Find the word definition

Crossword clues for gamelan

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
gamelan

"East Indian orchestra," 1817, from Javanese gamel "to handle."

Wiktionary
gamelan

n. 1 A genre of music of Indonesian origin typically featuring metallophones, xylophones, drums, gongs and a bamboo flute (called a siuling). 2 The name of the ensemble performing this style of music.

WordNet
gamelan

n. a traditional Indonesian ensemble typically including many tuned percussion instruments including bamboo xylophones and wooden or bronze chimes and gongs

Wikipedia
Gamelan

Gamelan is the traditional ensemble music of Java and Bali in Indonesia, made up predominantly of percussive instruments. The most common instruments used are metallophones played by mallets and a set of hand-played drums called kendhang which register the beat. Other instruments include xylophones, bamboo flutes, a bowed instrument called a rebab, and even vocalists called sindhen.

Although the popularity of gamelan has declined since the introduction of pop music, gamelan is still commonly played on formal occasions and in many traditional Indonesian ceremonies. For most Indonesians, gamelan is an integral part of Indonesian culture.

Usage examples of "gamelan".

Once his aide brought the proper insignia for an engineering warrant officer, the tunic would do as well for Gamelan Bandur as it had for Jos Metadi.

Infabede sector, the engineering warrant officer who currently answered to the name Gamelan Bandur was more than ready to see realspace again.

In the far distance, the gamelan drifted between volcanoes, married the moon, seduced the sea.

I remembered the question that Gamelan, eldest of the Evocators, had asked Janos back in Orissa, and how Janos had turned the question aside with a jest, not answering.

In the two most favored seats were Gamelan, oldest of the Evocator Elders, and Sisshon, his counterpart with the Magistrates.

She told me if she did have one, and it was close, then Gamelan and the others would have figured it out as well.

Even Gamelan found it politically expedient to withdraw to his retreat beyond the city, there to immerse himself in the wisdom of the Other Worlds before making a statement on the terrible events.

What of men like Ecco, Gamelan, or even Maeen and the other soldiers here in Irayas?

My mother said the gamelan created in the listener a brain wave beyond all alphas and betas and thetas, a brain wave that paralyzed the normal channels of thought and forced new ones to grow outside them, in the untouched regions of the mind, like parallel blood vessels that form to accommodate a damaged heart.

We went home, where I ate tuna out of a can while she wrote a poem using the rhythms of the gamelan, about shadow puppets and the gods of chance.

I tried to escape by thinking of gamelan orchestras, creatures in tide pools, even the shape of the curtains, navy and green, noticing how the stripes created the curtain by the way they flowed or broke.

I lay fingering the bruises blooming on my cheek, shading from purple to green, watching the shadows of the pines behind the curtain, dancing in the wind like Balinese shadow puppets behind a screen, moving to gamelan music.

I tried to recall the melodies of Debussy, the gamelan, Miles Davis, but the Who bass line pounded it right out of my head.

Then came the sound of the third pop and the footsteps heading back down the hall as from the stereo speakers the gamelan orchestra played deliriously on, nothing pleasing or placid about that discordant noise now, its bronze vagaries conducting sense down fun house steps into the randomness of hell.

An island gamelan orchestra of mostly percussion instruments had been playing softly in the background, and now it shifted to a new, compelling rhythm.