• Background
  • Music Example

Background

Relatively well known in the United States, though further from our own musical tradition than Kurdish Music, is Javanese gamelan. Gamelan music uses a very different scale system from our own, so it sounds very different. The slendro scale is a pentatonic (five-note) scale using intervals not used in Western music. Despite this difference, we certainly recognize gamelan as music.

Go to the next tab to listen to a Javanese Gamela music example.

Javanese Gamelan Music