Presented By: Residential College
RC Talks: "Early Female Gamelan Buskers: Social Persona and Musical Style"
Dr. Susan Walton, RC Faculty
For centuries, professional female entertainers, taledhek, have been Java’s premier buskers, singing and dancing in the streets, in erotic dance parties and fertility rites accompanied by the gamelan. By presenting short life histories of a few of these women, Dr. Walton shows how their musical style and persona eschew middle class Javanese gender norms. Drawing on recordings from the 1920s and 1930s, ethnographic fieldwork with aging male gamelan musicians and taledhek, and information from literary sources, Dr. Walton will analyze the musical characteristics of the early taledhek’s style and how those musical elements shifted when some taledhek started to perform in the courts in the early 20th century.
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