Negotiation and hybridity in new Balinese music

Sanggar Bona Alit, a case study

Authors

  • Manolete Mora University of Hong Kong, Faculty of Arts, School of Humanities (Music)

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/prbt.v12i1.45

Keywords:

new Balinese music, hybridity, sanggar

Abstract

Writers and scholars have often interpreted the Balinese as struggling to exist in two worlds - the traditional and the modern. Many Balinese, however, tend to see themselves as attempting to negotiate foreign culture and to manage the far-reaching transformations that have taken place in their world. Moreover, Balinese conceptions and expressions of their contemporary world are not homogenous and artists have responded in a variety of ways. The case of Sanggar Bona Alit, a studio for the teaching and performance of music and dance founded by Alit Adi Putra - musician, composer, and painter - shows how creative productions may be shaped by processes of cultural negotiation that occur at the conceptual boundaries between the familiar and the foreign, the inside and outside, and the traditional and the modern.

Author Biography

  • Manolete Mora, University of Hong Kong, Faculty of Arts, School of Humanities (Music)

    Manolete Mora is Associate Professor and Convener of the Bachelor of Music program at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. His principal research interests are indigenous and popular musics of the Philippines. His research interests also extend to the gamelan gong kebyar from Bali, and ritual dance music among the Dagaaba of Ghana. He has published widely in musicological and anthropological journals and has produced CDs for Rykodisc and UNESCO.

References

Baulch, Emma. 2002. ‘Gesturing Elsewhere: The Identity Politics of the Balinese Death/ Thrash Metal Scene’. Popular Music 22: 195–216.

—2007. Making Scenes: Reggae, Punk, and Death Metal in 1990s Bali. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Bourdieu, P., and L. J. D. Wacquant. 1992. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Cohen, M. I. 2006. The Komedie Stamboel: Popular Theater in Colonial Indonesia, 1891–1903. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press.

Covarrubias, M. 1937. Island of Bali. London: Cassell.

Creese, H. 2000 . ‘In Search of Majapahit: The Transformation of Balinese Identities’. In To Change Bali: Essays in Honour of I Gusti Ngurah Bagus, ed. A. Vickers, I. N. D. Putra and M. Ford, 15–46. Denpasar: Bali Post.

De Ferranti, H. 2002. ‘ “Japanese Music” Can be Popular’. Popular Music 21.2: 195–208.

DeZoete, B., and W. Spies. 1973 [1938]. Dance and Drama in Bali. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press.

Dibia, I. W. 2000. Kecak: The Vocal Chant of Bali, 2nd edn. Denpasar: Hartanto Art Books Studio.

Dunbar-Hall, P. 2006. ‘Culture, Tourism, and Cultural Tourism: Boundaries and Frontiers in Performances of Balinese Music and Dance’. In Ethnomusicology: A Contemporary Reader, ed. J. C. Post, 55–65. New York: Routledge.

Green, E. 2004. ‘Tenzer, Michael. Gamelan Gong Kebyar: The Art of Twentieth-Century Balinese Music’ [electronic version]. The Journal of Music and Meaning 2: sec. 10.12. http://www.musicandmeaning.net/issues/showArticle.php?artID=2.10

Harnish, D. 2005. ‘Teletubbies in Paradise: Tourism, Indonesianisation and Modernisation in Balinese Music’. Yearbook for Traditional Music 37: 103–123.

Heimarck, B. R. 2003. Balinese Discourses on Music and Modernization: Village Voices and Urban Views. New York: Routledge.

Hough, B. 1999. ‘Educating for the Performing Arts: Contesting and Mediating Identity in Contemporary Bali’. In Staying Local in the Global Village: Bali in the Twentieth Century, ed. R. Rubinstein and L. H. Conner, 231–64. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Iyer, P. 1989. Video Night in Kathmandu: and Other Reports from the Not-so-Far East. New York: Vintage Books.

Kahn, J. 2004. ‘Introduction: Identities, Nations and Cosmopolitan Practice’. In Ethnicities, Diasporas and ‘Grounded’ Cosmopolitanism in Asia. Singapore: National University of Singapore.

Kunst, J., and C. J. A. K. Van-Wely. 1924. ‘De toonkunst van Bali I’. In C. Kunst Van-Wely, De Toonkunst van Bali. (1924; part 2 in Tijdschrift voor Indische taal-, land-, en volkenkunde, LXV, Batavia, 1925). Weltevreden: Koninklijk Bataviasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenshappen & Kolff (vol. 2 appears as an article in Tidjdschrift voor Indische Taal-, Land-en Volkenkunde 65 [1925: 369–508]).

McGraw, A. 2005. ‘Gong’s Gravity and Ombak: Waves of Musical Change in Bali’. Paper presented at the 50th meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology. http://oncampus. richmond.edu/~amcgraw/writing/SEM%2005%20final.doc

McPhee, C. 1976 [1966]. Music in Bali: A Study in Form and Instrumental Organization in Balinese Orchestral Music. New York: Da Capo Press.

—1979 [1944]. A House in Bali. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press.

Mead, M. 1970 [1940]. ‘The Arts of Bali’. In Traditional Balinese Culture, ed. J. Belo, 331–40. New York: Columbia University Press.

Nordholt, H. S. 1994. ‘The Making of Traditional Bali: Colonial Ethnography and Bureaucratic Reproduction’. History and Anthropology 8(1-4): 89–127.

Picard, M. 1996. Bali: Cultural Tourism and Touristic Culture. Singapore: Editions Didier Millet Pte.

Picard, M., and R. E. Wood. 1997. Tourism, Ethnicity, and the State in Asian and Pacific Societies. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.

Racki, C. 1998. The Sacred Dances of Bali. Denpasar: Buratwangi.

Ramseyer, U., I. G. R. P. Tisna, R. Surya and Museum der Kulturen Basel. 2001. Bali: Living in Two Worlds. Basel: Museum der Kulturen Basel; Schwabe.

Ramstedt, M. 1992. ‘Indonesian Cultural Policy in Relation to the Development of Balinese Performing Arts’. In Balinese Music in Context: A Sixty-fifth Birthday Tribute to Hans Oesch, ed. D. Schaareman, 59–84. Winterthur, Switzerland: Amadeus Verlag.

Reuter, T. A. 1999. ‘People of the Mountains, People of the Sea: Negotiating the Local and the Foreign in Bali’. In Staying Local in the Global Village Bali in the Twentieth Century, ed. R. Rubinstein and L. Connor, 155–80. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.

Richter, M. M. 2006. ‘Musical Worlds in Jogjakarta: Contexts, Genres, Identities’. Unpublished PhD dissertation, La Trove University, Melbourne.

Robinson, G. 1995. The Dark Side of Paradise: Political Violence in Bali. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press.

Rubinstein, R., and L. Connor. 1999. Staying Local in the Global Village: Bali in the Twentieth Century. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.

Seebas, T. 1996. ‘Change in Balinese Musical Life: Kebiar in the 1920s and 1930s’. In Being Modern in Bali: Image and Change, ed. A. Vickers, 71–114. New Haven, CN: Southeast Asia Studies, Yale University.

Suryani, L. K. and G. Jensen. 1993. Trance and Possession in Bali: A Window on Western Multiple Personality,Possession Disorder, and Suicide. New York: Oxford University Press.

Taylor, C. 2004. Modern Social Imaginaries. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press.

Tenzer, M. 2000. Gamelan Gong Kebyar: The Art of Twentieth-century Balinese Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Vickers, A. 1990. Bali: A Paradise Created. Singapore and Malaysia: Periplus Editions.

—1996. Being Modern in Bali: Image and Change. New Haven, CN: Southeast Asia Studies, Yale University.

Vickers, A., I. N. D. Putra and M. Ford. 2000. To Change Bali: Essays in Honour of I Gusti Ngurah Bagus. Denpasar: Bali Post.

Warren, C. 2000. ‘Adat and the Discourses of Modernity in Bali’. In To Change Bali: Essays in Honour of I Gusti Ngurah Bagus, ed. A. Vickers, I. N. D. Putra and M. Ford, 1–14. Denpasar: Bali Post.

Published

2011-09-23

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Mora, M. (2011). Negotiation and hybridity in new Balinese music: Sanggar Bona Alit, a case study. Perfect Beat, 12(1), 45-68. https://doi.org/10.1558/prbt.v12i1.45