Feature: Reinvigorating Sanggar Tripittaka
Sarah Lecompte-Bergeron
Their parents are very proud to see them working diligently on an art project instead of drinking and hanging out on the streets all night. I brought them together so they could do something positive. When people ask where the instruments come from, I am proud to say that we found the bamboo and made them ourselves.
Ketut Nik
The vibrant music scene of Munduk in North Bali is well-known to gamelan aficionados the world over, and its reputation is largely synonymous with the activities of composer, gamelan tuner, and instrument builder I Made Terip. Terip comes from a lineage of gamelan musicians stretching back several generations and has worked with his sons to enshrine that legacy in an arts community called Tripittaka. In recent years, Terip’s sons Komang Kosil and Ketut Nick have transformed the group into a vital force for creativity in North Bali by recruiting younger players and focusing on novel ideas. Their latest projects are realized using a newly constructed set of instruments that Terip calls gumbyung. Akin to the jegog ensembles from West Bali, Terip’s newer instruments are large, flashy, and better able to satisfy the musical demands of energetic teenagers. Despite the radical image that comes with these new instruments, personnel, and music, Tripittaka remains firmly rooted in Terip’s family legacy. Its reputation and productivity are increasingly dependent on pioneering work carried out by his children.
Tripittaka owes part of its enduring vitality to an extensive children’s education program under the satellite institution Komunitas Seni Bala Anindha. The organization, led by Jero Komang Kosil, is a collection of ensembles intent on educating children, teenagers, and women, where musicians can garner the necessary experience to eventually join Tripittaka’s front ranks. Kosil implements his father’s approach to teaching, which involves “treating students as professional musicians so they develop a sense of responsibility and pride alongside their musical skills.” Terip and Kosil provide students with as many performance opportunities as possible and encourage stronger students – for example Kosil’s 12-year-old son Putu Reva – to take on leadership roles.
Tripittaka’s gong kebyar ensemble experienced a period of inactivity after the instruments were sold to cover medical treatment costs for Terip’s late son, I Putu Putrawan. Terip and the sanggar remained active by creating music for their new gumbyung instruments. The collection Nong Cret, recorded by Insitu Recordings in late 2016, features new compositions for the first iteration of this bamboo ensemble. Terip derived the ensemble’s unique scale – which uses a 4-note subset from a theoretical 7-note aggregate different than that of standard jegog tuning systems – in part by listening to the cicadas outside his home. Terip composed the melody for the title track by incorporating the insects’ alien clicking sound with elements from Munduk’s vast repository of angklung melodies, which according to Terip, are represented in the intel-intelan motive and occasional kotekan figuration. He elaborated on this foundation with layers of alternating interlocking rhythms – referred to variously in Jembrana by the terms nguntungin, ngundirin, metingkadan, and others – and wide dynamic contrasts typical of jegog music. Terip takes such hybridization further in Tetangisan Jamianom by infusing elaboration patterns from the village’s distinct angklung style with those of “traditional” jegog and explains that such a technique helps him avoid resorting to imitation. He strives to respect the artists and traditions in Jembrana and does not claim his music represents traditional jegog genres.
The word gumbyung is a contraction of gabungan jegog dengan bumbung. The ensemble combines instruments and music features from each genre. It currently consists of three barangan and two kantil instruments that execute interlocking ornamentation, and three types of low melodic instruments – kuntung, undir, and jegog – tuned in successively lower octaves. These pitched instruments are accompanied by a pair of kendang, suling and a battery of staple instruments typical of other styles – gong, kempur, klentong, kempli, and kecek.
A second iteration of the ensemble with a different tuning system is featured on Tripittaka’s recently released second album with Insitu Recordings, Ndag Surye. The music is generally more boisterous than that of Tripittaka’s other groups as might be expected by its derivation from joged bumbung and its much younger personnel. Komang Kosil composed the title track Ndag Surye – the coming of the sun – to commemorate the revival of the gumbyung ensemble and its newer instruments.
https://youtu.be/miBSgCZKClw
Terip’s contribution to the new album, Tari Megangsingan – much like the track Gangsig Leged from Nong Cret – conjures the energetic atmosphere of thrown spinning top competitions (gangsingan). The exclamatory rhythmic events are meant to evoke the violent and humorous collisions of tops that result in disqualification. These events are humorized in the choreography as well, which depicts competitors reacting to their successes and failures. The vocal melody is taken from an actual tune that Terip heard sung by coffee farmers when he was a child. Farmers around Munduk often played gangsingan and sung together while waiting for coffee beans to dry in the sun. The dance and accompaniment depict the history of gegangsingan – from rural past-time to competitive spectacle.
Terip asserts that despite its contemporary reputation, the primary function of joged bumbung is to relieve stress. He often shares stories about his grandfather, who built ensembles of grantang instruments and carried them deep into the jungle at night with friends to play, dance, and joke around in the 1960s. This was before joged bumbung became associated with sexualized street music and included female dancers. Kosil envisions expanding the gumbyung ensemble to fifty musicians and adding more percussion instruments, including drum kit, bigger bass jegog – like those found in Jembrana – and a scale of pitched gong. Such large ensembles have become something of a novelty in Bali, especially at festival events meant to provide entertainment (read: stress relief) for general audiences.
In 2017, Ketut Nik devised another new ensemble using interlocking hand-held bamboo instruments when the group struggled to secure baleganjur instruments to use in the energetic pengerupukan festivities preceding nyepi. He calls the ensemble Kulkul Munduk and boasts that because the instruments are tuned lower than usual, the sound travels further, and the group can be heard over the boisterous drums and ceng-ceng of nearby baleganjur groups. The instrumentation resembles that of tektekan ensembles and consists of kendang, 12-20 bamboo kulkul, three tawa-tawa, ponggang, a set of gong, and four bamboo rope tension drums. The most popular and oft-performed piece in their repertoire, Telolet, refers to the blaring horn patterns of tour buses passing the rehearsal space as well as the “om telolet om!” internet meme. The tawa-tawa replicates these horn patterns, which gives the piece a lyrical character despite the lack of melodic instruments.
Ketut Nik takes pride in the fact that his Kukul Munduk group primarily consists of young novices who exhibit remarkable enthusiasm about the music:
The rehearsal process [for Telolet] took less than a month. We rehearsed often, every day, sometimes up to four hours. The members were extraordinarily stimulated. I gave them patterns that are easy to play but also interesting-enough so they don’t get bored. When I would ask them when they wanted to rehearse next, they would answer “tomorrow!” in order to move through the memorization process more quickly. Their parents are very proud to see them working diligently on an art project instead of drinking and hanging out on the streets all night. I brought them together so they could do something positive. When people ask where the instruments come from, I am proud to say that we found the bamboo and made them ourselves.
Like most ensemble leaders in Bali, Terip enjoys composing and teaching commissions from other groups in the area. Notably he contributed arrangements and rehearsal leadership for the debut album of Sekaa Angklung Manik Suara, recorded by Insitu Recordings in January 2018 and set for release in 2020. The album features re-interpretations of angklung melodies from deep in Munduk’s musical memory.
The work of Terip and his sons exemplifies the creative productivity found all over Bali. Despite experiencing economic hardship and the loss of their main-stay gong kebyar ensemble, they have continued to devise unique solutions in order to continue their family’s artistic legacy and promote musical arts in Munduk. They are proof that tradition may take many forms as it moves through generations and that innovation often resonates with the past.
The Terip family would like to thank deeply everybody who contributed to the fundraiser to help I Putu Putrawan, Danker Schaareman for initiating the campaign, and everybody else who made a phone call or otherwise expressed positive energies and prayers from the other side of the world. This article is dedicated to the memory of I Putu Putrawan.
Sarah Lecompte-Bergeron
Check out Trippitaka‘s releases with Insitu Recordings on Bandcamp and SoundCloud:
Insitu Recordings · Ndag Surye
Insitu Recordings · Nong Cret