having
RASA ,
part i
she had a point: Javanese people learning gamelan for the first time do seem to have an intuitive sense of where the time-marking instruments enter, whereas foreigners have to intellectualize this fundamental organizing principle. But this woman was a rank beginner in an all-women’s group;49 it was highly unlikely that she had come anywhere close to being able to play with rasa in the sense Martopangrawit meant it (less close, one would think, than the better American gamelan musicians, who, like many British and Japanese players and singers, can function passably in a relatively advanced group, even on the hardest parts). I once asked Sudarsono (of Kentingan) if there were any such gamelan musicians who had rasa. He named three. To state the case in either/or terms, then, is somewhat misleading—there are too many borderline examples. On the other hand, one cannot simply chalk up claims about the inherent Javaneseness of rasa simply to xenophobia. No matter what culture one grows up in, perceptual habits linked to musical affect and meaning are learned starting in infancy, and affective knowledge of music accrues through layers and layers of culturally shaped memories.50 The question is whether, as an adult, one can accumulate enough of these memories and enough intuitive competency (wide repertoire and vocabulary of patterns, sense of syntax, sensitivity to musical and social context, adaptability and inventiveness, ability to hear and react to others), while at the same time getting rid of one’s “foreign accent” (faulty intonation and pronunciation, lack of “patience” and subtle use of rubato, inappropriate timbre, unidiomatic ornamentation), to be considered, at least partially, an insider.51 Anything less, it seems, would disqualify a foreigner as a rasaful musician. In discussing antonyms for rasa at the beginning of the chapter, I mentioned that terms dealing with surfaces and exteriority form a cluster. The flip side of that is a series of terms having to do with interiority, all of which are synonymous with or intimately linked to rasa. We have seen how the subtle, “deep” emotions are associated with inner mental states, as well as with Kraton insidership (at one time, at least). The Indonesian word dalam brings together nicely these three elements, though they are lexically distinguished in Javanese by the three words njero [Ng] (deep, inside), batin [Ng] (the inner self, the seat of emotions), and dalem [ J,KI] (the inner rooms of a house or palace, an aristocratic residence). Rasa dalam [I], used by several of my teachers, is very close to the English “deep feeling.” Jiwa [I] (soul) and isi [I,J] (contents), both close synonyms for rasa gendhing (discussed in chapter 2), also play on the idea of interiority. Indeed, isi not only can signify 49. See chapter 1 for a description of women’s groups. 50. See A. L. Becker 1995 for examples of how memory, which he calls “prior text,” shapes language and patterns of thought. 51. See Brinner 1995 for a full treatment of competence as it relates to Javanese gamelan music. For an interesting problematizing of the dichotomy between insider and outsider, see Herndon 1993.
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