Balinese Music and Dance: Gamelan Dharma Swara

Join us for an evening of Balinese gamelan with 20 musicians and dancers and a workshop! Dharma Swara, which translates as “a duty of perpetuating sound,” is one of the United States’ preeminent Balinese music and dance ensembles, and has been captivating audiences around the world with their raucous and wondrous performances for over 30 years. The group performs a spellbinding blend of iconic traditional pieces paired with bold contemporary compositions, spanning some 500 years, and has been called “thrilling, mesmerizing and powerful” (NYTimes) and “sublime” (The New Yorker).

**There will be a pre-show workshop/conversation with the artists at 7pm**

Gamelan refers to the Balinese traditional percussion orchestra including gongs, metallophones, xylophones, cymbals, flutes, strings, and chanting. It’s a vibrant and complex music used in religious ceremonies, rituals, festivals and concert halls throughout Bali and worldwide. Closely related to Javanese gamelan, an older form, scholars speculate that the Balinese ensemble has been played for at least a millennium on the island. Balinese artists developed a new form of music and dance in the early decades of the twentieth century, renowned for its dynamic, virtuosic group performance techniques, complexity and expression. Called kebyar (“explosion”), the form quickly became the most popular music on the island, with hundreds of villages developing their own gamelan gong kebyar ensembles; intense competitions between kebyar ensembles remain a major element of Balinese musical culture. Gong kebyar is but one of the many types of Balinese gamelan, and music-making contexts in Bali ranging from temple festivals and family ceremonies to public competitions and tourist entertainment.

The intricate patterns of Balinese music and dance are learned through traditional aural methods with an incredible amount of dedication over long periods of rehearsal. Most members of Dharma Swara have been with the group for many years. A large number of them have also studied or lived in Bali, bringing back their knowledge to share and enhance the group. Dharma Swara plays with spirit, dedication, and gratitude on gamelan semara dana instruments which were invented by Balinese musician, composer, and master gamelansmith I Wayan Beratha in 1987. The ensemble combines the popular 20th century gong kebyar tuning (selisir, a 5-tone scale) with the older 7-tone semar pagulingan (16th or 17th c. CE), making it possible to play a wide range of traditional and new repertoire.

“brightly tingling and hypnotically psychedelic. Lucid Culture