Gamelan of Central Java XIV: Ritual Sounds of Sekaten

Sekaten is the sacred gamelan music. In Java, it is played in only a few mosques, and only during the week of celebrations marking the birth and death of the prophet Mohammed. It uses extra-large bronze percussion instruments that are kept only for this purpose. And there are only two official sekaten pieces, each of which builds from a sparse and stately opening to a tumultuous climax. That all sounds pretty special. And these field recordings from 2004 do gamelan fans a service in letting them hear what sekaten sounds like in its natural habitat. But most listeners would probably be better making their own compilation than investing in any individual disc. This album, for example, has two different versions of ‘Rangkung’, from the central Javanese cities of Surakarta and Yogyakarta (the two main centres of classical gamelan music). Versions of the other sekaten piece, ‘Rambu’, are strewn around other volumes – an indicator of the haphazard editorial and thematic decisions that seem to bedevil the series as a whole.

Sekaten is purely instrumental. But the third and final track on the album makes up for this: it’s a largely choral work, over an austere backdrop of drum and kemanak- hand-held percussion instruments that look like cast-iron bananas and sound a bit like a spaced-out version of the Brazilian agogo. The presence of the singers makes a nice change to the strangeness of the sekaten.