he first release in Nonesuch’s Explorer Series, back in 1967, was a volume of Balinese gamelan and traditional music called Music From the Morning of the World. Though the label had been releasing so-called “world music” prior to that, this one LP inspired an entire series that, by the time it had run its course, comprised 94 titles from nearly every non-American region of the world. Upon listening to the gamelan and other Indonesian musics heard on the original title and all the others from the Indonesian portion of the Explorer Series, it’s not hard to understand why these recordings spurred such fervor for pressing such un-commercial music. But among the many jewels of the Indonesian series’ chronicles of gamelan music in Bali and Java, none shine brighter than Gamelan Semar Pegulingan.


This album is a document of a very specific (and very rare) form of gamelan performance that fell out of favor in Bali in the early 1900s, partly due to Western influence and partly due merely to an evolution of local tastes and customs. In Bali in the 1970s, when these recordings were made, the dominant form of gamelan was known as gamelan gong kebjar, a style characterized by fast, aggressive playing and rapid shifts in volume and intensity, and best heard on Nonesuch’s Golden Rain album. In contrast, the older form heard on this album, “gamelan of the love god,” is much subtler, more textured -- though still very dynamic. The semar pegulingan ensemble recorded here is somewhat reminiscent of the more stately gamelan style of Java (as heard on The Jasmine Isle and the Court Gamelan series), though the Balinese players also seem informed by their own island’s newer gong kebjar style. Maintained almost artificially in a few Indonesian villages by Western ethnomusicologists and Balinese enthusiasts of the style, the gamelan heard here is nothing short of stunning.


One listen to the opening song, “Tabuh Gari” -- a very popular gamelan composition -- reveals just how special this music is. As its pulsating metallic beats and haunting melodies shimmer into life from a tentative opening, it’s hard not to be swept up in the emotion and evocative imagery of the piece. In comparison to the brief excerpt of a harsher, more minimal take on this piece on Nonesuch’s Music for the Shadow Play album, this version is filled with detail and vibrant splashes of color. The multiple parts, if they could be isolated, mostly seem relatively simple, but the arrangement of each player’s role within the larger ensemble results in a perfectly correlated performance that makes impossibly complicated and fragile textures float through the air.


The intricate, ethereal beauty of the gamelan orchestra emerges from this deft weaving of the many different elements into an interlocking whole. There are a wide array of xylophone-like keyed instruments, which provide the distinctive metallic rhythms and shimmering melodies that are the foundation of gamelan music. In addition, bamboo flutes -- called suling -- add a ghostly, subtle melodic backbone to the more intricate interplay on the keyed instruments. Coupled with hand drum patterns that provide a constantly shifting rhythmic basis to each composition and gongs that delineate major movements, the gamelan orchestra becomes a complex and mysteriously working creature, summoning great beauty from the convergence of its components.


It’s not hard to hear, in these dense compositions, the foundations for the rhythmic minimalism of Steve Reich and other Western composers who were vastly influenced by the first recordings leaking out of Indonesia and the rest of the world throughout the first half of the 20th Century. This influence is probably why, listened to today, this album sounds utterly accessible and absolutely gorgeous, not nearly as exotic as it must have seemed thirty years ago, but none the worse for its increased familiarity. The six songs on this album were recorded by one of the only surviving gamelan semar pegulingan groups in Bali at the time, combining the older traditional form with some comparatively modern elements. The result is certainly the best of the Explorer Series’ gamelan albums, providing a fascinating overview of this lovely form of music, as well as an excellent informational background on the gamelan in the liner notes.