In the latest edition of Humanitas, a column focused on the arts and humanities at Yale, the university art gallery hosts Indonesian music ensembles, a celebrated photographer meets the subject of a photo from the 1970s, an architecture exhibition looks behind the facades of modernist masterpieces, and Yale faculty reap awards in anthropology, criminology, and English.
For more, please visit an archive of all arts and humanities coverage at Yale News.
A musical backdrop for Indonesian art
Yale's two gamelan ensembles will bring their gongs, drums, and metallophones to the Yale University Art Gallery on Thursday, Nov. 20 for a free concert meant to complement the gallery's current exhibition of six centuries of Indonesian textiles.
The traditional Indonesian music ensembles consist primarily of bronze percussion instruments - the word gamel means to hammer something - but also include stringed instruments, flutes, drums, and vocalists. The musicians play while seated on the ground, their instruments before them. The music is the traditional accompaniment to dances, feasts, and ceremonies in Indonesia, as well as to wayang shows, a Javanese shadow play tradition.
Yale's Council on Southeast Asian Studies purchased a collection of gamelan instruments in 2006, said Phil Acimovic, a lecturer in the Department of Music in Yale's Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) and director of the ensembles. Acimovic teaches two gamelan courses per semester, which include sections of the performing ensemble.
