A Fast-Paced Present and A Future of Change
With the development of a presence on the internet, the Kraton Yogyakarta has embarked on a bold experiment to connect this venerable institution with old and new audiences alike. I see the Sultan, his family, and top palace functionaries as having decided that their best way forward is to retain their core traditional values, roles, and responsibilities while at the same time to exploit current tools of social connectivity to foster in their audiences a sense that their brand of Javanese kingship is attuned to the present. Just as in the “old days” when the palace seemed to be more inward looking in their defense of traditional kingship, the performing arts, almost all of which involve gamelan performance, are important actors in this new strategy.
From a great distance, I sense that this strategy is so far generating some positive results. In the domain of palace performing arts, the average age of niyaga (gamelan musicians) seems to have dropped dramatically since my first extended research visit in the early 1980s, while at the same time the number of young and talented dancers that I see participating in performances broadcast from the palace has steadily grown. This suggests to me that the palace has modified its longstanding (and arguably outdated) practices of performer recruitment and retention and is now enticing more talented performers at a younger age into the palace sphere. This can only be good for the future of Yogyanese style music and dance as it is these younger performers who will someday be the faculty at Indonesia’s performing arts academies and therefore involved with the training of the next generation of performers.
A consequence of what I believe can be characterized as an acceleration of palace performing arts activity is that the scene is changing so rapidly that I can no longer keep apace of it. I believe that, by necessity, this pace of activity and innovation must and probably will continue to increase into the future if the institution of which it is a part has any hope of remaining pertinent to future generations of Yogyanese Javanese. As of the end of the year 2022, this site will no longer attempt to document the fast-changing artistic sphere of the Kraton Yogyakarta. It will become a resource of historical documentation sprinkled with links to palace internet sites through which interested individuals can keep abreast of new expressions of palace innovations to whatever degree interests them.
Palace Gamelans as Enduring But Evolving Agents of Javanese Kingship
As for the gamelans associated with the Kraton Yogyakarta and documented on this website, they have undergone a relatively small degree of change over the past forty years. Two new sets have been added (KK Sangumukti and KK Sangumulya) and four previously un-modernized sets (KK Medharsih, KK Mikatsih, KK Marikangen, and KK Panji) have been modernized and integrated into present-day palace life. Several archaic instruments such as the cluring, slentho, and gambang gangsa still in existence as of my first research visit in 1982 but not in use at the time have been dusted off and are now in regular use. Probably all of the palace gamelans have received at least one new carefully-applied coat of paint, if not more, over the forty-year period of my research and look quite stunning—worthy, I feel, of being called royal gamelans. Their tunings have, as well, been touched up regularly over the same period so that every single key and gong in any given set is in pitch agreement with the others. I sense these actors, these sound-producing servants of Javanese kingship, will continue to be utilized for decades to come and literally get only better with age (and maintenance). Whether or not some of the more esoteric information about these sets that I have gathered over the decades and shared on this site will survive and remain associated with these instruments in the future I know not. But as long as Javanese kingship continues to be practiced and the powers that are believed to reside in a living Sultan continue to be recognized, the palace gamelans chronicled here will likely continue to embody, collect, and communicate cultural meaning as they are integrated into the ceremonial gestures that are central to the practice of Javanese kingship in Yogyakarta.
