Abstract
Gender Wayang is one of the oldest musical ensembles in Bali. It is played at the several kinds of ceremonies and accompanies the wayang kulit, a traditional Balinese shadow puppet theater. It can be heard throughout Bali, and each village and each group has its own style. Sukawati is very famous as a village of wayang kulit, having many dalangs, puppeteers of wayang kulit, and having a brilliant and distinguished style of gender wayang. This study intends to find out what motivates the musical changes in style of Sukawati village, and is based .mainly upon information from my interviews of musicians during my fieldwork in 1996 and 1997.
It seems that gender wayang style in Sukawati before the 1950s was not so different from that in neighboring villages. During 1950s and 1960s, some Sukawati gender musicians and dalang transformed and recreated old pieces of gender wayang to be more modern, more complicated in style, and these changes are the basis of their present. That transformation aimed to create a style distinct from all other villages.
Gamelan gong kebyar was a modern musical form developed in north Bali which spread throughout Bali in the 1920s. Sukawati's new style has reflected its influence in these ways: (1) sharpness of sound, (2) sense of running speed, fast in tempo, (3) dramatical expression, (4) virtuoso techniques. It is remarkable that Sukawati musicians regard the fast tempo as modern expression.
The new style of music combined with the new style of wayang performance and made wayang Sukawati very popular. Many other musicians had tried to follow, learn and imitate the new style directly or indirectly. Sukawati has become a center for gender wayang from which new ideas and techniques spread. But Sukawati musicians have not been satisfied with it. They continue to try to reform their style so as to be more complicated and too difficult to imitate or play for other musicians so as to keep their difference and superiority in musical style. Sukawati musicians always have made efforts to find new ideas and devices and to push the technical limits of their skills.
Sukawati style has changed and also is still changing. It changes not only through the motivation to create better, more modern musical expression, but also through their strategies with which they maintain their highposition as the top performers of gender wayang. These two purposes are fuse into one in the Sukawati musicians. It is their pride in their own music and techniques and their competitive spirit that grow and lead the fertility and prominence of their gender wayang style.
