When the concert was done this evening, I was thinking about what someone told me about a few months ago. She said, "Pam, you should not play gamelan again because those people worship the spirits (and not God)."
The question I had in my mind after remembering that question was, when does culture cease to be culture and start being something else?
When will music (gamelan, for instance) stop being cultural performance and heritage and start being a religion, a cult, a myth?
It is cultural heritage and performance, but religious values can inserted in the purification ceremony, offerings, chantings, or in the respect to the music (i.e. the masks, instruments, platform, etc.)
Or, when will gamelan stop being a cultural heritage and start being an economic activity?
Someone has to pay for the music director to come and teach. Someone else has to cook or bring drinks for the performances. Costumes have to be bought, and cleaned, and re-cleaned. Others have to sacrifice time (which is, money, right? for some people, at least) to practice twice a week when they can work instead, or maybe do homework, or study.
Could it be that gamelan, like Marcel Mauss's idea of gift, is a total phenomenon?
Could it be that it is religious, economic, cultural, philosophical, environmental, political ?
Or even scarier than that, it seems like the word "culture" encompasses all the religious, economic, philosophical, environmental, and political realms.
Oh, and gamelan can be social as well, because my friend just changed his status to "in a relationship." Guess where he met his girlfriend? Of course, at gamelan practice ;)
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