From Issue 3
Cerita Kehidupan: An Interview with Danker Schaareman
Insitu Recordings
Insitu Recordings: What is your earliest memory of a musical experience?
Danker Schaareman: As far as I can remember, that must have been the Matthäus Passion from Bach. My father had the vinyl record in his collection, but I also got to experience it performed live. He was a singer in a choir where we lived, and they performed it every Easter. He was also a pianist, which is why I was able to study piano. I also remember I was interested in sad songs, and when I couldn’t sleep, when I was about six or seven, or if I was upset, I would say “Papa play something sad!”
IR: Do you remember what he would play?
DS: Children’s songs mostly. Maybe they weren’t sad, but I often had the impression of a sad melody. I can’t explain it.
IR: How much of your early musical experience was based around the church?
DS: Well, my parents were only lightly religious. They were very open-minded people. They weren’t the Calvinists from Holland, but called themselves Remonstrants (similar to Mennonites). We went to church but did not have a rule that we had to go every Sunday. There were a lot of discussions about what was in the bible: “Don’t believe what it says in the bible, take it as a guide, and interpret as you would like.” There was no dogmatism. I played in the church, but not every Sunday. Sometimes I would sit in as organist. They had someone who was hired to do that, but sometimes he would say, “Oh, let someone else do it.” And I liked doing it, especially after sermon. There was a thinking pause filled with some piece of music. I would improvise something and when I stopped they started again.
IR: How old were you at that time?
DS: That was from age seven to eleven or so. Primary school. I was composing a bit of piano music too, but nothing special.
IR: Did music come easily to you?
DS: Yeah, when I finished secondary school, my music teacher encouraged me to enroll at the music academy. He said: “you’re supposed to go to the academy and become a pianist.” I thought, “OK.” After my final examinations at high school I registered at the conservatory in Utrecht, was accepted, and went there to study piano and composition. That was 1968 and 1969. I was 19. I composed and practiced heavily but it wasn’t enough. One day my piano teacher told me that I would never become a soloist. He said at best I would become a piano teacher, a good one, but that wasn’t enough for me so I stopped. [laughs] That was age 20. At the same time I had already started studying musicology and decided to continue with that while piano would continue as a hobby. Back in primary school I had developed a passion for other people and customs. I went through the encyclopedias at home and wrote down the names of tribes and what they did, where they lived, and so on. I accumulated whole notebooks with all this “tribal data” inside. [laughs] Maybe that habit triggered an interest in non-Western music and ethnomusicology and, later, cultural and social anthropology. I wanted to study that instead of that typical “medieval” musicology so I started looking around. In Holland, it wasn’t possible but somebody said “go to Switzerland, to Bern, there is something there.” So I went to Bern, but they only did alphorn music and yodeling. That was in 1970, at the University of Bern. They had a music department that was doing research in yodeling and alphorn music.
IR: That wasn’t what you were looking for?
DS: No way! [laughs] But then I heard about a professor of musicology in Basel who was interested in Indonesian music. I went there and he was very supportive: “Oh yeah, come on, come on, come here and enroll at our University, you’re welcome to study ethnomusicology, we do Indonesian music.”
IR: Had you heard Indonesian music before?
DS: No, never. The first time I heard it was in classes at the university in Basel. When I got there the institute of musicology, department of ethnology, and museum for ethnography were already preparing a research trip to Bali. I got to know the field notes and recordings of this Ernst Schlager who had been there in the forties and again in the fifties, and his friend who had continued recording, and so on. In classes we were preparing for the research trip. That was the first time I had heard Balinese gambang.
IR: Do you remember what you heard?
DS: Manukaba from Pegubugan in Selat. I used that as the topic of a paper at school. I had to transcribe it. The melody and the oncangan. It was very difficult.
IR: You transcribed all four parts of the oncangan?
DS: Yeah. It wasn’t perfect, but it could be done.
IR: What were your ethnomusicology courses about?
DS: I learned analysis and transcription mostly, with a bit of cultural background and history. I read Kunst’s book Hindu-Javanese Musical Instruments and his book on Balinese music (De Toonkunst van Bali). I also read Korn’s book on Balinese adat and of course McPhee’s Music of Bali.
IR: So when you went to Bali in 1972, as part of this research team, who led the team?
DS: It was a multi-institutional effort led by an anthropologist named Urs Ramseyer, who at the time worked for the Basel Museum of Ethnography. He was the cultural specialist, and the musicologist (Tilman Seebass) was only there to make recordings of seven-tone music. We did end up recording things like gong gede and gong kebyar though too.
IR: Who funded that research?
DS: The Swiss National Fund for the Promotion of Scientific Research, although I never had any insight into the finances. It was already approved and prepared by the time I got to Basel.
IR: Could you tell us about the trip?
DS: We flew to Jakarta first and spent two weeks there to get our permits (from LIPI). Then Urs and the film crew flew over to Bali while we (ethno-)musicologists went over land to Banyuwangi and then crossed the strait. We were brought to our final destination by truck, from Denpasar to Amlapura. Ramseyer and his guys went to Sideman. Theo Meier was also there. He came from Thailand to introduce us. It was May or June, so in Karangasem, lots of rituals. He took us to Asak, to Timbrah, to Bungaya, to Bugbug, to Tenganan, and all those places, so we could have a feel for what was going on at the Balinese temple ceremonies and for the music – gambang, selunding, gong, and so on. I myself decided to settle in Asak, because my first contact with the people there was very encouraging. I couldn’t speak Indonesian or Balinese yet, a couple of words only, but they initiated communication, so I thought OK, let’s do it here. The purpose was – as a cultural anthropologist – to produce a village monography about all aspects in the village, and the side job was assisting the musicologist with recording. All together we were there two years, and the data I collected was sufficient for my MA and PhD. The MA was in music/ethnography, about gambang and selunding in Asak, the PhD, in anthropology.
IR: You stayed in Asak alone? Where were the others?
DS: Yes, but to be honest I have to say that my wife joined me there sometimes. She was also a PhD student, in dance, studying dance and how to make offerings to Sang Hyang, mostly in Amlapura with the musicologist. Urs was in Iseh near Sidemen. I met them about once every two weeks.
IR: How did this initial experience living in Asak, Karangasem shape your perspective of Bali in general?
DS: Well, my perspective is very old fashioned! [laughs] It’s such a traditional area, the whole area of Bungaya, Timbrah, Asak, Bugbug, and so on. I like that. For my PhD I had to go back several times, many times actually. To do further research, conduct interviews, and so on. My horizon was widened sometimes, but the basis of my work was always Asak, that area, because I knew it. I don’t like to move around much.
IR: What was your methodology for doing research?
DS: [laughs] Holistic. Relative. Participant-observation. I became a member of the sekaha gambang. Not formally, but I was able to join them at ceremonies whenever I wanted to, but not with the selunding, that was not allowed.
IR: What did the people think of you? Were they surprised to see a Dutch person playing in the temple?
DS: They thought nothing. It was no problem. Nobody asked any questions. Nobody stared. I was there for over a year before I mastered oncangan and could play gangsa or gambang during ceremonies. By then everybody knew me. I remember once, during Kuningan, we were playing gambang in various temples and a film crew from Australia appeared. I don’t know what they wanted, but they asked me to go away. [laughs] I was disturbing the picture, but the other guys from the gambang orchestra said, “no, you stay here. If they want to film then they can figure it out.”
IR: When you returned home from that first trip, what did you bring back?
DS: I had all my handwritten notes, a very small part of that was already typed-up in Bali. When I was in Amlapura I had access to a typewriter, a classical/mechanical model.
IR: Did you bring any gamelan instruments home?
DS: The project included funding to bring instruments to Basel, so we brought back a gambang and two selunding orchestras.
IR: Where were those instruments built?
DS: One selunding was built in Bebandem, but based on the Tenganan model. The other was built in Bungaya. The gambang were also built in Bungaya, but tuning was modeled after instruments in Asak. The gangsa were forged in Tihingan, in Klungkung.
IR: What was the purpose of bringing them back?
DS: To have it. [laughs] Well basically what European collectors do is put things like that in a museum to show off the results of their research. But I thought that the instruments should be played, so I gathered people together who were interested in learning and started a group. We played repertoire that I knew from Asak, and other gending I had picked up here and there.
IR: What was your favorite piece to play?
DS: Manukaba or Jurangandanu, or both.
IR: Did that group ever perform?
DS: Yes, we did little showcases in the museum. After a while we began to take the instruments out onto the street and play them there.
IR: How did people react?
DS: I didn’t really notice. There were people looking at us, but not giving us money! We put out a hat, which was always empty. But I think people liked it. A couple of the players became very interested in Bali after learning to play and spent time there.
IR: What resulted from the data the team collected?
DS: Well, I used a lot of it for my master’s and PhD theses. But Seebass and Ramseyer were already enemies before they left for Bali. They had an argument so strong that they didn’t communicate and, consequently, cooperate. Urs published his books and Tilman Seebass made some records, I think. My wife used it for the basis of her MA and PhD. But if you’re talking about all of those recordings, nothing was done with it, except for a couple of records. It was mainly for documentation.
IR: When did you finish your dissertation?
DS: 1982. It then took me about four years to translate it into English and get money to publish it as a book. I don’t know how it is elsewhere, but in Switzerland it’s obligatory to publish your PhD work.
IR: That book refers to the village as Tatulingga. Why did you choose that name?
DS: At the time, the tendency in anthropology was to hide where you did your fieldwork for political reasons. I needed to protect the people I had written about so I chose a “neutral” name, Tatulingga.
IR: What were your worried about?
DS: I thought that if I mentioned people or certain events there might be repercussions from the government, by the regime. I was worried about the state, the consequences in Indonesia.
IR: What do you think is your most significant contribution to the study of Bali?
DS: I would simply say it is in plain ethnography, rather than anthropological theory.
IR: What is your favorite publication about Bali?
DS: Musik van Bali by Jaap Kunst. It is straightforward. It’s quite detailed. Even though it’s full of errors and misconceptions, I like it very much. That was written in 1925. Everyone else – Spies, McPhee, and so forth – were more famous but not very scientific. With all its deficits, I think Kunst should be translated into English. Or tell the Americans to learn Dutch. [laughs] A bit more expensive, I suppose.
IR: Who else has written ethnographies about Bali that you admire?
DS: Korn. 1932. There aren’t so many thorough monographs on a single village, only shorter articles by colonial officers with an interest in adat.
IR: What do you think of Geertz’s work?
DS: Not much. It’s too elegant. [laughs] He’s a good writer. That’s his problem. Grand theories. But they do not always fit reality. People these days talk about the old Balinese area, the new Balinese area, the Majapahit-influenced area and so forth. I don’t believe in that. It’s a mixture. There should be more ethnography about specific places.
IR: During the roughly twenty-year period, between 1972 and 1992, many field recordings were made on Bali. What challenges did you face while recording? What kind of equipment did you use?
DS: Well, none of us in the first group had experience recording. Not even Tilman, who did most of the recording. I knew how to put tape on the recorder and click the start button, but that was it. We had a Nagra Kudelsky recorder, a good model at that time, and two directional microphones. I think we got better at it over time. The recordings sometimes had disturbances. If you touched the tape while it was running you would get glitches, for example. The machine ran on batteries, which we could charge using a diesel generator in Amlapura. There was no electricity. We transported everything with an old jeep.
IR: How did people react to the equipment?
DS: They didn’t notice anything special. There weren’t any blinking lights. The only thing was if you looked closely there were dancing needles showing the volume.
IR: What was the biggest challenge?
DS: There weren’t as many challenges as you might think. We never had problems with musicians. We always asked permission, but nobody ever said no. We always brought supplies to share with people, sugar and coffee and so on.
IR: In how many places did you record?
DS: During the first trip, if we knew that a place had gambang, we went there. We got our leads from Schlager’s manuscripts, which hadn’t been published yet. Plus we had the whole collection of lontar, so we knew where to look. I was never involved in arranging the recordings, except in Asak. We recorded in about 50 places. Sometimes the Dinas Kebudayaan in Amlapura suggested we go to certain villages too. It was different in the eighties, because we knew better how to work with Balinese people. If we knew about a ceremony, we would visit the houses near the temple to sit and eat for a while. Then we would politely ask about when the gong or gambang was playing and ask to record it. Step-by-step we got to where we wanted to be.
IR: Do any of those experiences stand out in your memory?
DS: There were many pleasant and unexpected moments, especially in the 80s. There was a gong gede musician in Batur who wanted to hear the recording we had just made. His expression was one of amazement. He kept turning up the volume. He was blown away. But he loved it. It was the first time he had listened to such a recording. At that time we already had cassette recorders and we usually made copies from the reels and brought them around to the villages. We also traveled with a motorbike and I had a small cassette player and little speakers. Everywhere we went, we’d go to a warung and put it on the table and have gambang, or whatever music. It was nice.
IR: How many of those recordings sitting in Basel have been published?
DS: Maybe 1% or less. The other 99% rotted. Don’t forget that it was not just what we recorded in 1972-73. Add to that what Oesch recorded in ’68 and 74’ plus what we recorded from 1985-94, plus what Schlager and Meier recorded during the war and after, until 1964.
IR: How many hours of recordings are we talking about?
DS: What I know is that there were three or four big boxes with 15-cm tapes and there were 351 32-cm reel tapes. My estimate is about 350 to 400 hours in all. And all of that deteriorates over time. After we got back, in ’73, I made copies of all the tapes, and in the eighties I started copying the old Schlager materials. That was really a pain in the ass. Sometimes the tape was running and it would leave a mist of brown stuff. What you got in the end was a transparent tape that could not be used anymore. There were also times during playback that it would break for no obvious reason, other than the material was already fragile.
IR: We heard that you are digitizing some recordings and planning to share them online. Can you tell us about that?
DS: It’s a long process because beginning in the late 1990s I started to worry about those recordings sitting in the institute in Basel. Many people contacted me seeking recordings, and I told them to contact the institute, but nobody there could find specific recordings because they aren’t indexed. There’s no catalog. That’s one thing. And the material, it rots and breaks. So it needs be digitized, but I sit here and I can’t do that. In early 2000 I asked Dieter Mack how we could make it happen. In 2013, at his suggestion, someone in Freiburg went to Basel, took the tapes, and digitized them. I contacted him and he said “I have 66 CDs,” and I said “How do I get them? Because I want to do this and this and this with it.” I have them now, but I noticed it’s only a very small portion of the recordings. It’s only the older material from Theo Meier and Schlager, not from Oesch, a bit from my own recordings in Asak, which were probably on cassette copies of the reels. There are still about 350 reels, or 175-180 hours, of recordings that have not been digitized. That needs to be done. Eventually I want to create a catalog and put them on a website with transcriptions of the melodies in Balinese script. Plus the films. People will be able to download it, study it, or add to it. The important thing is that these recordings are accessible.
IR: Who do you think will benefit most from that?
DS: It is for the Balinese. Not everybody in Bali has access to the internet, so we need to figure out how to get it to them. We can deliver CDs and publish transcriptions. It will be a lot of work. First digitizing, and then cataloging and indexing, and identification of the melodies. My gambang teacher from Asak, Gede Putu, has passed away, but his son is now head of the sekaha and is teaching new players. I hope it will help people like him.
IR: How long will this take?
DS: I could finish the digitization in 2 weeks or 2 months. It depends on how many tape machines I have. But that doesn’t include getting funding for the website, the cataloging, the documentation of the melodies, editing and processing the recordings, and so forth. I could probably finish in a year.
IR: After publishing your dissertation in 82, when did you return to Bali to do research?
DS: I got funding for an anthropological research project in ’85-86. Two others went with me to collect data and make recordings. A German student in anthropology, focusing on dance; and there was my friend, a drummer, a non-academic, but he was good in recording and communicating with people, so he was involved. Wayne Vitale was also involved to a degree. I had met him in Europe through Dieter Mack. I wanted him to join us in Karangasem, but he was more interested in Kebyar. [laughs] Anyways, we finished the trip and returned home. I spent the following years teaching in Basel, copying tapes, preparing for another project. I was also organizing and editing text, which led to publishing Balinese Music in Context in 1992. Hans Oesch had died a couple months before, so I dedicated the book to his memory. I was already in Bali supervising another research project by the time it was published.
IR: How did that research differ from what you had done before?
DS: It became multi-disciplinary. There was a specialist in Indian Hindu-Buddhist influences on Balinese temples like Penulisan in Kintamani. There was a social-geographer, who studied salt-making processes and the socio-economic impact of that. There was a comparative anthropologist. There was a photographer. The title of the project was Between the Sea and the Mountains. It explored the relationship between kaja and kelod. Music was not involved and not much resulted from it, except for the work done by the social-geographer. He published a thesis based on that research. It was mainly an experience for the students.
IR: Did you compose music or play piano while you were travelling between Switzerland and Bali?
DS: No. I only played gambang. I sold my piano to Wayne Vitale in 1990 or so. I have started to compose again, since 2014. I finished a string quartet last year that I like, although it hasn’t been performed.
IR: What has your life looked like since your last research trip on Bali, in the early nineties?
DS: After that I went to Bali, and I haven’t been back to Europe since. I lived in Asak at first. Later I moved to Denpasar and then to Tabanan. I taught English to high school students. I wrote some articles for the Bali Post about Balinese history, some political stuff about Tanah Lot, some stuff about the resorts on Sunset Road. I still have them. In 1999 I found a job as a consultant and later I got a better job in Jakarta through a group of American universities. It was called the Southeast Consortium of International Development. I was the director of their office in Indonesia. We did some forestry and education projects throughout the country. Eventually they ran out of money and I lost my job. The bank couldn’t tell me what happened. There was an audit, but nobody knows where the money went. After that my wife and I started our own consulting firm, which I still have today. Otherwise I spend my time composing. I’m also translating my dissertation into Indonesian.
IR: What rekindled your interest in that work?
DS: I think it’s necessary. That’s my own personal opinion. Students in their 20s, in Asak, tell me they use my book at school, but that’s in English. That was difficult for them and I thought let’s translate it. If they can use it for adat, or whatever, that’s nice. Now, I travel to Bali often because some of the data needs updating. In the end, it will be a completely new book because of the many additions. Also, my way of thinking has changed over time, and the book reflects that.
IR: Who is your favorite composer?
DS: Bach.
IR: Favorite composition?
DS: Jurangandanu [laughs]
IR: What is it that you like about Jurangandanu?
DS: I like the melody. I don’t know. The tonal quality. The way it goes up and down, and not up and down. I also like Sidakarya, which is 6 tones. Sidakarya means good work. Also Pujaparwata, and Pamandana, for selunding.
IR: What’s your favorite gamelan recording of all time?
DS: A field recording of Jurangandanu, played by one person with someone else singing the melody. Recorded in Asak in 1973. And the other recording is gong gede from Batur. Recorded in 1985. The gending is Lasem. I like it very much.
Jurangandanu, recorded in 1973
IR: Have you played gambang since moving to Jakarta?
DS: No, the last time I played was in 2014. I played with Wayan Widia in Bebandem, at his home. It was the first time in 10 or 15 years. Of course, I played Jurangandanu.
Insitu Recordings
Read Danker’s most recent text about selunding in Asak, self-published at Academia.org:
Learn more about Danker’s involvement with the Swiss-Basel recording projects at the Insitu Recordings archive:
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