By Louis Dennig
Staff Writer

The Balinese religious and social traditional music Gamelan showed up at Bates this weekend in a big way on Sunday, April 4, when the M.I.T. based group Gamelan Galak Tika filled Olin Arts Center both literally and figuratively with incense. This eerie music, comprised of syncopated rhythms where two people play individual parts that blend together to form what sounds like it’s coming from only one instrument, is incredibly difficult to do. That being said, Gamelan Galak Tika seems to do it without breaking a sweat, missing a note, and with unbelievable speed.

Gamelan music comes from the word “to hammer,” which is fitting considering the music is primarily made by hitting metal plates with hammer-like sticks. The 30-member metal orchestra contains a wide array of distinct instruments. Each of the five different ‘hammering’ instruments has different-sized sheets to create vastly different sounds, and each base’s wood design is beautifully ornate. The guest artist, I Nyoman Catra, played a two-sided drum which kept the beat going as the hammers, hand-cymbals, gongs, bamboo flute, and dancers were all busy creating their own flurries of music and art.

The music itself is difficult to describe, it has an eerie eastern Hindu feel to it, sounds like one would expect incense to sound. Gamelan Galak Tika is nothing if not impressive. The beats that they produce are so fast that the hammers look like a blur, and to imagine that those hammers have to be in exact timing with someone else’s in order to produce any kind of coherent rhythm at all is amazing.

The first piece of the six piece set, called “The Bait,” composed by band manager Sean Mannion, started the audience off feeling like they were at a religious ceremony, and slowly crescendoed into a beat so fast that it was hard to tap your foot too. Part of the appeal of the music, however, is just how eerie it all sounds, as though it’s always trying to make the audience discover something or realize some impending doom. This feeling was transferred perfectly into the dancers.

In the second piece, “Panyembrama,” two Galak Tika dancers, Rebecca Zook and Denok Istart, performed a dance where their movements switched immediately from pure fluidity, to how one would imagine an ancient stone to dance. Both dancers brilliantly showcased the quick, sharp head movements, darting eyes, and shaking that seems to be a staple of Balinese dancing.

Gamelan Galak Tika enjoyed showing off their own performers works. The fifth piece was actually composed by Zook and started off as a very basic example of Balinese music, and then proceeded to prove that initial response utterly incorrect. This, the fastest piece, also showed off an incredible amount of not just abrupt starts and stops, but also abrupt changes in the volume of the music.

Galak Tika’s performance showed up on a rainy day in Maine and brought in a little taste of eastern Hindu meditation. It’s a thing that if it ever returns - or if the Bates Javanese style Gamelan group performs - is not to be missed.





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