Bittersweet Sounds of Passage

Balinese Gamelan Angklung Cremation Music

By: Ellen Koskoff

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Hardcover | 8 July 2025

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Hardcover
208 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
22.89 x 15.27

Hardcover

RRP $255.00

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An important presence through centuries of musical and social change, gamelan angklung is a small, four-tone bronze-keyed ensemble that remains ubiquitous at cremations in Bali. Ellen Koskoff offers a compelling portrait of these little-studied orchestras and their members: rice farmers, eatery owners, and other locals who do not see themselves as musicians or what they play as music. Koskoff examines the history, cultural significance, and musical structures of contemporary gamelan angklung cremation music through the lens of three intertwined stories: existing scholarship on this music, written mostly by Western composers and scholars; the views of those performing and experiencing the music who regard it as dharma--ritual obligation, a basic concept in Balinese Hinduism; and the music itself, with a musical analysis focusing on changes in rasa--feeling, flavor and musical flow. A journey inside a tradition, Bittersweet Sounds of Passage reveals the overlooked music of an important ritual in Balinese village life.

Industry Reviews

"A marvelous and distinctive contribution to the growing canon of scholarship on Balinese gamelan music that is sure to be enjoyed by international gamelan musicians, students of ethnomusicology, and the many connoisseurs of Balinese culture far beyond academia."--Michael Tenzer, author of Gamelan Gong Kebyar: The Art of Twentieth Century Balinese Music

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