Woodside Gamelan

You may have noticed some strange-looking instruments stored in our studio this year. These are part of a set of Slendro Gamelan, very old but recently acquired. Children at Woodside have already played Javanese Gamelan on a number of occasions; accompanying traditional Indonesian shadow puppetry in performances to parents in school, complete with Indonesian food and at the Junior Music Festival and Thurrock International Cultural Celebration. These were Pelog Gamelan which is played on 6 notes. The Gamelan set we have now are Slendro Gamelan and uses a pentatonic scale of only 5 notes. The music is therefore completely different but equally enchanting. However, the most important thing about these particular instruments is that we have them on extended loan rather than just a few week and we should be able to give all our children the chance to play them.