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Alpha Savitri spoke to I Nyoman Rembang, one of Bali's most accomplished traditional musicians and most esteemed teachers, at his home in Denpasar.

I Nyoman Rembang is a traditional maestro, who does not know his age. He guesses he's around seventy years old. On his identity card his birth date is listed as 15 December 1930, but even that was just his school teacher's approximation.

"People never used to think in terms of age," he said, letting fly a cackle. This tall man, who can play just about any Balinese or Javanese traditional musical instrument you may care to mention, is kicking back in his old age.

In his big, modern house in Banjar Tengah, Sesetan, Denpasar, I Nyoman Rembang lives happily, with his children and grandchildren. His solitary time is spent blowing on a flute or playing Balinese gamelan (traditional Balinese orchestra). Or sometimes he even takes the time to write a book on traditional music, or to receive journalists and foreign researchers. But what he likes , doing most of  all is to pass the days making gamelan bungbang, a traditional instrument made from lengths of bamboo which emit music of certain tones, depending on their length and width. He has been doing this for ten years, since he stopped working at Denpasar's School of Arts.

"Getting old is one thing, but no longer having the energy or the will to work is another thing entirely," quips Rembang, a widower and father of four. It is this determination to keep busy that has prompted Rembang to continue performing with the musical group he leads - the Sekehe Purna Langesti Sari - in one of Sanur's hotels, and a number of other hotels who book them on an irregular basis. "I don't just play wherever I get asked to, though," explains Rembang. "As artists, we refuse to be considered cheap or easy. It's part of our responsibility to educate people to have respect for artists everywhere, and pay them accordingly."

Rembang is acutely aware of this issue. He laments the current situation, whereby in spite of local government regulations that stipulate award rates for musicians, many of his colleagues have never been paid in accordance with the award, and indeed they tend to adopt a passive attitude when negotiating for pay with hoteliers. Perhaps, Rembang reflects, his own group is the only one on the island to have received award rates, probably due to the fact that they are in high demand. Even though they charge high rates, he recounts, this doesn't seem to have deterred hotels from booking them. In fact, hoteliers actively seek them out. "Artists shouldn't allow themselves to be taken over by market interests. If they are offered low rates, it's better to just refuse to play," he advises.

I Nyoman Rembang never had a formal education. He only went to primary school for five years (1937 - 42). But since he was a small child he was eager to learn to play music and sought out anyone and everyone with knowledge and skill to teach him what they could. Exactly whence this urgent desire to play music derived, no-one is really sure,  for Rembang's parents were not musical: his father was a farmer, and his mother a gambuh performer. "Since I was a child I have had an awareness that my chosen path was music," he explains.

At first, as a child in Sesetan, Rembang played in the local gambuh troupe. It was then that he became inspired to play in the orchestra. At seven, he began reaming the gender with two of the older musicians in his village, I Wayan Naka and I Wayan Jiwa. Not content to stop there, a year later, Rembang  left his village to learn how to play the accompaniment to the legong. His teachers were spread all over the south of the island: in Kuta, in Kepaon, in Geledag, in Belaluan, Pagan, Baugan and Tohpati - a feat which my sound easy in these days of convenient transportation but in those days if he wanted to meet one of his teachers, Rembang had to walk.

Having had enough of the gander, at ten Rembang tried his hand at playing the accompaniment to the most challenging of Balinese dances, the gambuh. Gambuh originates from his  home village, and is only performed in Sesetan and neighboring Pedungan, meaning that Rembang no longer had to walk far to meet his teachers. Rembang went on to learn to play accompaniment to a number of Balinese dances and by the time he reached his teens, he was probably the most accomplished musicians on the island.

Two important influences in Rembang's career were senior musicians I Nyoman Kaler and Gusti Putu Made Geria, who introduced him to many of his teachers. Once he had finished learning, Rembang also wanted to teach, and was eager to accept an offer from the local government to teach Balinese gamelan at the Surakarta Conservatorium in Central Java. Whist there, Rembang studied Javanese gamelan under RM Yudoprawiro, a Javanese gamelan musician from the Surakarta palace. The two became friends, and Rembang became a proficient Javanese gamelan player.

Since he was a small child he was eager to learn to play music and sought out anyone and everyone with knowledge and skill to teach him what they could.

In 1960, Rembang pioneered the establishment of the Balinese Conservatorium, soliciting the assistance of the then Chancellor of Denpasar's Udayana University, who later went on to become the province's second governor, Ida Bagus Mantra. When, due to his lack of formal qualifications, and in spite of his capability and community support for him to take on the job, Rembang was denied the position of Head Lecturer at the Conservatorium, Mantra agreed to take on the job for one year. In 1963, Rembang resigned from the Surakarta Conservatorium and relocated to Bali.

Rembang's talent has since attracted the attention of many a foreign scholar - he has received countless invitations to go and teach in overseas institutions. On many occasions, Rembang has accepted, but only those which require him to stay away for less than a year, as his beloved late wife, Ni Ketut Rabinstiti, refused to join him on overseas appointments. "My wife said to me that she cannot fly anywhere. It is very hard for me to be separated from her," lamented Rembang. Once, he accepted a three year contract to teach Balinese gamelan in Berkeley but he missed his wife so much that he was back home after six months. 

In 1980, Rembang received an offer to go and work in Chicago - an offer he was hesitant to refuse. But again, his wife would not join him because she didn't want to fly, so he turned down the offer. "I didn't want to go alone, and I wouldn't leave my wife alone," he explained.

In his old age, Rembang often ponders the question of whether the traditional, particularly the classical arts will survive, and who will maintain them - a question to which he has no answers. Indeed, traditional art forms continue to be performed in the banjar (local communal) context. But in this materialistic age, for most young Balinese to be a traditional musician is not their main priority. Lately, Rembang has witnessed the disappearance of traditional art forms first hand, in his own village. The gambuh, an esoteric performance art involving complex movements and difficult text (spoken in Kawi, or Old Javanese), and believed to be the basis of all Balinese dance used to be unique to Sesetan and Pedungan. Now, there is only one village left that is keeping the gambuh alive: Pedungan. "Very few young Balinese can speak Kawi," says Rembang. Rembang also has doubts about the will of young the will of young Balinese to study the arts. "It used to be the case that those who wanted to study the arts would go to great lengths to find the best teachers, regardless of the lack of convenient transportation. They were ready to do anything for their teachers. Nowadays, many of the young people think they can stop learning once they have mastered one thing," critiques Rembang. Indeed, there are countless dancers and gamelan players in Bali. But Rembang questions whether their skill and talent is up to the standard that it was when he was young. "It's difficult to find good quality musicians nowadays," he reflects.

In his old age, Rembang often ponders the question of whether the traditional, particularly the classical arts will survive, and who will maintain them.

Rembang's concerns on this matter have prompted him to share his own musical skills by writing about them, and so far six books have been authored by him, each on different aspects of the traditional music's he has mastered. His most recent publication is about gambuh, meant as a guide book for those interested in studying the art.

Nyoman Rembang's huge contribution to I Balinese gamelan has earned him a number of prizes, not only locally, from the provincial government, but from the Minister of Culture and Education and even from the President as well. At the turn of the millennium he was awarded US$4000 ("I already spent it," he pre-empts) by UNESCO for his invention of the bungbang gamelan, a kind of bamboo xylophone. For any one performance, as many as 32 bungbang gamelan are required, but a bungbang is good as an accompaniment to any song, really. It also harmonises well with flutes and drums..

Bungbang gamelan are located all over the world, nowadays. Recently, Rembang sent one over to the States. Of the instrument, his invention, says Rembang: "There's no need to make the invention of the bungbang into a
big thing. As an artist and a teacher, it's my responsibility to come up with something new. That's something I promised myself I would do." Whilst most people hold Rembang's contribution to the traditional Balinese arts in high esteem, he himself is grateful for what traditional art has given him. In his words, it has made his life  more powerful, and given him a muse in the absence of his wife, who died ten years ago.

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