The India problem

Culture gap

It is natural to look for common points between music in India and gamelan. The cultural link with India is noticeable in a large part of South-East Asia. Sculpture, architecture, painting, textiles, dance and other arts of the stage, cookery, medecine, calendars, literature, language, religion and society are as many domains where India has played an important role. This link was strong between India and Java with regard to dance particularly. It is justified to look for a musical influence too. But here we come up against the irreducible difference between music of India and gamelan. What we hear in India has nothing to do with gamelan. After hours of listening to the multidimensional and dancing sounds of gamelan, Indian music makes us fall brutally to a musical world that is completely different. A world that echoes the Middle East. India is indeed a part of the large Western Asian musical sphere, which streches from Northern Africa to Central Asia. India is only the most oriental branch of this sphere. From its characteristics, we can perceive this music as poles apart from gamelan : The music in question is of monophonic character. In scales, intervals are systematically short and many. There is a redundant, excessive number of modes. Voice, strings, etc. predominate and not melodic percussions. The rythmic part is separated from the melody, it is not rooted in the musical structure. There are no large instrumental ensembles.

One is left surprised, disappointed of this cultural gap. And hearing this Indian music in Java or Angkor would be an inconceivable situation anyhow. Indeed, this music would not be suitable for Javanese and Khmer dance, it wouldn't agree, esthetically speaking, with the arts of these regions. Yet, this dance and these arts are Indian ; the problem is precisely there. It doesn't mean either that gamelan isn't Indian ! or that Java hasn't influenced arts in India ! Such statements seem daring, at first sight. But, one day or another, we shall have to solve this problem. It is worth observing well some cultural phenomena and their workings in the history of Southern Asia, not only to realize the scale of the problem, but also to foresee maybe the beginning of an explanation. If gamelan didn't exist in India nor in Java in the early years AD, these phenomena tell us anyway that such music had no chance of developing in the Indian subcontinent afterwards. Java had in addition a technology already present in South-East Asia and close at hand : tuned bronze.

Confluences in Burma Ancient Indian music, or one of ancient musical traditions of India, did leave traces in South-East Asia. They seem the most audible in present Myanmar. Although different from the music of present-day India, it is an influence we could qualify as neutral, in the sense that it has neither corrupted the music of Burma nor developed its gamelan aspect. Although coming from India, this influence emanates from a musical system that is different from what we hear today in its country of origin. The Indian harp, for example, doesn't exist anymore in the "classical" music of India but in the one of Myanmar. It's difficult to know whether that same influence was exerted on other musical traditions of South-East Asia, notably gamelan. Let's observe anyway that Burmese music has received another influence, of Indonesian origin, through Môn music and Thai-Khmer music : an influence of gamelan. It is manifest in the hsaìng-waìng, a chime of knobbed gongs. Let's also observe that the ancient Indian music having influenced Burma wasn't of the same nature as the one coming from Cambodia. Aimed at entertainment, this Indian music had a purely artistic character. Gamelan, on the other hand, has a strong ritual function. In order to find music in India that is of ritual character, percussive too, one has to head for Kerala. But it isn't from this music that the influence went from India to Burma. The influence of Indian music in South-East Asia exists but is limited. It is well and truly different from Indian present music but nevertheless doesn't resemble gamelan. If one has to look for a possible influence of India on gamelan, we will have to head for indirect influences and that don't come from Indian music itself.

Indian ritual dance and its music have most probably suffered within India. On the southwestern coastal regions of the subcontinent, Malabar and Kerala harbor interesting music and dance forms. The instrumental ensembles accompanying dance are generally more percussion-based than in the rest of India. Furthermore, percussion seems to have been more preponderant throughout the subcontinent in the past. Over the centuries, India has received new musical instruments and a new musical system through the northwestern frontier from Central Asia, Persia and even Britain ! This new kind of music obscured the native Indian musical tradition under a new esthetic quality that has never been designed for Indian dance. We have the impression that during the revival of classical dance in India, standard Indian music has been applied to the dance ; resulting in a music all too identical to music played in non-dance contexts. That must partly explain why the music accompanying today bharata natyam, odissi and other classical dances never seem to fit the dance. Music and dance look as if they were forced to cohabitate, each giving a different atmosphere : the dance tries to convey rhythm, dynamism, joy in rhythm ; the music conveys an unenthusiastic sentiment. The spread of this foreign music has spared some places, seemingly in Kerala and around. Also, all the classical dances of India have retained ONE essential instrument : that horizontal double-headed cylindrical drum. This is because it is at the core of the dance's rhythmic accompaniment. An altogether different story has taken place in South-East Asia where the piphat and gamelan ensembles are synonyms of dance music and drama music. See the possible role of Indian dance in the development of gamelan in ancient Java.

Two questions From all that, two questions come to us : What would have the tuned bronze become without the Indian influence ? We can speculate that if Java hadn't been Indianized, gamelan wouldn't exist or would have another form (but could we have spoken about gamelan in that case ?). In India, what happened to the ritual dance music, before the reconstruction of the dances ? Is it lost ? What was it in pre-Mughal India ? Today, the most percussive dance music occurs to come from Kerala. Does it have a connection with the ancient ritual music of India ? Does it betray South-East Asian influences ? We can also try more radical explanations by putting forward three hypotheses.