Gamelon in the West

Of all of the worlds’ non-western music, none seems to be as familiar and at the same time as alien as Indonesian gamelan. Gamelan utilizes it’s own, highly intricate, notation system under the context of large group orchestration much like a lot of western music. This fact makes gamelan easily dissectible and imitable for western scholars and composers. It is also the main reason for such a high level of ethnomusicological study done in Indonesia. Be that as it may, it is the other worldly sound of gamelan that truly captured many a westerner’s attention and imagination.
Gamelan’s first appearance in the west is a debated subject, but it is agreed upon that individual instruments (as opposed to whole ensembles) were imported from the East Indies to Europe in the early 19th century. The very first gamelan outside of South-east Asia was brought to England by a man named Stamford Raffles. He had just finished his governorship of Java in 1816 and decided to bring a taste of ...