A Hermeneutical Arc in The Life of Balinese Musician

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A Hermeneutical Arc in the Life of Balinese Musician, I Made Lebah

Author(s): David Harnish
Source: The World of Music, Vol. 43, No. 1, Ethnomusicology and the Individual (2001), pp.
21-41
Published by: VWB - Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung
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the world of music 43 (1) - 2001 : 21-41
A Hermeneutical Arc in the Life of Balinese Musician,

I Made Lebah
David Harnish
Abstract
This study employs hermeneutics to illuminate a musical life history. I Made Lebah
was a unique individual who lived during a violent and creative time of Bali's history .
This paper explores his life through the lens of hermeneutics and identifies music stag-
es through segmented, progressive hermeneutical arcs within his lifelong arc of expe-
rience. A consciousness of historical situatedness and an enabling appropriation al-
lowed him to master a number of Balinese music styles and assume the title, " great
teacher. " The people he worked with, including composers Lotring and Colin McPhee
and his lifelong friend, Agung Mandra, all affected him and helped him to acquire a
self-awareness, a rapid learning and internalization process, and a sensitivity to re-
flective hermeneutics.
When I came striding up to the teacher's home for my first drum and gamelan lesson,
the first thing he said was that I had promised (janji) to begin lessons the day before!
I was shocked and embarrassed! How could I have confused the days and forgotten
to come to the first lesson? This was a terrible way to begin lessons with Made Leb-
ah, the great teacher. I apologized profusely and later checked my notes to find- as
usual- that he was correct. I gazed at this man, then nearly 80 years old, tall and
wiry, and with a soft voice but loud guffaw, and wondered at his remarkable mind
and memory. This was a seminal moment for me- beginning lessons with pak (Mr.)
Lebah- and he was taking it perhaps more seriously than I was. I had met him in
1979; by the time I began my work with him in 1983, 1 was just one of hundreds who
had been his students. Yet, my study mattered. Perhaps more than a performer or
composer, he was always a teacher. I still marvel at him today. The fourteen years in
which I studied, interviewed, and interacted with pak Lebah loom large in my life
and take up a notable percentage of it. However, these years are insignificant in the
context of his long and eventful history.
This paper approaches pak Lebah's life from an angle of hermeneutics, not to in-
terpret his life and times but to explore how he learned and mastered music, and to
observe how arcs of understanding and experience informed his progress as a musi-
22 • the world of music 43 (1)- 2001
cian. Made Lebah was an uncommon man who lived through a tumultuous time in
Bali's history. The "world" he was thrown into was exploding with violence, creativ-
ity, and sociopolitical change. The people and places that crossed his path all affected
him (see Figure 1); he was very much a man of his time, trying to maintain the past as
he fully embraced his present. His contributions to Bali (and to the villages in which
he taught) are difficult to measure. It is safe to say that many musicians and music
clubs, several genres of music, and many extant compositions owe their existences to
pak Lebah. While he helped forge and preserve the direction of Balinese music do-
mestically, he was also a major figure in its dissemination internationally (see further
Harnish 1997). The information on pak Lebah's life in this paper comes primarily
from hours of interviews conducted in 1983, 1987, 1988, and 1995.
Agung Mandra prince, gamelan director, and lifelong friend

Agung Perit teacher and master of Semar pagulingan and le gong
Gusti Kompiang close friend and third of the leaders of Gunung Sari
Gusti Pancung and
Wayan Utuh gong kebyar and gong gede teachers
Lotting, Agung Saba, composers, collaborators, choreographers, directors
Nyoman Kaler,
Gede Manik, Maria
Colin McPhee composer; influenced systematic study and verbal
discourse
Fig. 1 : Major figures who affected and influenced Pak Lebah
1. Hermeneutics and Ethnomusicology
Hermeneutics is generally defined as an art or science of critical interpretation, or al-

ternately as the "theory of the operations of understandings in their relation to the in-
terpretation of texts" (Ricoeur 1981:43). It first evolved in scholarly circles devoted
to biblical study and to early Latin texts, expanded to classical literature and lan-
guage a few centuries ago, and broadened since then to include the philosophical and
ontological explorations of such figures as Heidegger, Dilthey, and Dewey, where
discourse often concerns one's being in the world. Gadamer, who inherited the Ger-
man intellectual tradition from Heidegger, is often considered the father of modern
hermeneutics. He gave hermeneutics the task of interpreting other philosophical tra-
ditions (Silverman 1991 : 1). Among other well-known figures is the Frenchman, Paul
Ricoeur, who often explores connections between hermeneutics and phenomenology
and seeks ways to break down a subject's distanciation and alienation from texts and
their meanings (see especially 1981). In the last few decades, scholars have pushed
David Harnish. A Hermeneutical Arc in the Life ofBalinese Musician • 23
the hermeneutics of biblical study and theology, literature, and philosophies like ex-
istentialism and phenomenology into such areas as psychology, political science, le-
gal studies, sociology, cultural studies, history, anthropology, art, and music.
Several ethnomusicologists have utilized hermeneutics in their work, among
them Amy Catlin, Jeff Todd Titon, Gregory Barz, Philip Bohlman, and Timothy
Rice. The catalyst generally held to have inspired relevant ethnomusicological mus-
ing is Gadamer' s open concept of "text;" this has been applied to cultural perfor-
mances and institutions, thus opening the door for music, performance, and ritual
contexts to be "read" as texts. Geertz' s (1973) definition of culture as "an assem-
blage of texts" was also influential in sparking a type of interpretative ethnomusicol-
ogy.
Hermeneutics has proven to be a malleable subject, and ethnomusicologists call-
ing upon it have produced a diversity of new concepts. For instance, in her work on
the arts of mainland Southeast Asia, Catlin (1992) has advocated for a cross-disci-
plinary hermeneutical approach to "transcribe the texts" and interpret layers of sym-
bolism; Bohlman (1997) has explored a hermeneutics of self to help transcend other-
ness and discover the conditions of sameness and identity between himself and his
teachers in Europe; Barz (1997) has suggested that a hermeneutic circle exists within
the fieldnote, and that through magnification, clarification, examination, or reduc-
tion, the fieldnote can become a way of re-interpreting original experience; Titon
(1997) has developed a hermeneutic phenomenology that identifies an experiential
"musical being-in-the- world" which engages one with the affective power of music
within a social performing group; Rice (1994) has adapted Ricoeur' s thesis of devel-
oping a self capable of understanding and appropriating the world in following his
own progression of knowledge and experience of Bulgarian music; and several have
utilized hermeneutics to argue for an analysis of the shared narratives of ethnogra-
phers and those they study, or for a mediation of insider / outsider (Kisliuk 1997,
Rice 1997).
These and other ethnomusicologists generally adapt the reflexive elements of
hermeneutics for their work, displacing notions of subject and object and situating
themselves and their understandings directly into the study. Indeed, reflexivity was
the cornerstone of the biblical hermeneutics and to the hermeticists of the early cen-
turies, where the idea was to note how one's interpretation of a text changed over
time and to meditate upon or thoroughly discuss (since language- "the house of Be-
ing"- was [and continues to be] so crucial to classical hermeneutics) that realization.
Reflexivity has become a core element of the new ethnography we find in some re-
cent books, such as Barz and Cooley (1997), Bakan (1999), and Kisliuk (1998), and
is no longer uncommon in ethnomusicology.
The present work, however, has little to do with reflexive hermeneutics. I instead
look at the life of a single individual and explore how a type of hermeneutical arc
helped him to develop a great depth of musical knowledge over his lifetime. Ricoeur
(1991 : 124) describes a hermeneutical arc both as that which integrates the opposition
of explanation and understanding in the recovery of meaning from a text, and as the
final brace of the bridge or anchorage of the arch in the ground of lived experience.
Rice (1994:4) adapts Ricoeur' s idea to assert that a hermeneutical arc in music "be-
gins with pre-understanding, moves through explanation of the structure- or the
sense- of music, and arrives at an interpretation and a new understanding of the
world referenced by music acting as a symbol." In Rice's case, music acted as a sym-
bol of his expanding experience of Bulgarian culture; in pak Lebah's case, music
opened a window, which led to an evolving mastery over a number of music styles
through a collection of experiences. The term appropriation- meaning here "to
make one's own what was originally alien" (Thompson 1991:18)- is used by
Ricoeur, Gadamer, and Rice in explicating processes of self-discovery and unity be-
tween subject and object. As we shall see, pak Lebah was an active practitioner of ap-
propriation.
Philosophical and phenomenological hermeneutics hold that each experience
foreknowledges the next; that one's knowledge in a given context has the potential to
increase with further experience as we adjust our understandings accordingly. As
Gadamer states (1986:236-44), preconceptions and pre-understandings always con-
dition our explanations. When we confront a phenomenon, we relate to it according
to our preconceptions and understandings of that phenomenon. Our experience with
that phenomenon changes us, and affects our interpretation of the world. We then
have new preconceptions and understandings that we take to the next encounter.
I believe that each stage of Made Lebah's musical life prepared him for the next,
and that he had a unique ability to accumulate and compound musical experiences.
These experiences led to a more rapid learning process, and as a result, to greater ma-
turity and musical wisdom. Music was the key to his life and the lens through which
he understood the world, and he had a burning passion to share that understanding
with Balinese and foreign students alike. Whenever I wanted to change the subject of
our conversations away from music (for instance, I was interested in structural ho-
mologies between music and religion), he would either not understand my intention
or deliberately turn the discussion back to musical elements, aesthetics, histories, and
musicians. He understood the various texts of Balinese culture through music.
Although my thesis here is that pak Lebah learned rapidly because his under-
standings adjusted quickly to the musical phenomena around him, he indicated that
he ran into a "critical mass" or saturation point when his preconceptions and preun-
derstandings would perhaps no longer significantly change with musical encoun-
ter-ultimately when he would no longer learn new things from musical experience.
There seems to be a lacuna in the hermeneutical literature on this issue. Theoretically
no one can ever stop learning or changing, as experience forces us to adjust our fore-
knowledge. Yet, pak Lebah made it clear that he reached a point where he had little
interest in any more music, and this sudden shift of disposition is startling for some-
one who had so voraciously learned over his lifetime. This change occurred in his
50s after Bali had gone from feudal, to colonized, to occupied, to re-colonized, to in-
dependent, and to authoritarian. Changes had occurred in Balinese music and he no
longer could relate to or agree with those changes. He finally was no longer a student
David Harnish. A Hermeneutical Arc in the Life of Baline se Musician • 25
and had learned all he really cared to know; he believed that his musical understand-
ings of the world were set. However from one perspective, I think he was wrong. I
believe that in his later years he began to refine his memory, and to reposition in his
mind the development of Balinese music and his role within it.
2. Early Life History
Made Lebah's life stretched nearly the entire twentieth century. Born probably in
1905 to a family of commoner artists in Peliatan, a village rich in arts in the south-
central Bali district of Gianyar, he died on November 18, 1996.1 He never could re-
member when he first started playing music, only that it was shortly after he could
walk. Both parents died when he was young. His mother, who was a dancer, died
when he was about 8, and his father, who was a musician and dancer, when he was
about II.2 The raja of Peliatan, Anak Agung Anom, then invited pak Lebah and his
older brother to live and serve in the local palace, Puri Agung.
At the age of about 14, he began gamelan study with court musicians along with
Anak Agung Mandra, a young prince with whom he would share a lifetime of music.
On holidays, he and Agung Mandra formed a children's gamelan (gamelan barong),
and walked throughout the village with someone dressed as a barong , a mythical for-
est creature. On other occasions, pak Lebah sat around and played on the tingklik (a
bamboo xylophone) with other young people. These early experiences further stimu-
lated his interest and fostered his comradeship with Agung Mandra. This first stage
of his musical life (see Figure 6) provided a base of knowledge to enfold later expe-
riences. When Agung Mandra moved to a palace across the street, Puri Kaleran, pak
Lebah asked the raja if he could move too. Pak Lebah's remaining life was absorbed
in and surrounded by music. Apart from his brief servitude at the palace, a little farm-
ing, and a brief stint as a chauffeur particularly in the 1930s, he dedicated his entire
life to music as student, performer, teacher, and composer.
Pak Lebah was most interested in what he called the klasik (classic) arts: the cer-
emonial music of the gamelan gong gede known as lelambatan, the music of the
court gamelan, Semar pagulingan , and the music (of the gamelan pelegongan ) that
accompanied the female court dances known as le gong ? In the early 1920s he was
strongly attracted to the music of the gamelan gong gede , and studied informally
with the elder court musician, pak Glemuk, at Puri Agung. In the mid- 1920s, the raja
attempted to establish legong in Peliatan and invited several teachers to train musi-
cians and dancers. However, progress was slow, so he sent pak Lebah to learn from a
music master in Sukawati, a village about 10 kilometers south in 1926. Since the raja
had often depended upon pak Lebah's family in the past for performing arts, it was
natural that he should send pak Lebah out on this task. This teacher, Anak Agung Rai
Périt, was one of the most famous musicians of legong , and was one of the few mas-
ters of the male dance version known as nandir. Agung Perit had studied in Ketewel,
the village designated as the origin of legong. Pak Lebah lived in Sukawati for about
six months of his study. He sought to learn the entire legong repertoires. He de-
scribed his study routine:
Mulai pagi , main sampai jam 12; makan; habis makan, lagi sampai jam 4; mandi ,
habis mandi; main lagi sampai jam 10; baru habis; tiap tiap hari.
Begin in the morning; play until 12; eat, when finished eating [play] until 4; bathe;
when finished bathing, play again until 10; finally finished; every day.
Pak Lebah met and found opportunities to study and perform with other major
figures also studying with Agung Perit. These included pak Lotring, a composer and
Semar pagulingan specialist in Kuta, and the most famous musician of south Bali;
Nyoman Kaler, composer and choreographer in Denpasar; and Anak Agung Saba,
gamelan and dance director from the palace in Saba. These studies, the second stage
of his long musical life, were seminal experiences that would inform pak Lebah' s lat-
er musicianship. By the end of 1926, pak Lebah had helped launch the performance
of legong and the gamelan Semar pagulingan in the Peliatan courts. He continued
performing and studying legong , Semar pagulingan , and gamelan gong gede through
the end of the 1920s.
3. The 1930s-50s
Meanwhile, Agung Mandra had managed to borrow a modern gamelan gong kebyar
from a priestly family in the neighboring village of Ubud.4 This was a new, dynamic,
and more secular style of gamelan that pak Lebah had not yet mastered. Pak Lebah,
Agung Mandra, and another musician residing then at Puri Kaleran, Gusti Kompiang,
studied intensively on their own for about a year. Then, pak Lebah heard about two
specialists, Gusti Pancung and Wayan Utuh, in the southern village of Batubulan and
immediately went there to ask them to become teachers. Kebyar had begun in north
Bali about 1915, spread to the southern capital of Denpasar and fermented within sev-
eral years, and then moved slowly northward into such villages as Batubulan.
A sekaha (club) consisting of the best musicians in the Peliatan and Ubud area
quickly formed to learn kebyar pieces from the invited teachers. Pak Lebah also
taught and adapted the legong and Semar pagulingan repertoire for the group. Agung
Mandra' s father called other outside music experts, such as pak Lotring and the su-
perstar dancer pak Maria, and the musicians intensively learned kebyar , legong , Se-
mar pagulingan , and gong gede repertoires. The sekaha was co-sponsored by the
Dutch colonial government and a Balinese district leader, Tjokorda Gide Agung
Soekawati, to conduct what was to be a very successful two-month tour to Europe in
1931. Pak Lebah often spoke of his impressions of Europe (his meeting of dignitar-
ies, how the sekaha shared a boat with Queen Wilhelmina, etc.), and also mentioned
that he was so enamored with the two legong dancers that he wound up marrying
them both.5
This was the first Balinese group to perform internationally and the club estab-
lished a reputation as the finest in Bali. With their earnings, the performers each put
in some money to purchase a new set of instruments upon their return (they also put
some money into a coconut plantation). The contracted bronzesmith added a bit of
gold along with aged bronze for the instruments. Pak Lebah said that the new
gamelan had the sweetest voice (suara), which could never be replicated. Each of the
contributing members had one or more sekaha hak, an ownership or position in the
gamelan.6
The club named their new gamelan Gunung Sari, the name of the ward from
which the first gamelan was borrowed. After building an impressive domestic per-
formance record at a variety of events over several years, they entered the first is-
land-wide gong kebyar music competition in 1937. The competition featured repre-
sentative clubs from each of Bali's eight districts. According to pak Lebah, the
district that represented Denpasar, Badung, suddenly pulled out of the competition.
Pak Lebah felt that this was because the Denpasar club was afraid that they could not
oppose him.7 A few musicians from Badung (notably pak Kaler and pak Lotring), in
fact, joined Gunung Sari, which made the club virtually unbeatable. As expected, the
club won, though pak Lebah said the competition and so much great playing made
him dizzy (pusing ). They never entered another competition, thus they have "never
been beaten." Pak Lebah was always proud of this victory, and even in his 80s could
remember the moment (i.e. which club played first, most of the pieces performed that
day, even the uniforms some clubs wore!) with great clarity. His musical abilities and
understandings had reached another new plateau since his intensive studies of
gamelan gong kebyar, this is a third stage of his musical life.
After returning from Europe in the early 1930s, pak Lebah and Agung Mandra
were a little tired of gong kebyar and decided they wanted to develop an arja troupe.
Ar ja is a sung musical play, accompanied by a small ensemble of flute, two struck
tube zithers, two drums, and sometimes other small percussion instruments (see Fig-
ure 2). Agung Mandra had often used his clout as an orang besar ("big" person,
prince directly related to the Peliatan raja) to arrange teachers, who could not easily
refuse. He had done it for Gunung Sari and did it again for the uncourtly arja, a style
that had been resisted by the higher castes of Peliatan. Agung Mandra called upon
pak Oka, a teacher in Singapadu; he, pak Lebah, Gusti Kompiang, and an entire cast
of female actors-singers-dancers studied intensively for about six months (some of
the women nearly went crazy [ jadi gila ] with the intense study schedule). The all-fe-
male cast was revolutionary in Bali for the time, but was to be commonplace a few
decades later. As usual, pak Lebah mastered the repertoire quickly, and he began
teaching arja to groups in nearby villages in the early 1930s. His fame as arja per-
former and teacher was widespread, and many sought his tutelage. In 1999, 1 Dewa
Putu Berata, one of Bali's brightest composers who happens to live in the neighbor-
ing village of Pengosekan, told me how proud he was that his father had studied arja
with pak Lebah. Pak Lebah also won the award for best musician ( tukang gambel) at
the island- wide Festival Arja competition in 1968.
28 • the world of music 43 (1) - 2001
Fig. 2: Pak Lebah (I.) plays kendang drums with Agung Mandra (r.) in a gamelan
arja practice. (Photo by Colin McPhee , c. 1930s; used by permission
of the McPhee Archives housed at the UCLA Archives)
Also in the 1930s, pak Lebah became the chauffeur, guide, friend, and teacher of
Canadian-born composer, Colin McPhee. McPhee had heard records (78 rpm discs
probably produced by Odeon) of Balinese music in the late 1920s, fallen in love with
what he heard, and had gone to Bali to study. He resolved to live there for an extend-
ed time and stayed from 193 1-38 with two breaks to return to America. McPhee met
pak Lebah during his second visit, probably in late 1932, when pak Lebah was ac-
companying le gong practice sessions at McPhee' s house. When he learned of pak
Lebah's musicianship and knowledge, McPhee requested that pak Lebah play hun-
dreds of musical passages so that he could transcribe them. Transcription and discus-
sions with pak Lebah were two of McPhee's primary learning tools; for months if not
years, they developed a routine and worked from afternoon until sundown (Oja
1990:91). McPhee loved to explore and had taken a few trips to various parts of Bali.
When he learned of pak Lebah's knowledge of music masters and gamelans in vari-
ous parts of the island, he was emboldened to undertake music surveys of the island.
Pak Lebah drove and guided McPhee on most of McPhee's journeys through Ba-
li. This gave pak Lebah opportunities to revisit and study with old friends, such as
pak Lotring and pak Kaler (both of whom McPhee had met earlier); to discover new
teachers such as the elder Semar pagulingan specialist pak Lunyuh, and the gamelan
angklung (a folk-style gamelan) master, pak Nengah; and to learn and observe a
number of other gamelan styles, such as the sacred gamelans gambang and slond-
ingß McPhee later arranged for two gamelans (a Sentar pagulingan and angklung ) to
be organized in Sayan village; though he contacted outside specialists (pak Lunyuh
and pak Nengah), pak Lebah was also key in the development and teaching of both.
Pak Lebah clearly benefited from his relationship with McPhee; however, McPhee' s
research and knowledge, if not his time in Bali, would have been sharply curtailed
without pak Lebah. Pak Lebah's musical life continued for nearly sixty years after
McPhee's departure and for more than thirty years after McPhee's death in 1964.
Though he often thought McPhee's questions were odd and wondered about his
notational scribbles, he saw the logic in McPhee's systematic study which resonated
with his own approaches toward learning Balinese music. Pak Lebah, with his solid
background of knowledge and understanding, mastered new styles with an ease that
greatly surprised McPhee and other musicians. Due to McPhee's frequent questions
about music technique, elements, and overall description, pak Lebah learned to ab-
stract and verbally articulate about gamelan music, a skill unique even today for most
Balinese musicians. Pak Lebah once told me that McPhee " bertanya mengenai musik
yang saya belum pikirkan " (asked questions about music that I had not thought of be-
fore), which required thought, inquiry, and reflection to answer. Thus McPhee in-
spired pak Lebah to conceptualize music in new ways. McPhee (1979 [1944]: 145)
stated that pak Lebah's musical information had "a clarity and precision" "which de-
lighted me, for it was before all practical, based on experience, very much up-to-date
and not blurred by theory."9 This is a fourth stage in pak Lebah's musical life.
From the 1930s onwards, pak Lebah was teaching various clubs Semar pagulin-
gan and gamelan gong gede repertoires. Musicians in Bali credit him with recreating
nearly obsolete pieces for these ensembles, and for adapting compositions from the
courtly gamelan gambuh for the Semar pagulingan. He also introduced the gong
gede repertoire into gong kebyar and began adding interlocking parts ( kotekan , in a
basic {polos ] style, not kebyar style) to this more stately repertoire.10 He said that he
was " tak boleh " (not allowed) to do this according to tradition, but did so anyway to
help preserve the music and to make the gong gede repertoire available to the Gu-
nung Sari gong kebyar. He had appropriated knowledge from nearly all of the major
ensembles in Bali and had synthesized this knowledge within himself ("made it his
own") to form deep conceptions and understandings of all available styles. This is re-
portedly the time when some began calling him guru besar , great teacher.
The Japanese occupied Bali from 1942-45, and Gunung Sari disbanded but re-
formed by the end of the decade. Working again with master musicians and dancers
such as pak Maria, they put together another extremely successful international tour,
this time to the United States in 1952. The tour restored their reputation as the finest
club in Bali. Competition between clubs was becoming fierce and intense. Wherever
he went, pak Lebah listened for the latest developments in kebyar and then would
come back and inform and teach Gunung Sari so that they could stay one step ahead
of other groups; he said he also incorporated some ideas (interlocking parts, rhythmic
breaks) from the American jazz he heard on several occasions during the tour. In ad-
30 • the world of music 43(1)- 2001
dition, he was at work co-composing material for gong kebyar , arranging and teach-
ing Semar pagulingan and gong gede repertoires, and teaching and performing arja.
This new peak is a fifth stage of his musical life (see Figures 3 and 4).
4. The Final Stage
In 1959, a high school of the performing arts, KOK AR (Konservatoři Karawitan,

Conservatory of Gamelan Music), opened in the regional capital and urban center of
Denpasar. Pak Lebah was invited to teach in the early 1960s, and rode his bicycle the
22 kilometers for a few months before deciding that the distance was too great and
that he disagreed with the method of instruction. The classroom-style system was not
part of his prior experience, and I do not believe that he liked the further decontextu-
alization of the music. Many new pieces and ideas were coming out of this arts
school and out of the new college of performing arts, ASTI (Akademi Seni Tari Indo-
nesia, Academy of Indonesian Dance), which opened in 1967. As creativity began to
centralize at these academies, the reputations of pak Lebah, Agung Mandra, and Gu-
nung Sari declined, as did those of other village musicians and clubs.
It was at this point that pak Lebah seemed to cease learning new things about mu-
sic, and he introduced no more music to Gunung Sari. Apart from a couple of early
1960s pieces composed by well known academy composers (Wayan Beratha and
Merdana), the club never acquired any new compositions for performance. Still to-
day, Gunung Sari, led by pak Lebah's son Wayan Gandra, performs the same reper-
toire as forty years ago at tourist shows each week. Pak Lebah told me that these
pieces are klasik (classic), kuat (strong), and taksu , (divinely inspired), whereas new-
er compositions lack these qualities. He pointed out the fact that newer pieces are
only played for a few years and then forgotten, whereas taksu compositions, such as
legong or baris (male warrior dance) remain for decades if not hundreds of years be-
cause they are " ciptaan nenek moyan" (creations of the ancestors) and a sacred inher-
itance. " Legong tak bisa hilang " (Legong cannot be forgotten) and " Bagaimana Bali
tanpa baris " (How can one imagine Bali without barisi) are statements showing his
bias for the classic and moderate disdain for the contemporary. He said that he had a
hard time understanding newer pieces, that these were pieces that might have been
written by children ( seperti dikarangi anak anak).
With pak Lebah and Agung Mandra (the publicly acknowledged leader) as driv-
ing forces (Gusti Kompiang died in about 1954), Gunung Sari toured Australia
(1971) and Mexico and America again (1981). In the 1980s, pak Lebah frequently
switched from leading instruments ( kendang , giying) to slower-moving and less
complicated ones (for example, jegogan)', as his health further declined, he often in-
stead took care of the club's lamps needed to light the stage, though he would still
play drum for legong. When Gunung Sari changed to electrical lighting in the 1990s,
his services as what we jokingly referred to as tukang lampu (lamp specialist) were
Fig. 3: Pak Lebah ( center ) reminisces with old friends and collaborators,
Wayan Tembres, director of the well known gamelan at Pindha near Blahbatu
(I.) and composer-cum-director Gede Manik of J agar aja (r.). (Photo by
Michael Tenzer , 1982; used by permission)
Fig. 4: Pak Lebah taught Balinese music to a great many foreigners ( Michael
Tenzer, Ruby Sue Ornstein, and Andy Toth to name only three). Here he teaches
legong drumming to American gamelan director and composer, Wayne Vitale
( photo by author, 1983).
no longer needed and he attended less frequently. He nonetheless continued to teach

up until his death.
5. Historical Situatedness
Pak Lebah appears to have always been a polite, shy, but self-assured man. McPhee
speaks of him in those terms, Balinese musicians have as well, and these concur with
my experiences with him. These attributes served him well. He was able to befriend
almost any musician, was sensitive to given situations, and had a well-developed
sense of himself. He was also fascinated with history and worked to appropriate, pre-
serve, and transmit classic forms. Pak Lebah was in this sense, "creatively histori-
cal." Palmer (1969:1 17) states that "grasping the past" is a form of freedom, a "free-
dom of ever fuller self-knowledge and the consciousness of being able to will what
one is to become." It seems clear that pak Lebah recognized an aptitude for music
and memory, and willed himself, or constructed himself, in becoming a master musi-
cian.
Such an effort would require a unique self-awareness, a consciousness of enable-
ment to achieve, and an historical situatedness which involves understanding and in-
terpretation of events as they happen- as a consciousness of being situated in and
being part of an unfinished historical event (Wallulis 1990:9). Pak Lebah seems to
have grasped these moments many times over in his history, and to have recognized
the "happening structure of appropriation" (ibid.: 10) to direct those unfinished
events. A primary way in which pak Lebah thrived was in his interactions with other
musicians.
Pak Lebah had cooperative relationships with several of Bali's greatest artists
such as pak Lotring, pak Kaier, Gede Manik (a composer-drummer of north Bali),
and many others. Whenever pak Lebah met one of these men, they shared what they
knew and would give and take compositions to each other. Pak Lebah, for example,
received ( terima ) several of pak Lotring's compositions; he brought these to Pelia-
tan, taught them to Gunung Sari, and later to two gamelan Semar pagulingan clubs in
the village who still perform those compositions today in addition to several of pak
Lebah' s. This ability to share with established music masters enhanced his reputation
and abilities, and his incredible memory allowed him to carry within himself a great
number of taksu products- compositions.
Pak Lebah' s contributions to Balinese music were acknowledged with the sever-
al medals he was awarded by the government in the 1980s. Into the 1990s, local clubs
whom he had taught continued to come by his home to make repairs, build new pa-
vilions, and sometimes leave some rice (this was also the traditional compensation he
received while an active teacher). No doubt, he felt rewarded and satisfied by the
continuous acknowledgement, though he was always a little jealous of the greater
recognition given by the government to Agung Mandra.
Fig. 5: Pak Lebah leads Gunung Sari from the drum in the performance of the
lelambatan repertoire at a cremation (photo by author , 1984).
Agung Mandra and pak Lebah seem to have competed for recognition over their
final decades. While Agung Mandra was amazed at pak Lebah' s ability to learn and
remember compositions, and pak Lebah was impressed with Agung Mandra' s fero-
cious and theatrical kendang playing, each tried to take more credit in developing the
arts in Peliatan. However, there was no antagonism; their relationship was strong and
built on a very long and deep foundation of shared histories and musical experiences.
When pak Lebah said that one of his proudest moments as a musician was when he
led Gunung Sari from the kendang in playing the ceremonial lelambatan repertoire
for Agung Mandra' s cremation in 1986, he was not boasting that he had outlived
Agung Mandra. He simply felt that it was an appropriate consummation of their rela-
tionship. No one knew Agung Mandra as pak Lebah did; the cremation could only be
proper if pak Lebah directed the gamelan that they had together nurtured and seen
prosper. Since pak Lebah outlived all of his contemporaries, he sent many other
friends off the same way (see Figure 5).
I interviewed pak Lebah a number of times, as did several other foreigners, and
he has given his history to many Indonesian scholars as well. In each case, he went
through a process of re-interpreting his own past. No doubt pak Lebah had to ask
himself: "What did the questioner really want? What sort of information should I
give?" In my experience, he sometimes wanted to list his own achievements; on
many other occasions he primarily spoke of others, particularly about his many
teachers. In his book, The Hermeneutics of Life Experience , Wallulis (1990:2) dis-
cusses the recognition of the complimentarity of historical belongingness and per-
sonal achievement in one's life; pak Lebah balanced these beautifully in his recollec-
tions. He seemed to have had a consciousness of his "effected life history" and a
consciousness of enablement to initiate his own life history- both when he lived
through his history (when he recognized situatedness and willed his life to action)
and when he reconstructed it in interviews. Interestingly, he very occasionally
changed details in his interview discourse; as his student, I felt it improper to ask
why. He may have appropriated his own past to see himself in a different light or to
recreate part of history; it was, after all, his history. I have little doubt that when dates
of events or credits did not always match, that he was fully aware of it and had his
reasons.
6. Pak Lebah's Hermeneutical Arc
Four personal attributes assisted pak Lebah' s learning and mastering of Balinese mu-
sic:
1. his mobility- he traveled to study with the best teachers when most Balinese
rarely left their villages;
2. his sociability- he knew how to meet and make musicians feel at ease, includ-
ing those of higher social caste (a skill acquired from living in local palaces, his
studies with Agung Perit, and his close work with Agung Mandra); he extended
this ability to assure musicians during his collaborations and travels with
McPhee, and this led to greater access to musical information around Bali;
3. his extraordinary memory- he was a walking encyclopedia; Agung Mandra
once confided to me that one thing he was really jealous of was pak Lebah's
ability to hold onto ( menyimpan ) knowledge;
4. a humble disposition- pak Lebah approached music as a student even when he
was an acknowledged master.
It was this disposition that allowed him to continue to absorb music- to take new
knowledge and combine it with his established concepts and understandings, and
then to synthesize these for the next encounter, when the learning and synthesizing
process would begin anew (see Figure 6). His work with McPhee may have helped
him form what Rice (1994:6) calls "productive distanciation," a process necessary to
explanation and critical interpretation of one's own culture. However he achieved it,
distanciation allowed pak Lebah to explain music to insiders and outsiders, to be-
come a renowned teacher, and to renew his appropriation in forming and creating
new meanings.
Pak Lebah went from playing children's gamelan and studying with masters in
the court; to systematic study with Agung Perit and other music masters like pak Lot-
ring in the Semar pagulingan and legong repertoires; to informal study yet quick
1905 1917/early 1920s mid/late 1920s early/mid 1930s late 1930s 1950s/early 1960s 1996
Birth Taken into Peliatan Study with Agung Masters arja and Tours Bali w/ Further synthesis/ Death
courts; begins Perit; performance gong kebyar ; tours McPhee; systematic collaborations;
formal study of legottg and Semar Europe; innovates study; Gunung Sari tours America;
pagulingan in and teaches many victory; continues works at conserva-
Peliatan courts; styles; meets and teaching; called tory; rejects new
furthers study in works with Colin "great teacher" pieces; continues
gong gede McPhee teaching
Fig. 6: Smaller , progressive hermeneutical arcs within Pak Lebah 's lifelong
hermeneutical arc of learning and experience
mastery over arja ; to intensive work with the gamelan gong kebyar and gong gede;
to collaborations with musicians all over the island with McPhee; and to further work
with masters in gong kebyar and the Gunung Sari club. It was pak Lebah's ability to
build on his knowledge, and then to bring his considerable memory to bear on the
music, reapplying his disposition as student and observations derived from his work
with McPhee which all led him to such success. His ability in verbal discourse about
gamelan, also partly acquired from his work with McPhee, assisted with abstracting
and reflecting and perhaps in identifying hermeneutical circles within the music,
where the "whole receives its definitions from the parts and the parts can only be un-
derstood in reference to the whole" (Palmer 1969:1 18). Mastering a composition or
music style is rapid once the parts and whole and their relationship are understood.
Pak Lebah learned the vocabulary of all of the instruments thoroughly, and his
main instrument was the kendang (drum), the instrument that directs the gamelan. I
believe that pak Lebah took the depth of the great ceremonial lelambatan repertoire
of the gong gede- its structures and patterns- applied this to the le gong repertoires
via the similar vocabulary of the drum; enhanced this knowledge through intensive
work in Semar pagulingan and arja; and then focussed his accumulated knowledge
on the flashy and virtuosic music of the gong kebyar.
In this hermeneutical process, he learned how to transfer musical competency
from one gamelan to the next and then to the next (suggesting intertextuality amongst
Balinese gamelan traditions), while also internalizing knowledge and experience
with the intricacies of each style. The more he learned, the quicker he mastered a new
style and the easier it was for him to go through the whole process again. Foreknowl-
edge was built upon experience, then absorbed to form new foreknowledge and syn-
thesized; then he was prepared for the next stage. Rice (1994:7) has suggested that
hermeneutical arcs like these move through understanding or appropriation, to expla-
nation or distanciation, to new understanding or reappropriation. The drum, the di-
rector's instrument, was generally his vehicle and pivot point into a new style; its
similar vocabulary offered a way to rapidly appropriate other styles.
For Gunung Sari, however, the bigger (physically, socially, and economically)
and stronger Agung Mandra played the main drum. Gusti Kompiang assumed the
other drum and pak Lebah shouldered the lead metallophone, the giying (called pan-
gugal in other areas of Bali). Pak Lebah often talked about how the three of them
were cocok (well fitted), how Agung Mandra and Gusti Kompiang memegang (held)
the drum parts and how he memegang (held or carried) the composition. These three
also performed together in other styles, such as Semar pagulingan and arja, and de-
veloped a deep camaraderie. Pak Lebah often felt that working outside this team of
musicians was often kurang cocok (not well fitted) for him because he would have to
teach other musicians the various styles of play. Gusti Kompiang was killed in the
1950s, Agung Mandra stopped playing except for important performances and tours
by the 1970s; only pak Lebah maintained active membership in one way or the other
into the 1990s. When I first saw Gunung Sari perform in 1979, he played drum on
several pieces though already did not play in every piece.
Throughout his life, it was his musical competency and ability to quickly synthe-
size information that was his brace over the bridge, his anchorage through the arches
of the different styles of Balinese music. Pak Lebah' s process of internalization and
appropriation quickly broke down the distanciation between artist and art, and en-
abled competency. His foreknowledge of the texts of music, developed and expand-
ed upon during his various stages, helped pak Lebah experience successive arcs of
understanding as he progressed from mastery over one style to another. Each stage of
mastery within pak Lebah' s life represented a new understanding of the world and
himself. As another style was appropriated, a transformation of understanding took
place and presented a "fresh way of seeing life" (Palmer 1969:233).
7. Conclusion
This paper has demonstrated a potentially new application for hermeneutics: to ex-
plore a musician's life and times involving learning (music style as text), historical
situatedness, and appropriation via stages represented by smaller arcs within an over-
arching arc of lived musical experience.11 The smaller arcs (see Figure 6) mark pak
Lebah 's progressive points of appropriation, and the lifelong arc flattens out in the
early 1960s when pak Lebah himself said that he stopped learning new music. He did
not, of course, stop learning; each experience held something new. I believe, howev-
er, that music became a way to relive his effective history, to re-experience the famil-
iar. He had appropriated many styles of music and found a "home" to revisit in each.
The arcs of experience were smaller and did not progress in new directions. His ratio-
nale was clear; new pieces were not strong, not taksu. But the newer pieces also rep-
resented a new generation, a new style of learning, and really took place in a new so-
ciopolitical era. The world had changed, and pak Lebah was no longer on the cutting
edge. He remained productive in performance and teaching, but saw the world slow-
ly pass him by. His death in 1996 symbolized the end of the era of early gong kebyar ,
of Colin McPhee, of music during Dutch colonization, and of the greater twentieth
century.
It is safe to say that there will never again be a Made Lebah. "The circumstances
that led pak Lebah into the music culture of his time, through those which took
McPhee to Bali, to those which resulted in today's situation could never be repeated,
and individuals with such exceptional sensitivity, musicality, and sensibility are rare
in any era" (Harnish 1997:264). As far as I can tell, pak Lebah never had any ene-
mies. Everyone respected him, former students loved him, and the village of Peliatan
will never forget his contributions. Balinese music culture does not acknowledge a
"cult of the great musician" or "great composer" as does, for example, European art
music, and there are respected teachers (guru) of one sort or another in nearly every
Balinese village. However, pak Lebah was granted the title of "great teacher" rela-
tively early in his life. Further, he is the one who primarily developed Semar pagul-
ingan, legong , arja, and gong gede in the village and district; he co-founded Gunung
Sari, perhaps the most famous gong kebyar club of the twentieth century; and,
through teaching and performance, he was a key figure in the internationalization of
Balinese music.
Ricoeur (1991:1 18) describes reflective hermeneutics as that stage in the process
of self-discovery where mediation is no longer necessary between the text and the
subject, in this case between music and the musician. Music became an immediate
and unmediated state of mind for pak Lebah. He often spoke of how he would not
feel pain, hunger, tiredness, and age when he played music, and he desired this expe-
rience again and again; it was his lifelong favorite (paling senang) activity. Perfor-
mance became not simply an experience of culture but also of the sum of his life. Pak
Lebah 's statements- particularly concerning what he learned, how he internalized,
and what he then learned next- reveal that he was a practitioner of reflective herme-
neutics and sensed successive hermeneutical arcs within the learning experience arc
of his lifetime. There was no distance between subject and object and the meanings
of the object were perpetually rediscovered, as performance became as natural as
walking or simply being. He willed himself to become a master, and saw himself and
found himself in the music of Bali.
Notes
1 Pak Lebah was never sure of the year of his birth in the Gregorian calendar because it was not
commonly used until the 1950s. Others have suggested that he was born in 1903 (this year is
favored by his family), 1909, 1910, and 1912. 1 asked him several times about his age; some-
times the answers conflicted. I chose 1905 because that is the year he usually gave, it jives
with most of his comments, it roughly correspond to descriptions by Colin McPhee, and
because it correlates with his story of being a nearly-pubescent boy at the time of an earth-
quake in 1917. Michael Tenzer (p.c.) relates a different story from pak Lebah; that he was only
five years old when the earthquake hit. I thought that pak Lebah had once told me that he had
some blood from an ancestor of the pande (metalsmith) caste. However, he never reconfirmed
this, and his plain sarcophagus and collective cremation (with other villagers) in 1996 suggests
that he was purely a commoner {orang jaba: "outside" people, the vast majority of Balinese).
2 Like most Balinese, pak Lebah believed that talent was transmitted "through blood," and that
he received his talent from his ancestors. He likewise held that that was where his son received
his talent, and his grandchildren. He stated that in his family all males pukul gamelan (play
gamelan) and all females menari (dance). His granddaughter, bu Sriati, is teaching her daugh-
ter to play gamelan as well as dance. Though gamelan has been an overwhelmingly male
activity in Bali, many young mothers and fathers are today giving their daughters opportuni-
ties to play.
3 Pak Lebah believed that there were several other klasik styles of music, such as that of the
courtly gamelan gambuh (from which sprang the foundations of Balinese music theory) and
shadowplay gamelan gender wayang. He studied gambuh compositions and transferred many
of these to the gamelan Semar pagulingan. He also briefly studied gender wayang . Pak Lebah
sometimes included the sung musical play, arja , as classic because it demanded maximum
skill (playing, singing, acting, improvisation) of all performers, and occasionally referred to
gamelan angklung (an ensemble without courtly associations that he mastered but rarely
played or taught) as klasik as well.
4 Pak Lebah recounted a fascinating tale about the history of this gamelan; one that I had heard
but not recorded from other musicians in Peliatan. The priest from this home in Gunung Sari
was called to the village of Sawan because people walking under a particular banyan tree were
falling ill. The priest went to the tree, used a powerful mantra, and the tree died. The village
bestowed the gamelan upon him as a gift for his work.
5 These dancers were sisters. Pak Lebah married the second one, Nyoman Jabrug, after the first
one, Made Jebreg, died (around 1944); thus he was not married to two simultaneously-
though this is perfectly legal in Indonesian law and Balinese custom. Agung Mandra and pak
Lebah' s own son (from his first wife), Wayan Gandra, both had three wives simultaneously,
though not all were equally favored. These become entirely different stories.
6 This arrangement, to my knowledge, is unique. Generally a ward or village or family owns a

gamelan. In this case, the musicians of the original club- and their descendents- are the own-
ers. Some talented musicians from the village have requested entrance into the club. The musi-
cians either used an open position from a family or purchased a new position in the club.
7 The competition was arranged for one of the three days of an event organized by the Regent of
the district of Gianyar to celebrate the restoration of some self-rule to the eight districts of
Bali. Interestingly, McPhee (1979 [1944]: 182-86) differs with pak Lebah and says that Blah-
batu dropped out of the competition, not Denpasar, because two spies within Gunung Sari
were secretly teaching the music to the club in Blahbatu. When the "plot" was discovered and
the musicians expelled, that club could apparently not bring itself to perform at the competi-
tion. However, pak Lebah told me the same story on two different occasions separated by five
years; it is possible that McPhee was describing a preliminary competition (not the final festi-
val) since Blahbatu is located in the same district of Gianyar and two groups could not have
represented Gianyar. For the festival, Gunung Sari adapted "Playón," a reworked (by pak Lot-
ring) tabuh kutus (eight strikes, 128 beats per gong) composition from the lelambatan reper-
toire of the gong gede. Pak Lebah arranged the interlocking parts (kotekari) and rhythmic
breaks ( angsel ), and also asked Agung Mandra to invite four players of suling gambuh (long
flutes of gambuh theatre) from the village of Batuan. Pak Kaler and pak Lotring both came up
from south Bali to play rebab (bowed lute). The suling and rebab players added a classical
depth to the music. On one occasion, pak Lebah stated that the group from Bangli came to the
festival but decided not to play. He also said that Gunung Sari made a mistake by wearing
common uniforms of white shirt and headpieces with woven gold, while the uniforms of the
Singaraja (Buleleng district) club were much more attractive and featured shirts with woven
gold. For information on contemporary music competitions, and their connections to politics,
state and notions of "winning," see Bakan (1999).
8 Throughout the rest of his life, pak Lebah wanted to go on excursions to see gamelans play,
and he often encouraged his foreign students to develop such trips. Bob Brown (p.c.) recounts
that in the 1960s, pak Lebah wanted to go to several villages with gamelan slonding , particu-
larly those that had been off-limits to McPhee in the 1930s. Tenzer (p.c.) reports that he went
around part of the island with pak Lebah in 1982, and that they visited noted composer Gede
Manik in the north district of Buleleng. Pak Lebah asked me in 1983 if I wanted to go around
Bali with him, but we never worked out the details for a trip. We did, however, attend various
temple festivals and life cycle rites together; these events featured many gamelans performing.
He often looked intently at the performers and ensembles, and commented to me upon their
abilities or shortcomings.
9 By saying pak Lebah's musical information was not "blurred by theory," McPhee is compli-
menting pak Lebah's direct and practical approach; this comment may also refer back to his
frustrations with other musicians. McPhee had trouble relating to information offered by pak
Kaler, for example, and felt he was arrogant, and to musicians of higher caste who often linked
musical information to more abstract ideas. Pak Lebah had a complete grasp of theory, but
always came back to how the music is actually played. This may have pleased McPhee but
sometimes frustrated me because I was often looking for more theory!
10 The word "polos" also refers to one of the parts of interlocking figures. By using that term
here, pak Lebah was referring to what is called elsewhere ikut-ikutan or nuutin where the two
parts alternate notes and form what we might call continuous sixteenth-note patterns. This
style of interlocking parts is sometimes used in kebyar , though more rhythmically complicated
patterns are the norm.
Pak Lebah mentioned that he sometimes tweaked pieces to improve them. On one occa-
sion, he went to pak Lotring with a traditional composition. The melody was manis (sweet) but
the tabuh (structure, the drum part) was not. He asked pak Lotring to help him rework the
tabuh. Pak Lebah probably took similar small liberties when he adapted pieces from gambuh
for Semar pagulingan. He mentions that his teacher, Agung Perit, had also adjusted certain
pieces in the adaptation process. This method was not unlike the compositional process of the
time, where composers took extant melodies from various pieces and styles and reworked
them into a new composition. For further discussion of Balinese composers and composition,
see Harnish (2000) and Tenzer (2000).
1 1 Rice (1994) also applies hermeneutics to individual lives- those of two Bulgarian musicians.
His approach differs from the one presented in this paper.
40 • the world of music 43(1 j - 2001
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A Hermeneutical Arc in The Life of Balinese Musician

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A Hermeneutical Arc in the Life of Balinese Musician, I Made Lebah

A Hermeneutical Arc in the Life of Balinese Musician,

Agung Mandra prince, gamelan director, and lifelong friend

Fig. 1 : Major figures who affected and influenced Pak Lebah

1. Hermeneutics and Ethnomusicology

Hermeneutics is generally defined as an art or science of critical interpretation, or al-

2. Early Life History

4. The Final Stage

In 1959, a high school of the performing arts, KOK AR (Konservatoři Karawitan,

no longer needed and he attended less frequently. He nonetheless continued to teach

6. Pak Lebah's Hermeneutical Arc

6 This arrangement, to my knowledge, is unique. Generally a ward or village or family owns a

Titon, Jeff Todd

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