Interactive approaches

Other writers have focused on interaction in performance, particularly Gourlay (1993) and Brinner (1995). Gourlay’s approach is to analyse all the

unpredictable aspects of a performance (in this case a Karimojong beer party) at both a macro- and micro-level. This includes unpredictability at the level of whether or not and when the performance takes place at all, who gives it, which songs will be sung and when - the whole order and sequence of events, down to the level of choices between notes. Gourlay’s approach and findings seem to coincide with my instinctive feeling that in gender wayang pre-composition, pre­ planned variation and improvisation can be seen as interrelated phenomena, or even different ways of looking at the same thing.

Benjamin Brinner’s (1995) book examines interaction in Javanese

gamelan and how it affects group improvisation. He relates musical competence and interaction in Central Javanese gamelan music to the realisation of varied or improvised parts played on soft instruments in the ensemble, such as rebab (spike fiddle), gender, and gambang (xylophone). He explores how such improvisatory skills are acquired and realised and analyses the impact of external forces, particularly interpersonal conduct, on the choices made in producing the eventual sound: “the sound product is a ‘trace’ of that give and take” (ibid.:4). His study is particularly important to this discussion in that it relates how knowledge is acquired (competence) and how music is produced (interaction) to the act of creating sound itself (composition, variation and improvisation).

Brinner takes a wide view of such interaction, which includes those who might not be physically present, such as great performers or teachers who have influenced the musicians and audience (ibid.:4). He also includes extra-musical knowledge in this interaction and acquiring of competence, such as mystical or ritual knowledge, gauging listeners’ tastes and negotiating with patrons. He highlights issues such as keys to learning: items which are regarded as prototypes to the acquisition of other items (ibid.: 156).

Brinner puts forward four overlapping concepts for the analysis of interaction: interactive network (the roles assumed by performers and links or relationships); interactive system (the means and meanings of communication); interactive sound structure (constraints and possibilities inherent in the ways sounds are put together); and interactive motivation (“goals, rewards, pitfalls, and sanctions”) (ibid.: 169).

Within an interactive network, questions of leadership come to the fore: whether such responsibilities are constant or shifting, assigned or attained, the explicitness and recognition of leadership, the status of leaders, the relative spontaneity or rehearsed nature of leadership, the timeframe involved, the domains controlled and the degree of control or influence over blend, balance, rhythmic co-ordination or tempo change (ibid.:172). Personality plays an important role: some are leaders who inspire, others may have roles as followers or accompanists (ibid.: 174). Linked relationships are often built into the music, as with Balinese interlocking figuration (ibid: 177-8). Relationships

may be more complex than they seem in an interactive network: even leaders, such as soloists, may depend on the followers' driving role. Some musicians even talk of a kind of telepathy at work (ibid.:179). Besides leaders, other instruments may act as mediators, actualising cues, or reinforcers (ibid.:188). Brinner further distinguishes prompts, that correct mistakes, signals, which show a path and prevent mistakes, and markers, that orient players (ibid.:190).

Competitive Interaction is common in a number of traditions: Brinner cites interaction between North Indian musicians. In gender wayang too, group

dynamics often lead to an audible effect: I noticed that the tensions between Loceng and Sarga often seemed to make them play faster, louder and more aggressively. Among the flash points of interaction are mistakes, how to cope with them or cover them up, uncertainty, support, breakdowns, challenges to

authority in or outside the ensemble, and clashes between individual and group goals (ibid.:205).

Brinner discusses interaction in pathetan, used after many gendhing, before songs or as a mood-enhancer and structural marker in Javanese wayang and dance (ibid.:245). Although there is no Balinese equivalent, the style of gender playing in pathetan seems similar in its relative metric freedom to the slow style of gender wayang in pieces that accompany the dalang’s songs. Brinner’s interest in pathetan focused on the role of interaction between players in how this rather loosely constructed, metrically free style was

conceived and co-ordinated (ibid.:167). A similarly mystifying process of interaction seems to hold together performances of some slow-style Balinese gender wayang pieces that accompany a dalang.

In Javanese wayang performance, the interactive network is centred on the dhalang, who has a special relationship with certain members of the

gamelan. He chooses pieces and controls the performance, but through leading musicians (ibid.:269). The gender is the key instrument in Javanese wayang, accompanying the dhalang’s sulukan (similar to Balinese sesendon), playing the introductions to pieces and providing a nearly continuous improvisation

(grimingan). The player usually sits near the puppeteer and is often a female relative (ibid.:269). The drummer transmits the dhalang’s cues to the gamelan through drum strokes (ibid.:270). Brinner also discusses the occasional leading or prominent roles of rebab, gong and demung (large metallophone), as well as the singers. Thus, the leading instruments mediate between the dhalang and the rest of the gamelan.

Such interactive analysis of group musicianship is an approach that might usefully be applied to gender wayang. Following Slobin (1993) one can see how Balinese gender groups engage in "banding and bonding” (1993:98- 108) the former stressing the everyday aspects of performance and the latter the aesthetic, transcendent aspects of playing together. Thus an ensemble such as gender wayang can be seen as "a microcosm of expressive culture”, though Slobin warns us that expressive forms may run contrary to as well as be a mirror of the society at large (ibid.: 106-7). Brinner, too, warns against a simplistic interpretation of correlations between musical and social structures: “That both Balinese and Javanese musicians can invoke the concept of

communal cooperation and harmony (rukun, gotong royong) as an interactive model for music shows how careful one must be in connecting musical ideals with social ones” (1995:202). We need a fine-grained description to understand how these concepts may be applied to music in both Java and Baii despite the differences in the actual interaction (ibid.:202-3).