Gamelan!
My new hobby is Balinese gamelan. If you’ve talked to me since I started attending rehearsals in August ‘25, you’ve probably heard me mention it. I’m writing this in case you want to know more about what it is, because hopefully you find it at least partially as interesting as I do. Gamelan is an Indonesian genre of music centered around hitting tuned metal instruments with mallets. In fact, the Indonesian verb “gamel” literally means “to strike with a mallet”. The word “gamelan” can refer to the genre of music or to the group of instruments themselves. Gamelan is necessarily played in ensembles, as far as I know you can’t really perform it alone. I don’t even have a real practice instrument at home. The closest American equivalent I can think of is marching band drumlines, where the composite of many quickly played percussion instruments makes an exhilarating atmosphere, and would be boring if you didn’t have all the instruments present. On the topic of togetherness, I want to t...