When former UNC Department of Music chair Louise Toppin asked Professor John Caldwell if he wanted to revive Gamelan Nyai Saraswati in the fall of 2017, he knew it wouldn’t be easy.
But after an almost two-year hiatus — because of what Caldwell attributes to the absence of a full-time director — the Indonesian music ensemble has made a complete return. After a successful spring concert in April 2017, the Gamelan Nyai Saraswati Ensemble will present their fall concert on Wednesday, Nov. 28 in Hill Hall at 8:00 p.m.
The instruments for Gamelan Nyai Saraswati ensemble arrived in Chapel Hill from Java in December of 2000. Caldwell, who has training in western classical music from the University of Michigan, worked for the Center of South Asian Studies at the time.
During his time at Michigan in the 1980s was when Caldwell first fell in love with South Asian music after he encountered Bollywood music through friends and coworkers.
Now a teaching assistant professor in UNC’s Department of Asian Studies and a Ph.D. student in the Department of Music, Caldwell saw the opportunity Toppin presented as another way to combine his two passions: Asian culture and music.
He was familiar with gamelan music and had visited Java and Bali just a few years prior to taking the role as director of the ensemble. But Caldwell knew he had a long way to go to successfully bring the group back from dormancy.
“I’m still kind of a beginner in a lot of senses, but at least I kind of have a lot more basic performance expertise that I can bring,” Caldwell said. “This semester has been a lot better than last semester when we were kind of winging a lot of it.”
The ensemble originally was made up of only a handful of community members. Now, the group consists of 14 performers — eight students, five community members, and Caldwell.
“We have some repeat students, too, who have picked up a lot of stuff,” Caldwell said. “As well as the community members, who also have various knowledge that they bring to the group. So, now we have a pretty good knowledge base to work with.”
On the 28th, the group will come together to perform a selection of three formal structures of gamelan: lancaran, ladrang and ketawang.
Gamelan Nyai Saraswati will play seven pieces, with the first and last being vocal pieces performed by two community members and two students.
Caldwell says singing is a tricky aspect of the performance for students, since not all of the student members have a musical background or an understanding of the Indonesian language.
“We have one student who’s an Indonesian heritage student, so she can do the language stuff a little bit,” Caldwell said. “But she’s not really a singer. It’s fun to have a student challenge their capabilities.”
By encouraging students to challenge their capabilities, Caldwell has reinserted Gamelan Nyai Saraswati into the music scene at UNC.
He believes the next step for the ensemble is to gain more interest and recruit new members, something he hopes will start to happen as soon as his performers clear the stage Wednesday night.
Following the show, Gamelan Nyai Saraswati will invite audience members to the stage to try instruments and look at the scores. Caldwell calls this the “petting zoo,” portion of the event.
“(They’ll) more or less get a kind of hands-on experience,” he said. “Maybe that will help us recruit some more people.
“It’s an amazing kind of music (with) some universal melodies, rhythms, and stuff that you can get into.”
