Some of the instruments at the palace in Solo, Indonesia, are known to have spirits living inside of them.

Should you accidentally brush by one of these instruments as you are trying to take your seat, you must always politely excuse yourself to the instrument exactly as you would a person.

You must never step over the instruments, or drop anything on them, for you never know exactly which of the instruments is harboring a spirit inside, and what kind of attitude that spirit has.

There are some songs, soft and slow, that reverberate off the walls of a gamelan concert hall, which are very powerful and dangerous. There is an Indonesian word that these songs are known by which has no equivalent in English. It says something about how the song must be played with utmost care and reverence, otherwise many dangers could befall the members of the gamelan.

So it was with great care that Harjito's ensemble, all students studying the central Indonesia gamelan, burned an offering of incense and flowers and asked politely of the composer's spirit and the spirits of the instruments if they might be allowed to play one of these special songs, one of these dangerous songs.

Unfortunately, something happened during the song. One could never really say whose fault it was, one never really can when it comes to the gamelan, since the gamelan has no true conductor, and each musician follows the other like leaves carried along on a stream. But they made a mistake and did not play the piece correctly.

As they were putting up the instruments for the night, one of the instruments crashed to the ground despite being held up by three people. Later that night one of the dancers let out a blood-curdling scream from the girls' room, followed almost instantly by an equal scream from the boys' room. Harjito and the others rushed to see what had happened, and the girl told them that she had awoken to see a tall dark man over her about to stab her with a large knife. When she screamed the man had leapt away into the darkness. The boy said that he had screamed after seeing a tall dark man leaping over his bed... in the room next door.

Three more times that night were the gamelan players awoken by members of their party. Once they found a boy hitting one of the large kettle gongs with his fists: he claimed that he had been fighting with someone.

"That was long ago, in Indonesia, when I was still a student," Harjito says peering through his glasses, now a master and composer of gamelan music and among the premiere gamelan musicians in the world. "But the place is still haunted."

I've always been under the impression that a gamelan is an instrument instead of a band of instruments. It is a pretty eerie story though I know I shouldn't be reading these stories cause I am easily creeped out. A lot of the palaces in Malaysia also share similar ghost stories.
» Nuttz on 2010-09-09 06:52:29

:)
» jinyu on 2010-09-11 06:57:04

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