Xin Wei THOW

Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of a Masters of Arts (Research) in Southeast Asian Studies, at the National University of Singapore.

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Abstract:

This work is a phenomenological enquiry into the experience of playing and learning classical Javanese gamelan, a genre intimately linked to notions of the past, in a present moment often felt to be modern, innovative and unpredictable. Prominent in my experience is a sense of decline encountered in various sources: scholarly literature, media portrayals, and comments from both Javanese and non-Javanese musicians alike. Taking this as a starting point, I investigate particular aspects of musical life associated with decline: the four essays that make up the main body of the thesis discuss formal schooling, the use of notation, and my experiences at the pendopo [audience hall] of the Mangkunegaran palace. Through these reflections on change and the sense of decline it engenders, I explore the relationships of musicians to their music, to each other, and to the world that surrounds them.

Excerpt:

The method I have chosen is the essay form as defined by Graham Good in the first chapter of The Observing Self (1988). According to Good, an essay privileges the particular over the general; to this end it “yield[s] flexibly to individual experience” rather than “imposing a discursive order” on it. “Conclusions may arise,” he continues, “[but] are provisional, and cannot be detached from their occasion.” Rather than a narrative or logical argument, the essay provides “event and reflection”, and takes “reading and thinking” themselves as “experiences mixed in with other experiences”.  This is in harmony with my experiences writing during fieldwork I described above, and best allows, I believe, for a form that brings the academic reading I’ve done in conversation with the things I have participated in and observed. It also resonates with Jackson’s aims of “according equal weight to all modalities of human experience”. The essay writer, through reflection, engages both with the experience at hand, as well as the theoretical and scholarly accounts they have previously encountered, recalling how the texts have shaped the view of the experience, as well as allowing the experience to shape their view of the texts: the thoughts are presented “as experienced, not as afterthought, as it responds to objects and events on the spot, not as it is later arranged and systematised”. Here I admit to deviating from Good’s ideal essayist, allowing for an arrangement of the reflections into the larger motifs of the chapters, all of which play on the theme of decline. Nevertheless, this process of writing still recalls for me the act of playing gamelan: forming my part from the music heard all around (stealing glances, inevitably, at the notation by my side).