State Education and the Funnel Effect: Changing Dynamics in Gamelan Music Learning

The role of state‐sponsored institutions in the transmission of gamelan music knowledge in Java has been widely observed in the context of the great transition from being a matter of oral transmission and the social ties it entailed to a study program relying on writing and on the state apparatus. While the role of the educational institutions – notably the network of art academies Institut Seni Indonesia – has been framed largely in ethnomusicological terms, little has been said as of yet of the consequences it triggered sociologically. A few of the most historically‐conscious contributions debating the recent developments of Javanese gamelan music have suggested an interpretative key which supported either a modernization paradigm or a transformation‐in‐continuity model, as formulated most recently by the work of Rachel Hand. Although both perspectives can provide important insights in the way socio‐cultural change unfolds, the ethnography I sketch here offers a more nuanced viewpoint.