{"id":29,"date":"2016-10-17T15:32:38","date_gmt":"2016-10-17T15:32:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vetter.sites.grinnell.edu\/gamelan\/?page_id=29"},"modified":"2025-06-03T16:02:05","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T16:02:05","slug":"k-k-maesaganggang","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/vetter.sites.grinnell.edu\/gamelan\/kraton-yogyakarta-gamelans\/k-k-maesaganggang\/","title":{"rendered":"K.K. Ma\u00e9saganggang"},"content":{"rendered":"

Acquired:<\/strong> during the Reign of Sultan Hamengku Buwana I
\nType of Gamelan:<\/strong> archaic–kodhok ngor\u00e8k<\/em>
\nTuning:<\/strong>\u00a0three tone, and\u00a0sl\u00e9ndro<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>
The gamelan kodhok ngor\u00e8k<\/em> of the Kraton Yogyakarta, K.K. Ma\u00e9saganggang.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the W\u00e9dha Pradangga<\/em>, a\u00a0compilation of orally-transmitted stories about the history of the gamelan and its repertoire,\u00a0Warsadiningrat credits\u00a0Prabu Surya Wis\u00e9sa with creating the first\u00a0gamelan kodhok ngor\u00e8k <\/em>in 1223 CE.[1]<\/abbr>\u00a0Kraton Yogyakarta manuscripts and publications place the origins of the palace’s pusaka<\/em>\u00a0gamelan kodhok ngor\u00e8k, K.K. <\/i>Ma\u00e9saganggang (“fighting buffalo”), at about the same time, in the 14th century Majapahit Kingdom of East Java. While the veracity\u00a0of these beliefs is\u00a0unprovable, it is important nonetheless to be aware of them\u00a0as part of the baggage and gravitas of this gamelan in the context of the Kraton Yogyakarta. This gamelan’s association with the Majapahit\u00a0kingdom serves to situate\u00a0the present day kraton<\/em>\u00a0in the long history of Javanese kingship, and to\u00a0validate the kraton<\/em>\u00a0as a royal institution.<\/p>\n

Warsadiningrat implies that the gamelan kodhok ngor\u00e8k<\/em> of the Kraton Surakarta, Kyai Jati Ngarang, was a descendent of Prabu Surya Wis\u00e9sa’s creation at least in type.[2]<\/abbr> It was probably parts of this gamelan that came to the newly established Kraton Yogyakarta in 1755 CE as a result of the Treaty of Giyanti. This\u00a0agreement between warring factions at the time\u00a0involved\u00a0the sharing of royal heirlooms between the Surakarta kingdom and its new equal, the Sultanate of Yogyakarta. The Surakarta gamelan kodhok ngor\u00e8k<\/em>\u00a0Kyai Jati Ngarang was one of these heirlooms, and it has been chronicled that half of its\u00a0instruments\u00a0were allotted to Yogyakarta. By 1757 CE these instruments had been augmented to become a complete gamelan kodhok ngor\u00e8k<\/em>\u00a0and given the name K.K. Ma\u00e9saganggang (this set is also referred to as K.K. Keboganggang; “ma\u00e9sa” and “kebo<\/i>” both mean “buffalo”). I have yet to\u00a0encounter an inventory\u00a0that lists exactly which of the instruments from Kyai Jati Ngarang came to Yogyakarta, and which of the instruments in K.K. Ma\u00e9saganggang were mid-18th century additions. To members of the Kraton Yogyakarta, I sense it does not matter that such details have been lost to history. The bottom line is that to the members of this community this gamelan, along with a few others that came to Yogyakarta\u00a0as part of the Treaty of Giyanti (see K.K. Gunturlaut<\/a> and K.K. Gunturmadu<\/a>), contributes significantly to how they\u00a0situate\u00a0the Kraton Yogyakarta in the centuries-old tradition of Javanese\u00a0kingship.<\/p>\n

It should not come as a surprise that in order to effectively index antiquity this gamelan needs to look and sound different from contemporary sets. Among the archaic instruments found in this gamelan\u00a0are a bell rattle (sekar\u00a0dlima<\/i><\/a>), cymbals (roj\u00e9h<\/i><\/a>), a pair of distinctively-shaped medium-size gongs with flat faces (penonthong<\/em><\/a>), and four\u00a0single-row\u00a0gong chimes (bonang<\/i><\/a>) with eight gongs each. These instruments, more so than the remaining instruments of this set, \u00a0visually convey a sense of antiquity. \u00a0But this gamelan\u00a0also includes three melodic instruments with thick bronze keys (one saron\u00a0<\/em>demung<\/i> and two smaller saron barung, <\/i>all\u00a0tuned to the sl\u00e9ndro<\/em> scale) that are found in all modern common practice gamelans but not in any other gamelan kodhok ngor\u00e8k<\/em>. These three saron<\/em> instruments are understood\u00a0as additions made during 1755-1757 to the incomplete set of instruments from Surakarta, and have been used subsequently to highlight\u00a0K.K. Ma\u00e9saganggang as being distinctively Yogyanese. This could very well be true, but one detail about these saron<\/em> instruments\u00a0that I find curious is that they have seven keys<\/a> each, as do contemporary Solonese saron<\/em> instruments, rather than six, which is the standard number of keys for modern Yogyanese common practice saron<\/em> instruments. This, in my mind, raises the possibility that the keys for these saron<\/em> instruments might have been part of the allotment of instruments from Surakarta that resulted from the breaking\u00a0up of\u00a0Kyai Jati Ngarang in 1755. That gamelan today includes two melodic metallophones–a gend\u00e8r barung<\/em> and a gambang gangsa<\/em>–tuned to the\u00a0sl\u00e9ndro<\/em> scale. Could, prior to 1755,\u00a0Kyai Jati Ngarang have also included the three saron<\/em> now found in K.K.\u00a0Ma\u00e9saganggang in addition to the\u00a0gend\u00e8r barung<\/em> and a gambang gangsa<\/em>\u00a0still found in its instrumentation? Until more evidence in the form of precise accountings of the objects\u00a0transferred from Surakarta to Yogyakarta as a result of the\u00a0Treaty of Giyanti surface, we cannot be certain one way or the other.<\/p>\n

There is only one musical piece, gendhing<\/em> Kodhok Ngor\u00e8k, performed on this gamelan (Video 1<\/a>).\u00a0This piece is ostinato-like with a single three-note, two-pitch syncopated motif repeated over and over on the bonang setren<\/em> and jaler<\/em> instruments\u00a0and\u00a0a third pitch reiterated\u00a0incessantly on the bonang kl\u00e9nang<\/em>. An underlying cyclical structure produced\u00a0collectively by the kenong japan<\/em>, penonthong<\/em>, the two kendhang paneteg<\/em>, and the two gong ageng<\/em> creates a phrase structure that encompasses four iterations of the melodic motif played on the bonang<\/em>s. But perhaps the most distinctive contributions to the aural personality of this gamelan arise from the indefinite-pitched\u00a0roj\u00e9h<\/em> and sekar dlima,\u00a0<\/em>which\u00a0contribute rhythmically\u00a0to the underlying phrase structure of the piece. When the drummer slows down the initial driving tempo to half speed (at 1:41 on\u00a0Video 1<\/a>), the saron<\/em> section performs a melody, called Ayam Sepanang (“separated chicken”), over g<\/em>endhing<\/em> Kodhok Ngor\u00e8k.\u00a0This two-phrase melody is itself cyclical, each iteration spread out over four cycles\u00a0of the piece’s underlying phrase structure.<\/p>\n

Palace inventories dating from the middle of the 20th century and earlier mention\u00a0that there are four gong ageng<\/em>\u00a0belonging to\u00a0K.K. Ma\u00e9saganggang, two of them considered pusaka<\/em> (powerful heirlooms) and named, respectively, K.K. Ma\u00e9saganggang and K.K. Sima (“tiger”). It is very likely that the gong ageng <\/em>K.K. Ma\u00e9saganggang is now part of a pair of former palace gamelans (K.K. Mangunsih and K.K. Mangunkung) given by the Ninth Sultan to the University of Gajah Mada in 1949–one of the two gong ageng<\/em> in this paired gamelan is named Kyai Keboganggang (“kebo<\/em>” and “ma\u00e9sa<\/em>” both mean “buffalo”). This might explain why, when I saw the gamelan kodhok ngor\u00e8k\u00a0<\/em>K.K. Ma\u00e9saganggang\u00a0in 2007 and 2016, both of its\u00a0gong ageng<\/em>\u00a0had\u00a0the name “K.K. Sima” painted on them (images 1<\/a> and 2<\/a>).\u00a0Dutch musicologist Jaap Kunst conveyed a story about the pusaka<\/em>\u00a0gong ageng<\/em>\u00a0K.K. Sima (at his time in the 1930s there was just one such named gong) that reveals something about the Javanese belief in pusaka<\/em> objects. The story goes that, should the palace functionary entrusted with the care of the palace gamelans forget to make a periodic (every 35 days) offering of incense and flower petals to K.K. Sima, he would immediately have an encounter with a tiger.[3]<\/abbr> I’m not sure this ever happened, but such stories about pusaka<\/em> objects in the Kraton Yogyakarta are many.<\/p>\n

Given the distinctive visual and sonic character of this gamelan and the cultural associations it carries as discussed above, it should come as no surprise that K.K. Ma\u00e9saganggang is strategically inserted\u00a0into the cultural, and particularly the ceremonial, life of the Kraton Yogyakarta. Over the more than 250-year history of the kraton<\/em> the occasions for which this set\u00a0is employed have\u00a0varied, but in general it is sounded in\u00a0association with the sultan himself or for\u00a0certain members of his family, or for events sponsored by the palace and which by custom are credited to the sultan. The current list of appropriate occasions for the sounding of this set is: during the ceremony to enthrone\u00a0a new sultan; for the send-off of the gunungan<\/em> (“rice mountain” offerings, considered gifts from the sultan to his subjects) from the palace to the mosque (where they are received by the public) during the thrice-yearly\u00a0grebeg<\/i>\u00a0celebrations; when a daughter is born to the sultan by his primary wife (prameswari<\/em>); for the marriage ceremonies of children of the sultan by his prameswari;<\/em>\u00a0and as the body of a sultan leaves the palace for the royal cemetery at Imogiri.\u00a0<\/i>One long-ago context of incorporation of\u00a0K.K. Ma\u00e9saganggang that\u00a0was discontinued well before the turn of the 20th century was the tiger-buffalo contest\u00a0(ngaben sima kaliyan ma\u00e9sa<\/em>\u00a0or adu-adu macan<\/em>). These duels, staged in the Northern Square of the kraton<\/em>\u00a0(Alun-alun Lor) and open to the public, were symbolic, with the tiger representing Dutch\u00a0colonial authority and the buffalo Javanese righteousness in subjugation. Surprisingly, the buffalo was usually the\u00a0victorious combatant, much to the joy of the Javanese. I bring this up only because of the names of\u00a0the two pusaka<\/em>\u00a0gong ageng<\/em> of\u00a0K.K. Ma\u00e9saganggang at the time this gamelan\u00a0was used for this purpose–K.K. Ma\u00e9saganggang (“fighting buffalo”) and K.K.<\/em> Sima (“tiger”)–are also the names of the combatants in the symbolic duel. It is ironic that at the present time the gong ageng<\/em>\u00a0that bears the name of the gamelan as a whole has been banished from the set (now part of former palace gamelans at the University of Gajah Mada) while the two gongs currently in use in the pusaka<\/em> gamelan are named after\u00a0the\u00a0creature that once represented\u00a0the greatest adversary of the Javanese nobility.<\/p>\n

K.K. Ma\u00e9saganggang is painted a rich dark red (abrit sepuh<\/em>) with silver\/gold highlights (prior to 2016 the highlight color had, in my encounters with this set, always been gold; when I saw the set in 2016 the gold highlight had been covered over with silver paint). This set\u2019s carving motif<\/a>–a frog (kodhok<\/i>) framed by wings (mirong<\/i>)–makes reference not to the name of the gamelan itself, but to its type–kodhok ngor\u00e8k<\/i> translates as \u201ccroaking frogs.\u201d The current casings for this gamelan are quite\u00a0new, having been made in 2006-2007 to replace the earlier (though certainly not original) casings that were damaged during an earthquake that struck Yogyakarta on May 27, 2006. At the time, K.K.\u00a0Ma\u00e9saganggang was on display in the Trajumas pavilion, which partially collapsed. The rubble damaged many of the gamelan’s casings and destroyed one bonang<\/em> gong kettle, which has been replaced.\u00a0But, regardless of the\u00a0temporal, political, and geological challenges\u00a0that this set of instruments has experienced over the\u00a0centuries, members of the palace community still view K.K. Ma\u00e9saganggang as an inheritance from medieval Javanese kings. It represents a valued continuity with the past and is therefore\u00a0afforded the greatest respect–even though the paint from its most recent repairs has barely dried.<\/p>\n

Inventory:
\n<\/strong>gong ageng<\/em><\/a> (2)
\npenonthong<\/em><\/a> (2)
\nkenong japan<\/em><\/a> (1)
\nroj\u00e9h<\/em><\/a> (1)
\nsekar dlima \/ klinthing rebyong<\/em><\/a> (1)
\nbonang<\/em> kodhok ngor<\/em>\u00e8<\/em>k<\/em> (4; 1 setren<\/em><\/a>, 2 jaler<\/em><\/a>; 1 kl\u00e9nang\/eneng-eneng<\/em><\/a>)
\nsaron demung<\/em><\/a> (1)
\nsaron ricik\/barung<\/em><\/a> (2)
\nkendhang paneteg ageng<\/em><\/a> (1)
\nkendhang paneteg alit<\/em><\/a> (1)<\/p>\n

Audio and Video Clips:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Video 1<\/a> [Gamelan kodhok ngor\u00e8k <\/em>K.K. Ma\u00e9saganggang being performed at Sitihinggil as part of Grebeg Mulud on March 31, 2007]<\/p>\n

\"maesaganggang\"<\/a>
The archaic gamelan kodhok ngor\u00e8k<\/em> of the Kraton Yogyakarta, K.K. Ma\u00e9saganggang.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Acquired: during the Reign of Sultan Hamengku Buwana I Type of Gamelan: archaic–kodhok ngor\u00e8k Tuning:\u00a0three tone, and\u00a0sl\u00e9ndro In the W\u00e9dha Pradangga, a\u00a0compilation of orally-transmitted stories about the history of the gamelan and its repertoire,\u00a0Warsadiningrat credits\u00a0Prabu Surya Wis\u00e9sa with creating the first\u00a0gamelan kodhok ngor\u00e8k in 1223 CE.\u00a0Kraton Yogyakarta manuscripts and publications place the origins of the … Continue reading “K.K. Ma\u00e9saganggang”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":24,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-29","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vetter.sites.grinnell.edu\/gamelan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/29","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vetter.sites.grinnell.edu\/gamelan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vetter.sites.grinnell.edu\/gamelan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vetter.sites.grinnell.edu\/gamelan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vetter.sites.grinnell.edu\/gamelan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29"}],"version-history":[{"count":67,"href":"https:\/\/vetter.sites.grinnell.edu\/gamelan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/29\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2265,"href":"https:\/\/vetter.sites.grinnell.edu\/gamelan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/29\/revisions\/2265"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vetter.sites.grinnell.edu\/gamelan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/24"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vetter.sites.grinnell.edu\/gamelan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}