Sunda Country: The Art of the Gamelan Degung

Gamelan degung is one of the smaller types of gamelan ensembles. This disc, recorded between 1972 and 1973, features two groups, one of ten players and another of seven. A bamboo flute leads the melody, while bronze metallophones and gongs provide interlocking patterns, unfurling without flash or hurry.

Traditionally this would have been court music. The oldest surviving ensembles of instruments date from the 1700s, where they were played for the princes of west Java. In Europe, it was a time when all self-respecting royals employed composers and musicians, and you could almost see baroque and gamelan degung as courtly mirror-images of one another. The emphasis, in other words, is on beauty and harmony more than turbulence and revolution. This means that what entrances on first hearing can — as it was intended to – blend into the background with prolonged exposure. But if you want one example of gamelan degung, it should probably be this. Ocora recorded, superbly, the leading musicians of the time – a mixture of veterans and young turks – and you’ve got to be seriously good to sound this effortless.