Directory of Gamelan Groups

UNITED STATES

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QUICK FACTS

Quantity of Listings

Relationships and Affiliations

Styles: Instruments and Music

Geographic Distribution

History of Gamelan in the United States

Quantity of Listings

As of January 2013, there are approximately 170 listings, an increase of about 60 from the version posted in 2011.

Of those, approximately 130 are active, 15 are permanently disbanded, and 25 are somewhere in between.

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Relationships and Affiliations

As of 2012, approximately 60% of the listed groups are associated with a university, 20% are independent community groups, 10% are closed-membership bands, 10% are associated with K-12 programs, and about 5% are at Indonesian diplomatic missions or in museums. 

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Styles: Instruments and Music

As of 2012:

Roughly 42% of the sets of instruments in the United States are Javanese, 41% are Balinese, 8% are Sundanese, 6% were built in the United States, and 2% are Cirebonese or other styles.

90% of the groups practice traditional Indonesian gamelan music at least part of the time, approximately 30% also practice modern Indonesian compositions for gamelan, and about 40% practice new American compositions for gamelan.  There are a few exclusively fusion, new American, or experimental gamelan groups. 

Some groups possess sets of instruments from more than one regional style and/or practice more than one type of repertoire. 

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Geographic Distribution

The largest concentrations of groups (in terms of quantity per state) are in California, followed at some distance, but with quantitites very similar to each other, by New York, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Washington. 

The largest total quantities of new additions to the Directory are in non-coastal states in the West and Midwest. 

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History of Gamelan in the United States

The first set of gamelan instruments in the United States was a Sundanese set acquired by the Field Museum of Natural History after the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago. 

The first set in regular use was a gamelan Mantle Hood brought to the UCLA Institute of Ethnomusicology in the mid-1950s.

The first set of gamelan instruments created in the United States was the Plainfield Village Gamelan, a Javanese style iron set built by Dennis Murphy and established at Goddard College in Vermont in 1967. 

The Center for World Music, an independent organization directed by Robert E. Brown, began promoting gamelan in the United States in the 1970s, producing concerts and educational programs, and sponsoring a tour to Indonesia for eighteen American students in 1971.

The first community gamelan ensembles (not associated with an educational institution) were both founded in 1979 -- the Boston Village Gamelan in Boston, Massachusetts and Gamelan Sekar Jaya in Berkeley, California (San Francisco Bay Area). 

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