Travel Tips

Gamelan is a way of linking individuals in social groups. Gamelan music is performed as a group effort, and so there is no place for an individual showoff. Traditionally, gamelan is only played at certain occasions such as ritual ceremonies, special community celebrations, shadow puppet shows, and for the royal family. Gamelan is also used to accompany dances in court, temple, and village rituals. Besides providing music for social functional ceremonies, gamelan also provides a livelihood for many professional musicians, and for specialized craftsmen who manufacture gamelan.

Today, although gamelan music is still used for ritual ceremonies and the royal family, it is also performed as concert music at social and cultural gatherings to welcome guests and audiences. Gamelan is also used to accompany many kinds of both traditional and modern dances, drama, theatrical and puppetry. In modern days, gamelan can be kept in places such as courts, temples, museums, schools, or even private homes.

The wayang or shadow puppet is the most prominent theatrical expressions in Bali. In a wayang kulit performance, flat cut-out figures are silhouetted against a translucent, white screen, with a coconut-husk lamp as its source of light. It is mostly expressions or enactments of religious mythology blended into one with historical facts that will keep a Balinese entertained all night long.

These wayang figures are manipulated with rods by the puppeteer or dalang, who tells the story accompanied by a gamelan orchestra and occassional chanting or singing of a singer. gamelan can also accompany voices, Outside the theater, the dalang commands a high respect from his community, for he performs the job of an actor, a teacher, a historian, and often a priest. The dalang is one mechanism that succesfully passes culture and tradition from one generation to another.