Cyclical narratives and the power of three: Institutional histories and pedagogical practices of gamelan ensembles at the University of Illinois
This project builds upon the scholarship of gamelan ensembles in the United States, particularly the work of Brent Talbot and Elizabeth Clendinning, by focusing on discourses of music transmission, pedagogical lineages, and the Balinese concept of air mengalir (“water flows”). In this thesis, I provide a history of gamelan music and gamelan ensembles at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), starting from the early 1970s, and explore various narratives constructed from oral histories, interviews, and archival materials. I then focus on a particular moment of this history—namely the years in which I have been involved in the UIUC Balinese gamelan ensemble (2015-2019)—and examine the pedagogical practices of Pak I Ketut Gede Asnawa situated in relation to institutional histories and theories that shape them and are equally influenced by them. Specifically, I theorize about Pak Asnawa’s pedagogical strategies from his own theoretical language and terms and expand this model to talk about the educational realties of the UIUC Balinese gamelan ensemble at this moment. Ultimately, I study how the historical narratives and pedagogical practices of the various gamelan programs uniquely exemplify what it means to be a gamelan musician in UIUC’s School of Music as well as show how these ideas about the function of a gamelan at a US postsecondary music institution interact with larger institutional forces such as campus policies, the discipline of ethnomusicology, and national and transnational legacies and theories.
Gamelan in the US, Gamelan Pedagogy, Institutional History, Pedagogy, Ethnomusicological Ensembles
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign