having table 4.1.
RASA ,
part i
Gender associations (after S. Weiss 1993).
male
female
control as power
freedom as power
order alus (refined) rule-bound spiritual analytical
disorder kasar (crude) emotional earthy intuitive
garap Kraton (royal palace) use of notation
rasa désa (village) aural stimulus only
anymore, but they can do it if they’re shown notation. So it’s a useful tool. (June 10, 1992) Bu [X] is prone to forget [pieces]; and she’s not very sharp [pinter]—she learned to read and write late. [ . . . ] She often used to get the number of syllables wrong—she couldn’t read, so she was a bit left behind by the others. Bu Tambang was like Bu Béi:19 she was really good at gendhing notation. Bu [Y] is pretty good, but she’s not as skillful [pandai] as Bu Tambang. (Suhartå, May 7, 1992)
One way of approaching this morass of interrelated, conflicting statements, is through Sarah Weiss’s broad-ranging analysis of the social meanings of female gendèr players. While her overall argument is more complex, the crux of it rests on a dichotomy between male and female behaviors as they relate to Javanese ideas of power and refinement. This dichotomy is summarized in table 4.1. The top six items in each list apply to behavior or general gender associations, whereas the bottom eight items apply to musical associations (which means that the middle five apply to both). Weiss’s analysis is a useful departure point, since it weaves together all of the parameters being touched on here. Weiss herself has substantially refined this dichotomy (1998, chapters 4 and 5; 2006, chapter 4), acknowledging its limitations. I would like to offer my own emendations here, which, like those of Weiss, owe much to the work of Brenner (1995). To begin with, as we have seen in chapter 3, women are not necessarily more kasar (crude, coarse) than men. Not only does the most kasar behavior come from men, but women have their own brand of alusness (refinement): “A man . . . might be halus, but he’ll never be as halus as a prima-donnaish woman (except if he’s an effeminate man)” (Suhartå, June 10, 1991). Indeed, alus [ J] (halus [I]) can mean “delicate,” “intricate,” “graceful,” “feminine,” as well as
19. Tambangraras and Mardusari, both former singers at the Mangkunegaran palace.
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