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technical notes equivalents of Pak and Bapak are Bu and Ibu (Mother, Mrs.) in both Indonesian and Javanese. Javanese also has a more intimate, less respectful term, Mbok. Current convention in much academic writing in Indonesian is to drop these honorifics, and to use a relatively full version of the person’s name. This is the policy I have adopted, even though it feels disrespectful. I hope I have not offended anyone as a result. Additional terms of address that may come up in quotations are Mbak and Mas. Mbak—literally, “older sister”—in addition to being employed in addressing or referring to actual older sisters, is used sometimes for young girls and often for young women as well as for adult women one is expressing a longstanding or informal relationship with—exact usage depends mostly on the age of the person in question and sometimes that of her siblings (is she an older sister to them?), the age of the speaker and its relation to that of the person in question, the respective social classes of those involved, how close these same people feel to each other, and the formality of the situation. Mas, literally “older brother,” is the male equivalent of Mbak. My principal teachers’ names are given below, along with the dates of the first and last documented conversation with them during my original period of research. For those with two names, I have underlined the one used in the citations. I have also provided shortened forms in parentheses, the way they might appear in conversations.
Sudarsono (Dar) Suhartå (Hartå, Harto) Sukanto Sastrodarsono (Kanto) Mloyowidodo (Mloyo, Mlåyå) Rahayu Supanggah (Panggah) Sastro Tugiyo (Sastro) Sutarman (Tarman) Sudarsono Wignyosaputro (Wig)
( January 24, 1990, to June 18, 1992) (November 17, 1989, to June 27, 1992) (November 4, 1989, to June 24, 1992) (March 11, 1992, to May 2, 1992) (April 24, 1990, to November 6, 1993) (April 29, 1992, to May 6, 1992) (August 21, 1991, to June 24, 1992) ( June 19, 1992, to June 24, 1992)
musical notation Musical notation has been in use in Java for just over a hundred years. Before that time the repertoire was transmitted orally. The transition to a written tradition has been slow and far from complete: even now, gamelan music still has a strong oral emphasis. Largely as a result of Dutch influence, various forms of writing musical notations were tried out in Java in the latter nineteenth century ( J. Becker 1980, Sumarsam 1995). The one that was finally adopted by Solonese musicians is known as Kepatihan or cipher (or number) notation, and this is what I shall be using throughout this book.