Maguru Maya: Teaching Balinese Gamelan at a Distance

The article surveys how Balinese arts instructors in U.S. settings rapidly reimagined teaching during COVID-19. With rooms locked and students scattered, teachers shifted to Zoom-based lectures, guided listening, and track-by-track projects built from home recordings. Solutions included kecak and baleganjur projects requiring minimal gear, edited videos with one part removed for students to supply, shared notation to complement listening, and one-on-one playback sessions. A key concept, maguru maya (“learning through the virtual/unseen”), reframed hands-on pedagogy for distance contexts while acknowledging lost real-time interaction, feel, and dynamics. Instructors highlight unexpected gains—deeper listening, clearer cueing, expanded access to guest artists, and stronger social bonds—while charting hybrid futures that pair pre-circulated materials with focused in-person practice.