Defining gamelan

One can thus distinguish three categories of instruments in a gamelan :

A series of tuned idiophonic elements defines the instrument's struck area. The elements are wood or metal bars/blades, bamboo tubes or knobbed gongs. They are arranged horizontally and struck with the hammers/sticks going downwards. Instruments with wooden bars/blades are known to us as xylophones ; those with metal bars/blades as metallophones; those with metal blades suspended over tubular resonators as vibraphones; those with knobbed gongs as gong chimes. Other tuned and untuned percussion : drums, cymbals, individual gongs, other percussion. Wind, string, voice.

 

Only the first category forms a criterion of definition, these instruments are compulsory for the ensemble to be called gamelan. The categories 2 and 3 simply represent instruments that are likely to be part of a gamelan, even if category 2 characterizes almost all gamelans. To distinguish between gamelan and other instrumental ensemble is not easy, for the criterion cited above is not sufficient : there must be at least two instruments of category 1, each playing a different level of rhythmical filling. This definition stays however difficult to put into practice. What to do, truly, with ensembles made up only of instruments from category 2 or 3 but playing a gamelan music ? Such ensembles exist in Java and Bali and are part of the great gamelan tradition. Let's think about kècak, made up only of voices.