complete glossary
T
his glossary is intended to include all of the non-English terms used throughout the text. It is to be used as a complement to the quick-reference short glossary of commonly used terms printed at the front of the book, which is of necessity abbreviated, both with respect to the number of entries and the definitions themselves. The glosses presented here should provide a fuller feel for the range of meanings a term may have (although I have attempted to keep these brief as well). Unless otherwise noted, all terms, to my knowledge, belong equally to ngoko, kråmå, and the Javanese dialect of Indonesian used in central Java (which includes many words of Javanese origin that may not be understood—or may have other meanings—in other parts of Indonesia). The asterisks indicate rasa terms that appear in the book (including peripheral ones listed in chapter 3). They include terms for rasa gendhing as well as those descriptive of performances and performers. A good number of them would probably be rejected by some musicians as being something other than a rasa in the strictest sense.1 Some terms, for example, might be considered more of a sifat (attribute, character), a watak (character, personality), or a swasånå (mood, atmosphere). But not all musicians distinguish carefully between these and rasa: at the very least they are all closely related. Other terms included here might not readily be applied to music (e.g., mancing, menyanjung), but were given to me only by way of explaining a term that is used for music.2 The vast majority, however, would be included in a list of moods, characters, or aesthetic effects of a piece or performance. While this list is generously inclusive with respect to prototypicality, at the same time it leaves out many terms that are clear exemplars of rasa gendhing—I have included only those words specifically mentioned in the book. My translations in this glossary emphasize the senses in which the words are used when applied to music, and some of these differ from ordinary usage. References to photos are for the glossy insert section.
1. Supanggah in particular is quite careful on this point. My sense is that what he includes as a rasa is more specifically what in Indonesian is called perasaan hati, or emotion. But, as demonstrated in chapter 2, both rasa and råså mean a lot more than just emotion. 2. I would not normally place these on a list of rasa gendhing, but a criterion for inclusion here was whether a term was linked in conversation to one of my six basic terms.
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