Melodic Elaboration

In looking at the way kotekan relates to the overall musical structure of a Balinese composition, many questions immediately arise. For example, is there a harmonic system at work, based on some chordal or intervallic scheme? Is kotekan built on a purely rhythmic framework? Is it partly improvised? Or is kotekan itself the actual basis of the music from which the other parts are derived? These possibilities seem obvious enough given the musical predominance of kotekan, standing most often in the foreground of the musical landscape. From a learning perspective as well, it often happens that the beginning student is immediately drawn into this fascinating system of interlocking parts, thinking that they form the real core of a place.

However, none of these possible descriptions are accurate. Kotekan is, with rare exceptions, a highly detailed elaboration or embellishment of a slower core melody, played by the calung and ugal in the middle and low octaves. That melody - and not the kotekan - is the primary musical thread. The kotekan is woven through and around this melody, meeting it in unison or octaves at important junctures - the primary downbeats of a phrase but also frequently taking short excursions away from it, or conversely remaining fixed in one position while the melody moves around the kotekan. The Balinese metaphor for this relationship illustrates the principle quite clearly. They see the kotekan as the flowers of a tree, where the branches represent the core melodies, and the trunk the more fundamental level of punctuating gong and bass tones.

This image also reflects the colotomic or multi-layered structure of the music, where the lowest tones move the slowest, and each higher level moves at a progressively faster rate, usually twice the speed of the level below it. The Balinese in fact frequently call kotekan the "flowers" [bunga ] of a composition, the finest and most detailed superstructure resting upon an underlying framework. lt simultaneously enhances that melody by highlighting its contours and rhythmic outlines, decorates it with an often surprising array of melodic twists and turns, reflects it in "microcosm" (sometimes the shapes of the pokok [core] melody can be found, rhythmically compressed, in its kotekan figuration; see figure 16) and presents an internal structural world of its own, seemingly propelled from within by the logic and momentum of its rhythmic patterning.

Sonically, the difference in timbre between the kotekan and the pokok melody is easy to discern. The two calung, on which the pokok tones are played, are struck with rubber-faced mallets, producing a sustained humming tone (due to the paired tuning) with almost no attack sound. This tone quality, despite its soft and rounded timbre, is nevertheless quite penetrating within the total sound of the gamelan. The gangsa, on the other hand, are struck with hard wooden mallets, creating an extremely bright metallic attack as described above. Although most of the calung range overlaps the low octave of the gangsa, the timbral difference between them helps to keep the musical stratification clear.