Sumarsam

Infobox musical artist
Name = Sumarsam


Img_capt = Sumarsam in Dhalang attire
Img_size =
Landscape =
Birth_name = Sumarsam
Born = Dander, Bojonegoro, East Java, Indonesia.
Years_active = 1951—present
Genre = Gamelan
Occupation = Professor, writer and performer
URL = [http://gamelan.blogs.wesleyan.edu/]

Sumarsam (born 1944) is a Javanese musician and scholar of the gamelan.

Life

Sumarsam was born in Dander, Bojonegoro, East Java, Indonesia. He first performed gamelan at the age of seven. He began his formal gamelan education in 1961 at the Konservatori Karawitan Indonesia (KOKAR, now Sekolah Menengah Karawitan Indonesia) in Surakarta. He graduated in 1964 and began to teach, and in 1965 began to study at the newly opened Akademi Seni Karawitan Indonesia (ASKI, now Sekolah Tinggi Seni Indonesia in Surakarta). He graduated in 1968 and did some co-teaching with Martopangrawit. ASKI participated in government programs to promote Indonesian culture abroad, and in 1970 Sumarsam was invited to Expo '70 in Osaka, Japan, where he worked seven months. In 1971 he was invited to teach at the Indonesian Embassy in Canberra, Australia. Afterwards he moved to the United States to become a visiting artist at Wesleyan University.

Inspired by Western academia, he pursued a master's degree in world music from Wesleyan University from 1974 to 1976. He graduated with the thesis "Inner Melody in Javanese Gamelan." He continued teaching and performing at various universities in the United States, and was made an artist-in-residence at Wesleyan in 1976.

From 1983 he began working on a Ph.D. from Cornell University in ethnomusicology and Southeast Asian Studies. His thesis was "Historical Contexts and Theories of Javanese Music." It was later revised and published as "Gamelan: Cultural Interaction and Musical Development in Central Java".

He was made adjunct professor at Wesleyan in 1992.

Publications

* "Inner Melody in Javanese Gamelan." In "Source Readings in Javanese Gamelan and Vocal Music", v.1. Judith Becker and Alan Feinstein, eds. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, 1984. ISBN 0-89148-027-7.
* "Gamelan: Cultural Interaction and Musical Development in Central Java". Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992, 1995. ISBN 0-226-78011-2.
* "Opportunity and Interaction: The Gamelan from Java to Wesleyan." In "Performing Ethnomusicology", Ted Solís, ed. University of California Press, 2004. ISBN 0-520-23831-1.

References

* Sumarsam. "Gamelan". The preface contains autobiographical details.

External links

* [http://www.wesleyan.edu/templates/dept/musc/skeleton_faculty.htt?function=f1&department=MUSC&faculty=sumarsam Page at Wesleyan University]

Persondata
NAME=Sumarsam
SHORT DESCRIPTION=Musician
DATE OF BIRTH= 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH= Dander, Bojonegoro, East Java, Indonesia.
DATE OF DEATH=
PLACE OF DEATH=