Pangamelan: Recycling Pans for a Collective and Sustainabble Music

Abstract

The artistic and educational project of Pangamelan.org raises the process of building musical instruments based on the recycling of disused frying pans and with affordable and lowcost technical requirements. It is inspired by the Indonesian musical tradition of Gamelan, and implements its logic of group performance with a new set of instruments, made with pans recovered from recycling centers or contributed by the participants in the workshops, bringing us closer to Indonesian sonorities: The pans they can sound like bells or gongs, the handles become drumsticks and hammers; the supporting structures are built by recycling old furniture and fabrics. During the construction and sound design, notions about acoustic physics, hearing awareness, non-Western musical tonalities and scales are introduced, and in the musical practice phase, the dynamics of group interpretation, techniques and rhythms are introduced in counterpoint according to the Balinese tradition, to the creation of new musical forms typical of each group.