Jamming: How Traffic and Javanese Gamelan Improvisation Music Works

Abstract

In over forty years of studying to fathom the music of classical Central Javanese music - by applying my Western training- I have found that the precision in the West which is associated with scientifically measurable exactitude is not something which is aesthetically - or perhaps even possibly- desirable in Javanese music or culture. While a Western approach is to look for operational principles and the consistent application or repeatable evidence of some underlying principles, Javanese gamelan does not seem to have this type of consistency or systematic regularity