Wayan Gandera Redux

Wayan Gandera Redux Ruby Ornstein (bio) In his review essay in the Winter/Spring 2005 edition of Asian Music (36/1), Michael Tenzer discusses Bali South, a compact disc (CD) containing music recorded by Gertrude Robinson in 1970. Robinson's liner notes for the original long-playing album (LP) credited Wayan Gandera, then the leader of the Gunung Sari gamelan club in Peliatan, with "arranging" the four kebyar pieces on the CD. I am concerned here with two of these pieces: "Gambang Suling" and "Hujan Mas." Robinson says that Gandera based "Gambang Suling" on a popular Indonesian melody and "Hujan Mas" on a Javanese gending (composition), and gives the dates of arrangement as 1962 and 1963, respectively. It is not true that Gandera arranged these two pieces (as Tenzer points out), and, moreover, the dates are meaningless. It is true that "Gambang Suling" is based on a popular Indonesian melody and "Hujan Mas" on a Javanese gending. (University of California at Los Angeles [UCLA] students will remember well the gending "Udan Mas" as the very first Javanese gamelan piece we played!) The new liner notes for the Bali South CD repeat the original mistakes, which seem to have become self-perpetuating. Douglas Myers, in his obituary of Wayan Gandera, says that he "developed many new compositions for the gong, including his famous rendition of the Indonesian melody 'Gambang Suling'" (Myers 2002, 1). Meanwhile, jacket notes for another CD, Music of the Gamelan Gong Kebyar, Vol. 2, correctly identify "Gambang Suling" as a North Balinese composition, but seem to suggest that "Hujan Mas" comes from Peliatan (Vitale 1996, 25). Finally, Dieter Mack, in his article, "The Gong Kebyar Style of Pinda, Gianyar, " says that "the two main kreasi kebyar of Pliatan 'Hujan Mas' and 'Gambang Suling'. . .were created in the nineteen-fifties" (Mack 1992, 323). "Gambang Suling" and "Hujan Mas" I recorded "Gambang Suling" and "Hujan Mas" in northern Bali in 1964. I transcribed them and played the tapes for Gandera. He verified my transcriptions, and together we taught them to Gunung Sari.1 Actually, I recorded two versions of "Gambang Suling": one in Kedis Kaja, [End Page 141] played by the gamelan led by Gdé Merdana,2 and another in Singaraja, played by the gamelan led by Gdé Purana. The two versions are almost identical. As it happened, Gunung Sari learned Merdana's version.3 I also recorded two versions of "Hujan Mas" by these clubs. The version of "Hujan Mas" that Gunung Sari learned was Purana's. This is significant because the Singaraja and Kedis Kaja versions of "Hujan Mas" are entirely different, sharing only the title. So, we know that Gandera did not arrange "Gambang Suling" or "Hujan Mas" from original sources, and that is why the dates—1962 and 1963—are meaningless. We know only that the pieces were being played in the north in 1964. I do not know how these errors originated. Robinson was a well-trained and responsible ethnomusicologist. As it happens, her LP was originally intended as one of a set of two. The second was to be called Bali North, and I was to supply the music and liner notes. The Bali North recording would certainly have included both "Gambang Suling" and "Hujan Mas," because they were so emblematic of the northern style. The Institute of Ethnomusicology closed its doors, however, and Bali North was never recorded. No doubt these errors would have been sorted out if the project had been completed. Wayan Gandera Robinson may have pressed Gandera a bit when she asked who had composed this piece or that (as Tenzer suggests), and so Gandera said that he did. The concept of "arrangement" or "attribution" (the game of "he wrote, she wrote") can be amusing at times, especially in Bali, where borrowing is not only traditional but is raised to a high art. However, answers to a field worker's queries about broader topics can cause trouble if enough skepticism is not added to the mix. This was certainly true when dealing with Wayan Gandera, who was by all accounts mercurial, charming, a lot of fun, creative, and thoroughly irritating! One day I asked him what he knew about the

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• Music of the Gamelan Gong Kebyar

  Jody Diamond, Stsi Denpasar et al.•Ethnomusicology•1998

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