Knowledge Transmission in Javanese Karawitan. Is It Time For an Ontological Turn?

The transmission of knowledge in the context of Javanese gamelan music underwent significant changes over the course of a busy twentieth century. Whereas the previously implied learning patterns involved the paramount importance of kinship and neighborhood ties, the postcolonial condition, embedded in a modern nation-state apparatus, promoted seemingly modern technologies of learning and transmission—notably written notation and academic institutions. The aim of this article is to complicate this modernization narrative by drawing on contemporary anthropological theory. Approaching the issue of knowledge transmission through the lens of phenomenology, I argue, allows us to appreciate it as it unfolds in everyday interaction instead of assuming its course under the aegis of abstract macroprocesses