by Andy Toth

Visitors to Bali for the first time will have read in their guidebooks or heard from experienced Baliphiles that the beach communities of Kuta and Sanur are for surfing, swimming, shopping, and partying. Ubud, on the other hand, is for culture and the arts, meditation and contemplation, and strolls through beautiful countryside. Arriving in Ubud, they find an astounding number of shops and galleries that sell carved wood items, from simple bricabrac souvenirs to refined statues, and paintings ranging from traditional Kamasan-style to contemporary abstract works.

Music in Ubud spans the spectrum as well. Western music runs from casual reggae to sophisticated jazz, and classical piano and violin. So too for Ubud's own homegrown gamelan traditions. Genggong jews harp groups, two tingklik bamboo xylophones playing joged tunes as lounge music, all the way up to a large gong kebyar orchestra accompanying dance and drama. There are performances to serve in traditional Balinese Hindu venues: temple festivals, and rites of passage like toothfiling ceremonies. Performances in new genres, such as wayang listrik. For visitors, on any day of the week there is at least one regularly scheduled performance of some type at some venue, and usually there are two or even three different ones from which to choose. Bali-related listservers on the Internet announce and describe ceremonies and performances in the area, as well as upcoming performances abroad by Ubud teachers with foreign student groups. There is a plethora of activity, and diversity, in the music traditions of Ubud.

How did such variety and intensity develop here? There are two themes, internal and external: palace and communities in a matrix of social and religious obligations, and interaction with outsiders.

Ubud is a royal seat in which the puri serve as a unifying focal point. Many performances are held at the palace and sponsored by it outside. The Tjokorde of the main puri in Ubud, the Puri Saren, was the Ubud district commissioner (punggawa) in 1921 when he graciously hosted a young Dutch couple from Batavia (Jakarta) for several weeks during their honeymoon in Bali, a destination popular to this day for such a romantic occasion. Jaap Kunst, musicologist with the Dutch Colonial Service, and his musician bride were presented a wide range of music from within the puri - the large gamelan gong orchestra playing stately, slow lelambatan pieces; the sweet semar pegulingan ensemble, playing "siesta" music and accompanying the legong dance; the gender wayang quartet, accompanying wayang kulit and wayang wong.

But the Ubud district is comprised of many villages, which are themselves made up of many banjar, which each have their own music ensembles for temple and family ceremonies, as well as for entertainment and education. The Ubud Tjokorde therefore called in gamelan groups from throughout the community: the angklung orchestra, which accompanies funerals; the bleganjur marching gamelan, which joins processions; and a bamboo-key joged ensemble, designed for the joged dance, a social flirtational chase-the-girl dance.