Warga, Loceng’s son I Ketut
Sukayana, who plays with dalang Ganjreng’s group, the dalang I Wayan Nartha and, during my study in the 1980s, Loceng’s brothers, I Nyoman Jaya and I Ketut Balik.
Tenganan
I Wayan Mudita
In Tenganan, a so-called Bali Aga (“original Balinese”) village with self consciously different customs from much of the rest of the island, music is set against the background of old ritual ensembles such as selonding and
gambang.23 Gender wayang is a relative newcomer to the village, having been adopted in the 1950s from neighbouring villages, such as Pesedahan. It is not used to accompany the characteristically Bali Aga rituals of the village, for which gambang or selonding ensembles are used. Although, as in the rest of East Bali, playing old, supposedly unchanged versions of gender pieces is valued in Tenganan, many sections of pieces have been added in recent memory and the younger generation of players is actively creating new pieces by drawing from other gamelan traditions such as angklung.
The foremost gender player in Tenganan today is I Wayan Mudita. Mudita says he started studying the art of puppetry in 1964 in Klungkung. He says that, by that time, he already knew how to play gender, having learnt from Ketut Serurut, a local teacher who had studied both in Karangasem and
Denpasar and who taught as far away as Lombok. Ketut Serurut taught in
23 For more about Tenganan, see Korn 1984 and for selonding, see Ramseyer 1992.
Tenganan around 1950. There were no puppets, so Mudita made some out of cardboard. At that time, the gender in the village were made of iron (Mudita, tape 2002:1a). One figure often mentioned in Tenganan is the late Ranu, who was widely held to be the best gender player in that area and who created many current versions of pieces and composed several variation sections (peniba).
I Nyoman Partha Gunawan (left) and I Wayan Dasta (right)
Other Tenganan gender players who helped me in this study are I Nyoman Partha Gunawan, I Wayan Dasta and I Wayan Jiwa. These players are, primarily, players of other ensembles. Gunawan was responsible for creating the first replica selonding instruments, which have enabled young Tenganan musicians to learn more easily and which, through commercial recordings and performances around the island, have triggered a revival of interest in this type of gamelan.
Budakeling and Abang
Budakeling, still in Karangasem district, but further inland than Tenganan, is a centre for the brahmana budha (brahmana high priests with elements of Mahayana Buddhism in their ritual), and the principal family of
dalang and gender musicians is also the main priestly family here. Although the majority of Balinese brahmana high priests, pedanda, are brahmana siwa, an important minority are brahmana budha and some ceremonies call for both types of priest to be present (see Covarrubias 1986:292-307). Hooykaas (1975b:250-1) lists the active brahmana budha households with their priests in Bali at the time: the first 14 out of a total of 40 households listed are from Budakeling village. This gives some idea of the centrality of this one village to the brahmana budha tradition within Balinese Hinduism.
Abang group: I Wayan Jira (front left), I Made Kondra (back left), I Made Widastra (back left), I Made Putu (front right)
In the Budakeling area, gender wayang seems more “sacralised” than in Sukawati, in the sense that its ritual context and religious connotations are emphasised more than in South Bali. My informants here were slightly more guarded about the tradition and anxious to stress the unchanging nature of many pieces. I was encouraged to meet groups, such as one in the nearby village of Abang, that still remembered old pieces and the current trend of adopting pieces from Denpasar was decried. The musicians I met in Abang were I Made Kondra, I Nyoman Kota, I Made Putu, I Made Widastra and I Wayan Jira.
Ida Wayan Oka Granoka
Ida Wayan Ngurah
Ida Wayan Oka Granoka, who has moved to Denpasar, and who is regarded by many in East Bali as a particularly talented musician and upholder of tradition, expressed a particularly Tantric view of the roles gender wayang
and other gamelan forms (see chapters 6 and 7). Granoka is a lecturer in linguistics in the Faculty of Literature, Udayana University, Denpasar. He was born in 1949 and was 53 at the time of the interviews in 2002. His brother, Ida Wayan Ngurah is slightly older than Granoka and started playing gender
wayang in 1967 when he was 22. Another member of this brahmana family who helped me was the dalang Ida Nyoman Sugata, who lives in Abang and
introduced me to the group there. Another musician who taught and helped me in Budakeling was I Nyoman Sutawa. His wife, Ni Ketut Sasih also plays
gender, as does his daughter, Ni Wayan Apriani, who was 14 in 2002 and his even younger son, I Kadek Adriana.
I Nyoman Sutawa (right) and Ni Wayan Apriani (left)
1.13 Conclusion
In chapter 5, I describe some of the stylistic contrasts between Sukawati and Karangasem. Regional styles in gender are linked with broader perceived regional styles in the arts: Gianyar district, which includes Sukawati, is famed as a centre where the performing arts are particularly nourished and developed, while Karangasem is generally felt to be archaic (kuno) and traditional.
But regional variation is only part of the story: each gender group and individual players within that group may have their own version of pieces.
Sometimes there is a standard group version, which the players ail agree on, while individual players may have their own favourite version. As we shall see, gender wayang is one of the most individualistic of Balinese music genres. Among gender wayang players, musical knowledge is commonly seen as
“owned” by individual players who are sometimes afraid that it will be “stolen”, in the context of a compositional system that, nevertheless, relies heavily on borrowing (Gold 1992:16-17). The importance of diverse individual opinions in Bali has been underplayed in much ethnographic writing and is only now being redressed in works such as Hobart (2000b). It is particularly important here, in a system of musical variation and composition which is related not just to regional but also to group and personal styles of playing.
This chapter has given an overview of gender wayang and its context in the performance of wayang and in ritual as well as some background to general concepts of composition and improvisation in other Balinese ensembles. The following chapter reviews the major literature on gender wayang.