‘Click, Play and Save’: The iGamelan as a Tool for Music-culture Sustainability

Abstract

This article explores the potential for web-based interactive music resources to represent and sustain music-culture heritage via digital means. Our focus is the University of Otago’s virtual Indonesian gamelan (iGamelan): an immersive online resource featuring interactive musical instruments, an audio-video gallery, and information archive. Designed in 2010–2011 for use within the tertiary education context, the iGamelan stands alone as an innovative learning/teaching tool, and also enhances real-life instructional sessions with the University’s pelog/slendro Central Javanese gamelan. This article illuminates the pitfalls and achievements of the iGamelan project and, at a broader level, demonstrates how contemporary technology can help sustain active music-making cultures.

Notes

¹ After the completion of this interactive website, an iPhone and iPad app was released in May 2011 that also used the name iGamelan, although in this instance focus was on the gamelan instrument called bonang (see iReka Soft 2011). For several other examples of types of interactive online gamelan, see < http://www.academy.wellscathedralschool.org>, < http://hub.hku.hk/handle/10722/49889>, and < http://www.citedelamusique.fr/gamelan/shock.html>(Accessed 1 November 3013).

² Each of these pieces is in the slendro (five-note) scale using the manyura mode. It is envisaged that a further development of the resource will also include instruments using the pelog (seven-note) scale.

³ See the official website (accessed 1 November 2013) < http://www.gamelansonoflion.org>.

⁴ All responses from students noted in this article are given anonymously and adhere to the university’s guidelines for ethical approval.

⁵ Schiemer and Havryliv (2006) call this a ‘Pocket Gamelan’, but it is not actually a simulation of the Indonesian music ensemble of the same name.

⁶ At the time of writing, only the saron demung was operational on the iGamelan, but it is intended that others are to be added at a future development stage.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shelley D. Brunt

Shelley D. Brunt is a Lecturer in Music Industry and Media at RMIT University, Australia. From 2008–2011, she was a Lecturer in the Department of Music at the University of Otago, New Zealand, where she performed with, and was the Director of, the ensemble Puspawarna Gamelan alongside Creative Director Dr Joko Susilo. Her research on community gamelan in New Zealand has been published in Dunedin Soundings (2011, co-written with Henry Johnson) and she recently edited a special issue on Asian popular music for Perfect Beat:The Pacific Journal of Research into Contemporary Music and Popular Culture(2011).

Email: [email protected]

Henry Johnson

Henry Johnson is Professor in the Department of Music, University of Otago, New Zealand. His teaching and research interests are in the field of ethnomusicology, particularly the creative and performing arts of Asia and its diasporas. His research on Indonesian music and gamelan have been published in Asia in the Making of New Zealand (Auckland University Press, 2006) and New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies (2002; 2008). His recent books include Performing Japan (co-edited with Jerry Jaffe, Global Oriental, 2008) and The Shamisen (Brill, 2010).Email: [email protected]