Concert Video
Recorded on Sunday, January 19, 2025 as part of the Concerts on the Corner Music Series at First Congregational Church of San Jose.
Pusaka Sunda is directed by internationally-acclaimed musician, recording artist and composer Burhan Sukarma. For over 35 years, the 10-member group has been performing and recording traditional and new music for gamelan degung, the iconic Sundanese gamelan of West Java, Indonesia. The concert features selections from Pusaka Sunda’s most recent album recorded this past summer in Bandung, Indonesia, traditional dance by Cia Garcia, and vocal selections song by guest vocalist Rina Oesman.
The Program
1. Wabango – Bungur
Wabango is a piece in the classical degung style. It starts with a traditional degung pankat, or introduction, and features simple drumming with a heterophonic melodic line punctuated by larger gongs. It is typical in modern performance practice to transition from a classical piece into a panambih (“extra piece”) in which the bronze instruments play simple, stereotyped parts while the suling and saron players improvise. Wabango was recorded on Pusaka Sunda’s 2024 album, Degung Klasik, vol. 1.
2. Dareuda – Ibu Saodah (1960s)
The vocal piece Dareuda features award-winning vocalist Rina Oesman, who is fortunately visiting from West Java, Indonesia. Danni Redding Lapuz joins Rina on vocals. Dareuda was composed in the 1960s by the esteemed vocalist and composer Ibu Saodah. The melody of her song is characterized by perfectly placed tones outside of the pelog tuning of the gamelan instruments.
Instrument Demonstration
Henry Spiller, renowned ethnomusicologist and original member of Pusaka Sunda, will lead an introduction
of the gamelan instruments.
3. Ningnang – Burhan Sukarma (2018)
Burhan Sukarma’s composition, Ningnang, pits two clashing rhythmic treatments against each other. The first section introduces a dynamic melody set in a triple meter. In the second section, several of the metallophones insist on continuing their triplet figurations while the other resources (drum, bonang, and sarons) resolutely switch to the duple rhythmic patterns that characterize most gamelan music. These dueling rhythms abruptly give way, in the third section, to a very slow, indubitably duple accompaniment to a beautiful suling melody, only to return to the vigorous triple-meter first section. This song is the title piece on Pusaka Sunda’s 2021 album, Ningnang.
4. Gelenyu – Burhan Sukarma (2007)
Gelenyu (“Smile”) is one of Burhan Sukarma’s compositions specifically written for Pusaka Sunda. Like the previous piece it is cast in the sorog tuning system, which requires most of the musicians to exchange several of their instruments’ keys or pots. The piece’s syncopated gamelan melodies, intense rhythmic density, and meandering flute parts combine with the sorog tuning’s yearning a_ect to suggest the warm thrill of catching sight of a furtive smile.
5. Ayun Ambing
Ayun Ambing is a traditional Sundanese lullaby well-known throughout West Java. The basic tune suggests a rocking motion–perfect for lulling a baby to sleep. In this arrangement the tune opens with a peppy, condensed version, followed by a slow, introspective expansion of the basic melody, featuring the vocalists Rina Oesman and Danni Redding Lapuz.
6. Tari Topeng Ratu Kencana Wungu – Dancer Cia Garcia
In Sundanese topeng masked dance, the dancer establishes the character first through movement alone, without wearing the mask. When she finally dons the mask, its color and facial characteristics complete the character depiction. Kencana Wungu is a powerful queen from the old Javanese “Damarwulan” stories. Her delicate walking posture and gestures of putting on makeup establish her beauty, while her more aggressive actions display her power. The dancer’s movements are mimicked in sound by the drummer, who provides a specific drum pattern for each gesture and serves as an intermediary between the dancer and the gamelan musicians. The accompanying musical piece is “Gonjing Miring.”
7. Sorban Palid
This perennial favorite has surfaced in many different treatments over the decades—as a gamelan instrumental, as a pop hit, and (as performed tonight) as a light, upbeat vocal number. Its peppy quality belies the sense of the lyrics, in which the image of a haji (one who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca, and thus is entitled to wear a white turban) watching his beloved headcloth float away serves as an admonition against excessive pride.
Vocalists: Rina Oesman and Danni Redding Lapuz
8. Lengser Midang
A favorite character in any Pajajaran story is the Lengser, an envoy of the king who is both wise and comical, and who successfully translates the inscrutable motives and actions of royalty into terms that common people can understand. Lengser characters played important roles in Sundanese stories that provided the plots for grand music-dramas called gending karesmen that were produced in Bandung in the 1960s. To evoke the appropriate Sundanese atmosphere, gamelan degung was a key component of gending karesmen accompaniments. One particularly notable feature of Lengser Midang is its many contrasting sections, some of which are adaptations of previously existing degung pieces, each of which evokes particular moods and association.
The Musicians
Featured artists: Burhan Sukarma, Rina Oesman, Cia Garcia
Pusaka Sunda is a 12-member West Javanese performing arts group, led by Burhan Sukarma and based in the San Francisco Bay Area with strong collaborative connections to Bandung, Indonesia. Members of the group are all accomplished musicians who have spent most of their lives learning and performing gamelan music. Founded in 1988 by Burhan and Rae Ann Stahl, Pusaka Sunda provides a voice for Burhan’s own compositions as well as a means for promulgating the traditional music of West Java. The group has performed all over the United States, toured West Java and produced multiple recordings of traditional and original music to great acclaim.
Performers: Ananda Bouchard, Andy Bouchard, Cia Garcia, Ed Garcia, Danni Redding Lapuz, Ray Lapuz, Gretchen McPherson, Rina Oesman, Olivia Sears, Henry Spiller, Rae Ann Stahl, Burhan Sukarma, Brandon Yu
Director Burhan Sukarma has a 50-year career as a prolific recording artist, composer and performer. He is known internationally for his improvisational virtuosity on the suling bamboo flute. Burhan’s style of suling playing has influenced all succeeding generations of players in West Java, Indonesia. Burhan has performed, recorded, and taught throughout the world and directed the group Pusaka Sunda for the past 37 years. With remarkable success, Burhan continues to be involved in expanding the repertory of the Gamelan Degung and Tembang Sunda genres of music.
Guest Artist Rina Oesman is an award-winning vocalist from Bandung, West Java. She has performed throughout the United States, Southeast Asia, and England. She is a sought-after judge at many of the Tembang Sunda vocal competitions in West Java. From 1989-2011, she studied singing and gamelan degung with the famous Euis Komariah of Jugala.
Cia Garcia, born in Jakarta and raised in Bandung, West Java, is a skilled dancer trained in Sundanese traditional female dances, masked dances, and jaipongan through renowned programs like Pusbitari and Jugala. She has performed across Indonesia and the USA, collaborating with groups such as Pusaka Sunda, Harnasari, and Mayang Sunda, and choreographing for UC Santa Cruz Theater Department and Gamelan X.
The gamelan ensemble known as degung (or gamelan degung) consists of hanging bronze gongs, gong chimes, metallophones, drums, and suling (bamboo flute) tuned to a pentatonic scale. Degung developed in the aristocratic regencies of colonial West Java to provide refined, courtly listening music. Since the 1920s, degung has evolved into a more egalitarian, but distinctly Sundanese, genre. Two different tuning systems will be used in tonight’s program. The first, called pelog degung is the traditional tuning system for this ensemble, in which much of its repertory is cast. In western terms, pelog degung’s pitches are approximately G-F#-D-CB. The second tuning system, called sorog, has long been popular for vocal music. The change is accomplished by exchanging one key or gong in each octave of each bronze instrument; the resulting scale is, in western terms, approximately C-B-G-F#-E.