The Gamelan

Last night, I finally saw live the Southeast Asian percussion orchestra that has influenced Western composers from Claude Debussy to Lou Harrison. The gamelan is a group of instruments consisting mostly of gongs, drums, and mallet instruments and is to my mind concrete proof that a sophisticated and venerable musical tradition can exist pretty much anywhere.

The presentation of the gamelan here in Berkeley was in the context of a performance of a shadow puppet play, an example of which you can see above. A small taste of what the gamelan sounds like can be found here.