I have been interested in Javanese gamelan since my first year of college at Wesleyan University. I learned about this musical form in a course called Worlds of Music, and attended every performance I could until I graduated. I also played gamelan during my senior year at Wesleyan. As a graduate student in sociology at the University of California at San Diego, I wrote several papers about the phenomenon of gamelan in America; I speculated about the ways in which American college students come to incorporate their involvement with gamelan into their lives, and about the ways in which gamelan performance practice may change in this non-native setting. In more recent years, I have been on the lookout for WWW sites dealing with gamelan. In this project, I will evaluate three web sites devoted to gamelan in America.
The first site I'll discuss is the Directory of Indonesian Gamelan Music Groups in North America, compiled by Barbara Benary and maintained by Marc Hoffman. This site is easily accessible through a search for "gamelan" on Yahoo!, and is indexed by that resource under Entertainment:Music:Genres:World Music. The main feature of this site, as the title implies, is a list of approximately 75 gamelan ensembles in the U.S. and Canada. I have never seen such a list in print; it seems to have been compiled very recently. This Internet site also includes a Welcome page orienting the new user to the site; a FAQ page including information about gamelan in general and the Internet site itself ; a page of Resources Related to Gamelan Music (links to other WWW sites of interest); a page listing Upcoming Events in the American gamelan world; and a page asking for feedback: either new or corrected listings, with an email link to the list compiler, or comments or suggestions about the web site itself, with an email link to the site maintainer.
This site has several nice features. In certain places, the site maintainer has inserted dated annotations indicating that specific links are currently unavailable, so that the user (me) won't become frustrated trying to connect to them. The Resources page is nicely annotated, so the user can tell what he/she is getting into. This page includes detailed information about the GAMELAN listserv (to which I've subscribed -- very busy!), including instructions on how to subscribe. The directory itself is well-organized (although I would prefer to see the information right-justified instead of centered), and the links to specific ensembles' web pages are formed by spelled-out URLs in addition to direct links. Also, the directory includes complete information about how to get in touch with the directors of each ensemble, as well as links to email addresses and web pages if they exist. Clearly, the site organizer has put a lot of thought into the features that users might appreciate.
In my opinion, this site is well-organized and user-friendly. Each page begins and ends with buttons leading to each of the other pages, so the entire site is always easily accessible. The FAQ is useful and to-the-point; it is also easily navigable, as it is bookmarked throughout so you can jump directly to any question of interest and then back up to the question list. These web pages aren't beautiful; the background is fairly boring and there are no graphics or sound files. In addition, the Resources page is somewhat limited when compared with the pages I'll discuss below, although the listed resources are generally good ones. However, this site does what it sets out to do and is very thorough in that regard. It provides valuable information that is not easily accessible through any other single source.
The next gamelan site I'd like to discuss is Kent Devereaux's Gamelan on the World Wide Web. I found this site through a link from the site discussed above; according to Alta Vista, this is the only indexed site with a link to this page. None of my own searches have revealed any other sources linking to Devereaux's site, either. This site is a single page containing annotated links to the gamelan directory discussed above, as well as to specific gamelan groups in the U.S. that have web pages; the Sun Microsystems web sites concerning the Java language and their trademarked "gamelan" collection of Java resources; web sites related to Indonesian culture; and Internet sites coming from Indonesia. Devereaux seems to have been selective in this listing; he does not include the GAMELAN listserv, or any gamelan sites coming from Australia or other non-American countries. The included links seem to be current and active.
This site is much more brief than the other one; however, it is more attractively designed and, I would argue, more "fun". Devereaux has selected a very pretty background design, and uses graphics and colorful-yet-tasteful icons on the page. He also makes good use of certain HTML formatting options including bold face and paragraph indentation. The annotations on this page are well-written and (I think) clever. I like Devereaux's inclusion of the www.gamelan.com site, and his pithy commentary on the apparent connection between musical forms and computer application names. This site is more than just a "hotlist"; I would argue that it is a "value-added" information source, because of the obvious effort and thought that have gone into the site's design.
The following site has changed a lot since I evaluated it; I have updated the main link so you can access the site, but the subpages have been reorganized and it is impossible to map the sections I mention onto the sections that now exist. Sorry for the inconvenience. ST 5/22/97
The final site I'll evaluate is the most extensive and most "professional" gamelan site currently available. It is entitled Bali & Beyond, and is designed and maintained by Cliff DeArment. Most other gamelan sites I've seen, including the two discussed above, link to this one. It's also easily accessible through Yahoo! and other search engines. This site begins with a Welcome page, which links to the other three main pages: the home page of Bali & Beyond, which is a "group of Los Angeles performing artists inspired by the cultures of Indonesia ... [which] offers original music, theater and dance, traditional Gamelan music and Indonesian arts presentations"; a Resource Room with links to online information sources on gamelan, Indonesian culture, and many other topics; and a "Forum" page that features postings of email the site has received from its users, including performance announcements, general comments, and requests for further information.This site is quite an information source in its own right. Most of the links on the resources page are to HTML documents put up by the owner of this site; in other words, DeArment has provided his own primary documents as information sources. The topics covered range from descriptions of Indonesian dance, a synopsis of the Mahabarata (the Hindu epic on which many gamelan compositions are based), hints on preservation and care of traditional instruments, and the history of Bali and Java. These documents are detailed and well-written; many are illustrated with attractive photographs, as well. I have only two criticisms of these pages, and the site in general:
- there are no bookmarks within the pages, so the user must scroll up and down in order to see what's where
- all of the content-filled pages are copyrighted to Cliff DeArment, with no indication of any outside sources for the information contained.
I find it difficult to believe that DeArment composed all of these documents without reference to any other written source, and I'm concerned that he has not provided proper credit where it is clearly due. (However, my suspicions may be unfounded.)
In general, this site is an excellent example of elegant WWW design. The pages are attractively laid out and are easily navigable. Each page ends with links to the other pages, and most pages include relatively small (ergo, fast-loading) but colorful photographs for illustration and decoration. Most links are annotated, and separator lines are well-placed. DeArment asks for comments from visitors to the site, and provides mailto: links throughout the documents. All of the internal and most of the external links seem to be up to date. All in all, this is a well-designed and highly informative and entertaining site.
All of these sites may be recommended for recreational use. Most people who are involved with gamelan consider it an avocation, and play for fun, relaxation, and comradery. However, ethnomusicologists and other performer/scholars experience gamelan as a subject of academic interest. With this in mind, all of these sites could be useful information sources for specialized libraries such as world music archives and academic music libraries (e.g., UCLA, Indiana, Wesleyan, Harvard). Several of these library sites do have links to related online resources, although none have identified the sites reviewed in this paper.
These sites could also be good resources for general academic libraries. As I've noted, each site provides information about the gamelan and Indonesian music in general, and each is a jumping-off point for further explorations into these topics. Of the three sites, the directory site might be of less interest to general users; the directory provides very practical information for people interested in playing gamelan, and provides relatively little original information on Indonesian culture or the musical form itself. However, the other two WWW sites, particularly Bali & Beyond, could be very interesting to users of academic libraries dealing with the humanities, anthropology, or ethnic studies.
Coypright 1996, 1997 Susan Turkel
Last modified: May 22, 1997