Joyful with Gamelan
Pardiman Djoyonegoro
Without any fanfare or lofty ambition, Pardiman Djoyonegoro, 48, diligently teaches kids and teenagers the fun of playing gamelan musical instruments. He has successfully made many of them fall in love with the traditional artform.
In the national arts scene, Pardiman is famous as the founder of Acapella Mataraman, an acapella group based in Yogyakarta. Before dabbling in acapella, he was a student of gamelan. It can be said that gamelan was the artist’s “first love”.
Pardiman does not come from a family of artists. Nevertheless, he has been close to traditional Javanese arts, including wayang kulit (shadow puppet show) and ketoprak (traditional theater), since he was just a small boy. Traditional art performances are a common thing in many villages across Java, including in Pardiman’s hometown.
“My parents were farmers. So was my grandfather. But they all loved watching wayang kulit and ketoprak and listening to gamelan,” he said in an interview at his house in Kasihan, Bantul, Yogyakarta, on Tuesday (31/1/2017).
Watching wayang shows and gamelan performances left a mark on Pardiman. When he was in junior high school, he took part in gamelan extracurricular activities. “I was the only boy in the gamelan group,” he said laughing.
Since then, he has been inseparable from the art of gamelan. Upon graduation from junior high school, he enrolled at the Indonesia Karawitan (Javanese Music) High School in Yogyakarta.
Outside of school, he joined the Yogyakarta Karawitan Park gamelan studio. In his spare time, he taught gamelan in various places to earn money. “From the teaching, I could pay for my education and send my two little siblings to school.”
Finishing high school, Pardiman took up karawitan studies at the Indonesian Arts Institute (ISI) in Yogyakarta. His creative network expanded after he joined a number of arts groups, such as Bagong Kussudiardja Arts Center, Ketoprak Sapta Mandala, Teater Gandrik and the Kua Etnika music group.
His vast network enabled him to explore many types of art, including writing musical accompaniments for ketoprak, dance and theater shows and forming an acapella group. He has performed abroad numerous times, including in Italy, the Netherlands, Singapore, China, Australia, Russia and Japan.
From village to village
After graduating from college in 1995, Pardiman went from village to village in Yogyakarta to find neglected gamelan instruments. Every time he found them, he asked local children to play the instruments with him. He then established the Sragam ABC (Srawung Gamelan Ayo Bermain Gamelan – Gamelan Mingling, Let’s Play Gamelan) community for these activities.
“Back then, I was concerned by the high number of neglected gamelan sets in Yogyakarta,” he said.
At first, it was not easy to ask the children to play gamelan. Many of them ignored him. “Once when I tried teaching the kids how to play the gamelan, they all left me to play soccer.”
Learning from the experience, he then offered the children the opportunity to learn gamelan while playing. The process of learning gamelan was split into several stages, namely srawung (getting to know), dunung (finding out), pirsa (understanding) and reka-reka (bringing out creativity).
The gamelan training process is adjusted to the psychological development of children. Every child acts differently when asked to play the instruments. Some are shy, some are afraid and some know them well.
“Creating a fun atmosphere is important so that the kids will not be afraid of me and the instruments. The goal is to make the kids think that the gamelan instruments are their playthings,” Pardiman explained.
On kids who are just getting to know gamelan for the first time, Pardiman does not immediately tell them to play the instrument. He lets them get to know the instrument better by watching other kids play some music. After the new kids become interested, they are taught basic skills like proper hand positions when playing gamelan, the proper way to sit and basic musical notes in karawitan compositions.
Pardiman also writes karawitan compositions that are interesting for kids. “When the [Japanese] Tamiya [toy cars] were popular, I wrote a song about them. Then, the kids play gamelan while playing with their Tamiya cars. It’s more fun for them that way,” he said. On another occasion, Pardiman wrote a karawitan composition based on Bruno Mars’ popular hit “The Lazy Song” after hearing his students sing the song a number of times during breaks from playing gamelan.
Pardiman Djoyonegoro
Task for children
Pardiman never tells his students to have lofty ambitions, such as preserving traditional arts. “That is the government’s duty.”
“The children’s task, first and foremost, is just to have fun. This is why I train them to play the gamelan with fun,” he said.
Pardiman never forces his students to be professional gamelan players. Several of his former students are currently teachers and armed forces personnel.
Despite not becoming professional gamelan players, their gamelan training with Pardiman when they were small was not for nothing. When playing gamelan, children indirectly learn about good manners. When playing the instruments, they have to learn to listen, observe and feel the performance of their friends as well. “From this, the kids can learn how to build harmony with other people,” he said.
Children who play the gong can learn to be patient. This is because, when the other gamelan players are busily playing their instruments, a gong player needs only to listen carefully and hit the gong at certain moments. “Playing the gong trains children to be more careful,” said the man who is sometimes called Fredy Pardiman.
Children who play the bonang, a set of medium-sized circular metal plates, learn to lead as this is what a bonang does in a gamelan orchestra. Those who play the saron bars must learn to control themselves as they need to hit the saron loud enough but not too loud that the sound drowns out the other instruments.
“Playing gamelan can become a mind sport,” he said.
After years of teaching gamelan in various places, Pardiman then decided to centralize his training at his home in Karangjati hamlet, Bangunjiwo village, Kasihan district, Bantul. At his house, which also functions as a base for the Omah Cangkem Studio, some 30 children and teenagers participate in gamelan training every Friday and Sunday free of charge. Recently, Pardiman has started to provide acapella training for his students and established the Icipilli Mitirimin group.
