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Name: Dewa Alit & Gamelan Salukat

Nationality: Indonesian
Interviewee: Dewa Alit
Occupation: Composer
Current Release: Dewa Alit & Gamelan Salukat's Chasing the Phantom is out via Black Truffle.
Recommendations: Music:“Daily” by I Wayan Sadra; Book:  Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music, edited by Christoph Cox and Daniel Warner

If you enjoyed this interview with Dewa Alit and would like to know more about his work, visit his official website.  



When did you start writing/producing/playing music and what or who were your early passions and influences? What was it about music and/or sound that drew you to it?

I was born and raised in Bali where I heard traditional gamelan music almost every day, either at home or in the village where we live. My own father was a renowned gamelan drummer and the most influential musician to me.

I myself started playing music (gamelan) when I was 10 years old. 
I started writing music for gamelan when I was 17 years old. Producing in the form of a record (CD) began in 2010.

When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening and how does it influence your approach to creativity?

There's nothing I'm aware of that happens physically to my body when I hear music. But it sometimes has effects on my thoughts. It really depends on the music, but some can inspire and stimulate my creativity to be more vibrant.

How would you describe your development as an artist in terms of interests and challenges, searching for a personal voice, as well as breakthroughs?

I started my music life as a musician for traditional gamelan music, but I always had a very strong interest and desire for something different and new. What I was looking for are aspects or values of novelty. And that is the big part of many challenges I had to face.

But these challenges are also the trigger for even stronger motivation to overcome it with innovative creativity.
These challenges also took me to a space where unexpected things like sounds that had never been heard before could emerge. This is both the result and the goal.


I learned that it requires courage and very strong principle to be able to realize ideas that are capable of making breakthroughs, to get out of the bonds of current habits or traditional expectations.

Tell me a bit about your sense of identity and how it influences both your preferences as a listener and your creativity as an artist, please.

As I said earlier, I was born and grew up with traditional Balinese gamelan music. I am aware of the strong roots there that influenced what I see and hear from very early childhood, and I feel very lucky that the music I grew up hearing were indeed very high-quality music.

It has definitely given me the creative power as an artist.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and art?

Freedom of expression.

How would you describe your views on topics like originality and innovation versus perfection and timelessness in music? Are you interested in a “music of the future” or “continuing a tradition”?

For me, such topic is about views outside the scope / realm of the composer's life. I always try not to be stuck in talking about originality, innovations, or traditional music or future music. Each composer has his own goals and tastes that deserve respects. Let the music flow as it is.

I feel it is a disgraceful attitude if a composer's work is judged for being unique or not, or innovative or not, without seeing and understanding the history and long process that the composer has gone through. Every culture has its own challenges or problems. Freedom to choose the path to face their own challenges is their right that should be respected by anyone.  

What I care about and what matters most is how I feel about my own work and what I can offer to the development of the world through music.

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools - and what are the most promising strategies for working with them?

The Balinese gamelan is the most important instrument in my life.

In order to maximize its potential for realizing my music, my approach is to develop the instruments both in physical aspects such as the tuning system and in the form of musical works (compositions).

I believe that my innovative works for gamelan is a way of introducing gamelan music in a contemporary way without killing the values of gamelan music itself.

Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please.

I prefer to work at night more than during the day, so it is rare for me to enjoy the morning atmosphere. 
So sometimes I work on a music composition all night long until the morning, take my kid to school, and then I'll sleep. I'll wake up a little before noon, have something to eat and go back to composing music.

When I need to refresh my mind, I'll spend time on gardening in my garden, and do some family activities like washing dishes. And once or twice a week my gamelan group Salukat has rehearsal at night at my studio.


Also I enjoy painting. If I'm not working on a musical composition then I'll be painting.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that's particularly dear to you, please?

I will explain my creative process for composing. But first of all, I need to explain a bit about traditional Balinese music.

In traditional Balinese culture, gamelan music is the language of the musicians that they all understand naturally, its musical structures, rules and melodies, as if it’s in their blood.  In the same way, the approach in composing gamelan music is expected to follow the universal gamelan structures and familiar shapes of melodies.

My music, and my gamelan Salukat, however, is different. So I had to find my own method for both teaching my work to players (Balinese gamelan is played without reading the notation) and during the process of writing musical compositions.

I start with building unique structures, then develop them according to the musical ideas I intend for that particular piece. Musical ideas include arranging tones according to bars and beats, choosing scales, calculate harmonies, making contrasts and constructing bonding between one part to another in the hope that the whole composition can be felt as a unified whole.

Listening can be both a solitary and a communal activity. Likewise, creating music can be private or collaborative. Can you talk about your preferences in this regard and how these constellations influence creative results?

As a composer I prefer to work alone because freedom and independence are more important to me. In collaboration you need to cooperate, and one must be prepared to give in to the other party for the sake of an agreement. Sometimes brilliant ideas can be sacrificed for the purpose of success in collaborative activities.

When I work alone, I feel that I am in a space where all the limitations are on my own imaginative and creative abilities. I feel working alone let the ideas and concepts of the work unspoiled, leading the work to be of a purity.

I am not saying, though, that collaboration is a useless way of making music. There are quite a lot of very good collaborative works contributing to the future development of music.

How do your work and your creativity relate to the world and what is the role of music in society?

I always motivated myself to come up with interesting ideas for my music. And often times those inspirations come from our everyday life. Although I work alone and isolated throughout the process of composition, when it comes to realizing musical ideas, i.e., my music being played, I always need musicians and hopefully a big audience.

I am very happy when I hear people find my works inspiring. Music is a tool to share how I understand the world. This is where the relationship between my creative work and the outside world lies.

The role of music in society, in my opinion, is that music can provide understandings to the public about maintaining awareness of living together with other humans and nature alike.  Music is also a tool for expressing not only about individual ideas and thoughts but also about cultural, political, social, and religious aspects of human life.

Art can be a way of dealing with the big topics in life: Life, loss, death, love, pain, and many more. In which way and on which occasions has music – both your own or that of others - contributed to your understanding of these questions?

I am less interested in music as an expression of feelings or emotions. Mostly, my work / music is more towards independent expression of art and not to represent my goals or emotional qualities.

Most of my musical ideas arise from aspects of formulation or formulas. Even working with formulas while I write music, there are opportunities for new ideas to emerge that I didn't expect. And at those times, through forming musical patterns or motifs, I feel my mindset expands. And that is life.

How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other?  

I think both music and science derive from the combination of imagination, logic and facts. Imagination is something that is in the air and does not need concrete proof. Logic is a way to realize imagination into an existing shape according to the desire arising from the imagination itself.

Sometimes there are mysteries in between imagination and logic that are confusing and difficult for our normal sense. But this can be proven by scientific knowledge, or facts.


For example, we can imagine harmony outside the standard Western music scales by following our feeling alone. Then a logical thinking will enter the picture, asking if it can be categorized as what the Western cultures call “harmony,” or is it just the legitimacy based on feelings for how it sound only to a certain group of people?  

Now science can be used to answer to that question, such as by measuring and analyzing the frequencies etc.  

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

As a composer, music is a language to express the thoughts or ideas that are hidden in my mind. Through the process of creating music, step by step, I have found maturity about living in this world. It is not about how to make good coffee to please others, but it is more about what I can do for the progress and development of my music or my life.

What I try to capture through the process of making music is things that are very difficult for me to understand. I am drawn to things that are outside my comprehension. Such as finding a question which, when answered, would lead to another question.

Music is vibration in the air, captured by our ear drums. From your perspective as a creator and listener, do you have an explanation how it able to transmit such diverse and potentially deep messages?

Yes, music is vibrations in the air, captured by our eardrums. But in every vibration that occurs, there are humans involved, both as a subject (making the vibrations) and as an object (the owner of the ears). 
At the receiver’s end, the vibrations are processed through the brain that lead to reactions and possible meanings to the effects. 


On the other hand, I believe the vibration itself can embrace contents, messages, and sometimes very strong and deep knowledge of those, either / both composers and musicians, depending on how the waves of vibrations are designed. How the mind of the receiver translates the vibrations and connects to the message of the designer depends on the ability and condition of the mind itself.

I believe the balance between both the creator and the listener in their hearing experience, reasoning abilities and knowledge of life should match for the best result. If it is not balanced, then the communication will not connect properly.