Krakatau: Indonesian Gamelan and Jazz Fusion

Krakatau is an ethnic jazz-fusion ensemble from West Java, Indonesia. They were led by Dwiki Dharmawan and Pra Budidharma.

Members of Krakatau for a Reunion (Rahmayanti, 2022)

They combine traditional Sundanese gamelan like bonang (kettle gong), kendang (barrel drum), rebab (spike fiddle), and tarompet (double-reed aerophone) with jazz elements such as guitar, drums, retuned keyboards, and improvisation (Harnish and Waalach, 2013). They also retuned to the keyboard in the slendro scale, a traditional Indonesian music scale. 

Kendang is featured on the far left (Harnish, 2013).

Jazz is believed to have been introduced to Indonesia around 1920 by Dutch colonists (Harnish and Waalach, 2013). Krakatau’s ethnic jazz fusion style was relatively novel when standard jazz and jazz-rock were more popular. All of the original members of this ensemble are from Bandung in West Java (Harnish and Waalach, 2013). Bandung was the center center of Sundanese music and culture, and its distance away from Jakarta led to this subculture of mixing Sundanese music with popular music. Indonesians perceived jazz to be “white” American music when it was actually appropriated from African-American music. Dharmawan has said that realizing that jazz was the “ethnic music” of African Americans led the ensemble to create music influenced by their Sundanese background (Harnish and Waalach, 2013).

Below is the composition “Shufflelendang – Sufflending.”

Krakatau – Shufflendang – Shufflending (Shufflendang – Shufflending, 2007)

The title is a portmanteau of shuffle and the Sundanese words kendang and genhing (Titon and Cooley, 2017). The fusion between the two genres has provided a bridge between local Indonesian culture and Western culture. In this piece, you hear the pelog and slendro scale being played. The piece is playful as the saron (metal slab instruments) and knobbed gongs play back and forth on a major scale in an upbeat tempo with a clear metallic timbre. The rebab begins to take over the melody briefly with more legato notes. The song cycles between more upbeat sections of the gongs and saron to the rebab sections which juxtapose each other. Throughout the piece, Western instruments such as drums and a shaker are played.

References:

Harnish, D. (2013, August). The hybrid music and cosmopolitan scene of Balinese guitarist I Wayan Balawan. In Ethnomusicology Forum (Vol. 22, No. 2, pp. 188-209). Taylor & Francis Group.

Harnish, D., & Wallach, J. (2013). ” Dance to Your Roots”: Genre Fusions in the Music of Indonesia’s Krakatau. Asian Music, 115-134.

Rahmayanti, Y. (2022, June 19). Profil band Krakatau, Grup Musik Jazz Indonesia, Mulanya Bernama Messopotamia, Dibentuk Tahun 1984. Tribunnews.com. https://www.tribunnews.com/seleb/2022/06/19/profil-band-krakatau-grup-musik-jazz-indonesia-berawal-dari-messopotamia-menjadi-krakatau

Shufflendang – Shufflending. (2007). Krakatau – Shufflendang – Shufflending. Retrieved December 14, 2023, from https://youtu.be/FFiFlQOIyrM?si=cLh7lZXemMdf1uft. 

Titon, J. T., & Cooley, T. J. (2017). Worlds of Music: An introduction to the music of the world’s peoples. Cengage Learning.