"Elegant and provocative at turns, Benamou's account of emotion and value in Javanese music makes an immediate and much-needed contribution to a genuinely global musicology."---Jonathan P.J. Stock, Professor of Ethnomusicology, University of Sheffield
"Marc Benamou not only successfully describes the elusive concept of rasa, but also analyzes it in a way that is easy to understand. Anyone who wants to know more about the essence of Javanese karawitan must read this book."---Rahayu Supanggah
"This is a welcome contribution on a number of fronts. It is not only a fascinating compendium of insights for all those interested in Javanese music, but also an exemplary challenge to ethnomusicologists to bring musical sound and meaning into closer scrutiny by re-centering our attention on musical aesthetics."---R. Anderson Sutton, Professor of Ethnomusicology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
The complex notion of rasa as understood by Javanese musicians refers to a combination of various qualities, including taste, feeling, affect, mood, sense, inner meaning, the faculty of knowing intuitively, and deep understanding. This leads to a number of questions: Who or what has rasa, and what sorts of musical, psychological, perceptual, and sociological distinctions enter into this determination? How is rasa expressed musically? How is the vocabulary of rasa structured, and what does this tell us about traditional Javanese music and aesthetics?
In this first book-length study of the concept, Rasa provides as entry into Javanese music as it is conceived by the people who know the tradition best: the musicians themselves. In one of the most thorough explorations of local aesthetics to date, author Marc Benamou argues that musical meaning is above all connotative and therefore not only learned but also learnable. Following several years performing and researching Javanese music in the regional cultural center of Solo, Indonesia, Benamou untangles the many meanings of rasa as an aesthetic criterion in central Javanese music practice, particularly in gamelan traditions. While acknowledging that certain universal psychological tendencies may inform musical experience, Rasa demonstrates just how culturally specific musical meanings can be.
The complex notion of "rasa," as understood by Javanese musicians, refers to a combination of various qualities, including: taste, feeling, affect, mood, sense, inner meaning, a faculty of knowing intuitively, and deep understanding. This leaves us with a number of questions: how is rasa expressed musically? Who or what has rasa, and what sorts of musical, psychological, perceptual, and sociological distinctions enter into this determination? How is the vocabulary of rasa structured, and what does this tell us about traditional Javanese music and aesthetics?
In this first book on the subject, Rasa provides an entry into Javanese music as it is conceived by the people who know the tradition best: the musicians themselves. In one of the most thorough explorations of local aesthetics to date, author Marc Benamou argues that musical meaning is above all connotative - hence, not only learned, but learnable. Following several years performing and researching Javanese music in the regional and national cultural center of Solo, Indonesia, Benamou untangles the many meanings of rasa as an aesthetic criterion in Javanese music, particularly in court and court-derived gamelan traditions. While acknowledging that certain universal psychological tendencies may inspire parallel interpretations of musical meaning, Rasa demonstrates just how culturally specific such accrued, shared meanings can be.
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