Page 110 - RWY LARASSUMBOGO KARYA DAN PENGABDIANNYA

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four quarter measure of this steps, a feat, that seems simple,
but in fact is one of the secrets of good musicianship. However
he hate teaching except for such fundamentals of the Javanese
orchestrarythm, which should be called the "adu rasa" or coor­
dination of antagonistic musical element. Another remarkable
man had been, before the war, the Yogyanese musicexpert,
R. M. Jayadipura, a friend of Sukarno at the time. It was he
wo created the first tourist performances of dance and music
in the Grand Hotel of Yogyakarta. The Yogyanesee music
expert Lee Jeng Kim had introducted the large konongsections
and the many kempul in the gamelan to make the orchesira
more versatile. Jayadipura had taken up this idea during the
construction of the gamelan of the Ngabean, famous for the
broadcasts of the Radio Republic of Indonesia after 1945,
Jayadipura had been not only and instrument builder and musi­
cian but also a mask-and wayangpuppetcarvet and he could act
sweetly arrogant at that.
Came 1945. The musicians duing the revolutin would
shool at night and play the gamelan in the daytime, or the other
way around. Theirs was by historical tradition a soldiery life.
None of that is left now. Nowadays the twenty five musicians
sitting crosslengged behind their different big gongs and samll
bambboo flutes, widely spaced on the floor af a pendopo, fac.e
a shadowscreen, on thich a dalang performans, palying with
a twenty five pupperts out of a collection of several hundreds,
standing to the left and the right of the screen. It is sight to
behold and to experience; to fully appreciate. It is the expres­
sion of a community, aristically, a country of artists, moving
the shadows over the screen. A world of vigorous understate­
ment; of blood, passion and fire in black shadows on a white
screen. an art for those, who understand the out line of the
word. It is a world in which the musicians sit for ten hours
unceasingly thorughout the night and it has been called a marti­
al excercise in hte framework of the arts.