On a relaxed autumn afternoon in London, art lovers warmed themselves up inside the Royal Festival Hall at the Southbank Centre. In the foyer, musicians, mostly from the UK but from other countries as well, set themselves up cross-legged to play the resident Javanese gamelan.

AP/KIN CHEUNG

Soothing melodies soon wafted across the open hall. The informal concert kicked off the second year of residency for Rahayu Supanggah, arguably the most internationally renowned Indonesian composer.

Supanggah sat in the middle, playing alternately the kendang (drum) and the rebab (bowed Asian fiddle).

The master musician has been visiting the Southbank twice a year since 2007, leading master classes or workshops at this major arts center in one of the world’s arts meccas. On previous visits he collaborated with a famous dalang (puppeteer) to stage the first all-night wayang (shadow puppet drama) and teamed up with Portico Quartet, an emerging four-piece UK jazz group, to bring new sounds to the Southbank London Jazz Festival.

Supanggah’s London connection began in 1978, when he was directly involved in introducing gamelan to the UK. As a member of Yogyakarta’s key traditional arts institutions, he was invited to perform in the first Oriental Music Festival at Durham University.

The traveling group played gamelan and accompanied dance, wayang, and langendriyan (court music) performances. When they returned home, they left their Javanese ensemble of tuned gongs behind at the Indonesian Embassy, hoping it would lead to a passion for the music in Britain.

Mission accomplished. The historic gamelan is now housed and played at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.

Supanggah, who has collaborated with world-class artists including directors Peter Brooks, Ong Keng Sen and most recently Robert Wilson, said that the central Javanese troupe was invited back to the festival the following year. This time they played a BBC Proms program during the interval of the London Simfonietta performance.

“I still remember the long, standing ovation we got . They even had to ask the audience to stop clapping so they could continue with the program,” he said.

One BBC listener, Simon Cook, even tried to create a gamelan after hearing the broadcast. “His was nothing like the original gamelan, but his approach was really interesting,” Supanggah said.

Supanggah was invited to study further in the UK in 1981 but he had already agreed to earn his Master’s in ethnomusicology at the University of Paris VIII in France.

The London–Surakarta relationship peaked in the 1980s when a younger generation of British gamelan aficionados flocked to Surakarta to hone their musicianship and technique.  

In 1987, composer Alec Roth, who helped host the troupe back in 1978, founded the Southbank Gamelan Players. Once  keep in the confines of academia, Javanese  gamelan has now expanded into the public sphere.

The cultural bridge is now well established. Cultural exchanges continue to bring artists from the two spheres together to share their love of music through gamelan. Gamelan playing has already passed to a second generation of Britons, music students and amateurs from many walks of life.

Many play it seriously. Some have applied for a darmasiswa — an Indonesian government scholarship – to study in Surakarta. When they return home, they usually combine a teaching job with further studies to hone their skills on a transplanted gamelan.

Gamelan devotees in the UK estimate almost 100 sets of these tuned gongs have made their way to the UK, with 80 percent from Java and the rest from Bali or other regions.

Foreign musicians are even beginning to make the tradition their own. Southbank Gamelan Players can boast some of the best players in the UK. They have begun performing abroad themselves.

“Today the performance quality in the UK has surpassed the abilities of US groups, even though gamelan began in the United States much earlier, back in the 1950s,” Suppangah said.

In the United States the gamelan features in some university music departments, normally as part of its ethnomusicology curriculum. Students tend to take a class or two without becoming devoted to the tradition. In the UK, although gamelan does not form part of the university curriculum, it has become an artistic passion for a handful of devotees.

“Many players I know here have been playing gamelan for 10 years, some even longer,” Supanggah said.

For the final performance, Su-panggah led the Southbank Gamelan Players in a mix of traditional and contemporary pieces before the Portico Quartet took the stage.

At the end of the jazz group’s performance, Supanggah was called back on stage to join them. He added rebab and bonang (a double rack of bossed gongs) parts as the young musicians played percussion, double bass and saxophone.

The two musical realms successfully forged a common ground, a challenge for the collaborators who had only a few days to rehearse.

For his next residency visit this year, Supanggah is set to collaborate with a Venezuelan group in April.

“I’ve never done anything with a Latin group. It will be an interesting experience for me.”

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