The Organology of the Javanese Gender
Ryan DeLayo
The Javanese are a group of people from the island of Java in Indonesia. The island is home to over 50% of the Indonesian population, and much of the well known Indonesian history took place on Java. The island is home to the Javanese people, with their own unique culture, and some of that important culture includes music, and instruments that are unique to their culture, such as the Javanese Gender.
The Javanese Gender is a percussion instrument, a metallophone, similar to a vibraphone or a marimba. It is played with mallets, by striking the bars of the instrument itself, which classifies the instrument as not only a metallophone and percussion instrument, but an idiophone. The gender can be tuned to two different types of tuning, including the 7-tone pelog tuning, or the 5-tone slendro tuning. However, in the pelog tuning, some notes will be left out, as the Gender has a 5 note octave.
The Pelog Scale is one of two essential scales of Gamelan music, which is music of the Javanese, Sudanese, and Balanese people who live in Indonesia. The term is meant to be a variant of the word Pelag, which means fine, or beautiful. Many Javanese instruments played in ensembles have five note octaves, which makes it difficult to use this seven note scale in musical works. Even in ensembles with instruments that have all seven notes, many works use a subset of five notes from the scale to accommodate for this.
The Slendro Scale is the other of the two essential scales of Gamelan music. The term is derived from the name Sailendra, a Javanese ruler from the 8th and 9th century, and also possibly from the name given by the Hindu and Buddhist god, Sang Hyang Hendra, with various different roles in different religions, but typically known as a protector or the ruler of the highest heavens. It is a pentatonic scale, composed of five notes.
Typically, the music written for Javanese ensembles includes two different genders, each spanning about two and a half octaves. The Gender Barung, and the Gender Panerus, which is pitched an octave higher than the other. In works for these ensembles, typically the Gender Panerus plays a single line of melodic patterns, and the Gender Barung plays a slower, more complex set of harmonies that include two separate melodic lines for the left and right hand that come together in intervals called kempyung and gembyang, which is approximately a fifth and an octave, respectively. These lines typically move contrapuntally, but will also occasionally move in parallel motion.
Here’s a video with an excerpt from a traditional Javanese work, played on the Gender Barung. The techniques of dampening are used, which essentially involves muffling the sound from the instrument to keep it from ringing out. This is a very important technique in gamelan music.
Sources:
Gendèr. (2020, October 03). Retrieved October 08, 2020, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gend%C3%A8r
Javanese Gender. (n.d.). Retrieved October 08, 2020, from http://rhythmdiscoverycenter.org/onlinecollection/javanese-gender/
