Local Bali

Gamelan Sekar Jaya’s lightning flash orchestra

by Paul Romo

When the Bay Area music and dance ensemble Gamelan Sekar Jaya arrived to perform in Bali for the first time in 1985, they shocked the locals, including the governor.

“[The Balinese] were amazed foreigners could play their music, that we took the time to learn it so well and were able to perform the dances,” said longtime director Wayne Vitale.

Since then, Gamelan Sekar Jaya or “Flowering Success Orchestra” has returned to Bali four times to perform at the Balinese Arts Festival as honored guests of the governor. This month-long summer celebration of “dance, music and beauty” is attended by “the whole of Bali,” according to the festival’s official Web site.

The 50-member, El Cerrito based ensemble is comprised of dancers accompanied by musicians, who play traditional

Balinese orchestra music known as Gamelan gong kebyar, which roughly translates as “lightning flash orchestra.”

The jangly, syncopated rhythm of gong kebyar is produced by pitched percussion instruments such as knobbed gongs and metallophones (similar to a xylophone), as well as various types of drums and chimes.

The music is largely based on repeating time cycles, often whizzing by at tremendous speed. Imagine four musicians playing in perfect unison, their individual instruments interlocking at a tempo of 400 beats per minute.

“Centuries old, the music as well as the dances manage to endure,” Vitale said, “because of its sophistication, the philosophical underpinnings and the reliance on teamwork, cooperation and sharing. Given the amount of people interacting on stage, participation must be a communal effort.” photos by Anthony Castellano

Opposite page (clockwise from top right): Made Moja and Kompiang Metri-Davies perform a Balinese dance; detail of hammers; musicians perform at the Noe Valley Ministry; Mark Salvatore and Agus Cahyadi play pemades.

This page: Laura Deering, Alice Terry, Maria Omo and Anna Deering throw flower petals during a dance; right, composer and guest musical director, I Nyoman Windha plays a kendang.

Mission San Francisco de Assis, popularly known as Mission Dolores, is San Francisco’s oldest structure.

It was founded in 1776 by Lieutenant Jose Joaquin Moraga in the name of King Carlos III of Spain.

Fray Francisco Palou celebrated the mission’s first mass on June 29, 1776.