Rasa attempts to get at the heart of central Javanese traditional music (karawitan) by attending to what those closest to the tradition—the musicians themselves—say about it. Based on several years of research conducted in the regional cultural center of Solo, Indonesia, this book untangles the multiple aesthetic criteria applied by musicians in various contexts. Central to their aesthetic discourse was the complex notion of rasa: taste, feeling, affect, mood, sense, inner meaning, faculty of taste, faculty of sensing, faculty of knowing intuitively, deep understanding—all roll ... More

Rasa attempts to get at the heart of central Javanese traditional music (karawitan) by attending to what those closest to the tradition—the musicians themselves—say about it. Based on several years of research conducted in the regional cultural center of Solo, Indonesia, this book untangles the multiple aesthetic criteria applied by musicians in various contexts. Central to their aesthetic discourse was the complex notion of rasa: taste, feeling, affect, mood, sense, inner meaning, faculty of taste, faculty of sensing, faculty of knowing intuitively, deep understanding—all rolled into one. Working outward from this concept, the book addresses various questions: How is the vocabulary of rasa structured, and what does this tell us about Javanese aesthetics? Who or what has rasa, and what sorts of musical, psychological, perceptual, and sociological distinctions enter into this determination? How is rasa expressed musically? And how can exploring such questions lead to a fuller understanding of traditional Javanese music and of emotion and music in general? While acknowledging the possibility of universal psychological tendencies, the book demonstrates just how culturally specific musical meaning can be. This specificity results from the essentially connotative nature of musical meaning, which, following Wittgenstein on linguistic meaning, accrues through use. Relevant audio examples are provided through two media—an Oxford Web Music Web site and a four‐CD set (Gamelan de Solo) produced and annotated by the author and released by the Maison des Cultures du Monde—to help readers link Javanese terms and concepts to Javanese sound patterns.