Karawitan

some students of Lab School Satya Wacana - practice karawitan at UKSW

“It does not only teach you about rhythm and harmony in playing gamelan, but also rhythm and harmony in life.” I’ve never understood about the meaning that’s quotation until I learn Karawitan. How come you learn about the harmony in life by playing gamelan, Javanese traditional musical instrument? I just begin to practice playing gamelan and join karawitan, Javanese musical orchestra which use gamelan as its instrument, and I just think that there are many things I learn. It’s not only about how well you play the gamelan, but also how deep your feeling in it and in listening to others is.

At first I came into a building in my university where we can practice karawitan I heard beautiful gamelan rhythm were playing, I thought it was so difficult to play them. It was so harmonic and beautiful; peace came into my mind since I listened to the rhythm. Then I forced myself to enter the room, watched a group of students played the gamelan. One of the teacher, we call him Pakde, told me to play one of the instrument. Then, I sat down in front of a saron, one of gamelan instrument, and tried to play this. I was listening to the one of the teacher who led the orchestra and tried to follow the rhythm while reading ne notation on the board. Hmm…I was so proud of myself; it was not so bad for a beginner like me. When I played the instrument in front of me, I was thinking that it’s not how expert you are at playing gamelan or how deep your musical sense is. It’s about listening to the conductor and following the music flow.

Demung - instrument I play

Eyang kakung (our teacher) and one of the students

So what is GAMELAN and KARAWITAN?

In Javanese gamelan comes from the word gamel means playing musical instrument (percussion) by strike it. Suffixes “-an” change lexical meaning of gamel from “strike” (verb) to a noun (gamelan = something you strike/ play). By knowing the meaning of gamelan we can conclude that gamelan is Javanese traditional musical instrument which is likely percussion.

A set of gamelan consist of some kind of instruments:

1.       GONG

2.       KENDANG

3.       SARON 

4.       BONANG

5.       REBAB

6.       KENONG

7.       KEMPUL

8.       GAMBANG

And others…hehe :p

Let’s talk about karawitan…it is kind of Javanese musical orchestra which is associated with gamelan as its instrument. The word karawitan itself comes from the word “rawit” (Javanese) that means smooth and have elegant sense. So, karawitan is a Javanese musical orchestra that sounds smooth and so elegant. hehe