Dr. Andrew Weintraub

Andrew Weintraub is an ethnomusicologist specializing in the performing arts of Indonesia, particularly Sundanese music, dance, and theater of West Java. He has extensive field research experience in Indonesia, encompassing eight research trips over a period of sixteen years. His initial interest in Indonesian music and culture began as an undergraduate at the University of California, Santa Cruz (B.A. with honors, 1985). He earned his first advanced degree in ethnomusicology at the University of Hawai'i in 1990, where he studied Asian music (Indonesia, Japan, Okinawa, China, and India) as well as music and dance of Hawai'i. He completed the Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley in 1997. The dissertation field research in Indonesia was conducted in 1994-95 under the auspices of a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Abroad Grant.

Weintraub's articles have appeared in edited books and journals including Ethnomusicology, Asian Music, Asian Theatre Journal, Perfect Beat, and Balungan, among others. Recent work includes a 6-CD recording of an all-night Sundanese puppet theater performance (Multicultural Media, 2001), a complete English translation and text transcription of the same performance (Lontar Publications, 1999), and articles on music of ethnic communities in Hawai'i (Honolulu: State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, 1995). As a practitioner of Indonesian gamelan and martial arts, he has performed in the U.S., Canada, Asia, and Europe.

Weintraub joined the faculty of the University of Pittsburgh in Fall 1997. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in ethnomusicology and popular music, and he directs the University of Pittsburgh gamelan program. His most recent book is entitled Power Plays: Wayang Golek Puppet Theater of West Java (Ohio University Press, 2004). Power Plays examines the ways in which meanings about identity, citizenship, and community are produced through systems of representation, particularly through theater, music, language, and discourse in modern Indonesia.

Photo Gallery
Click images for larger view.
Gamelan refers to a set of predominantly percussion instruments including tuned gongs, metal-keyed instruments, and drums (as well as bowed lute and voice). The University of Pittsburgh gamelan, which arrived in October 1995, is named appropriately "Kyai Tirta Rukmi," or "Venerable Rivers of Gold."
Undang Sumarna, a master drummer from Bandung, West Java, frequently performs with the Pitt University Gamelan. Undang Sumarna comes from a lineage of famous drummers and musicians. He has taught gamelan at KOKAR (High School for Indonesian Performing Arts) and ASTI (College of Indonesian Arts) as well as UC Berkeley and UCLA. Undang Sumarna currently teaches at UC Santa Cruz, a position he has held since 1974.
Andrew Weintraub, the director of the Pitt University Gamelan, playing the kendang (drums). Gamelan music is played as accompaniment to dance, drama, puppet theater, and martial arts, as well as for concerts of listening music.
"Rampak Kendang" features the dynamic rhythmic patterns of the kendang, a set of three drums made up of one large drum and two small drums. Undang Sumarna (center) flanked by his students Henry Spiller (left, currently an Assistant Professor of Music and Anthropology at Kenyon College) and Andrew Weintraub (right) in a performance in 2002 at the University of Pittsburgh.
A student musician plays the gambang, a xylophone. The University of Pittsburgh gamelan group is composed of students as well as community members.
Students play the metallophones saron (front) and slenthem (back). Students are encouraged to learn and play more than one instrument and to learn the relationships among them. Therefore, in our concerts, the musicians move from one position to another in order to put into practice what they have learned.
The kenong, comprised of large kettle-gongs suspended on ropes attached to wooden frame racks. The kenong is used to play the structural tones of basic compositions in the gamelan repertoire. No large image available.
Andrew Weintraub performs a penca silat martial arts dance accompanied by a musical ensemble of bowed lute (rebab), gong, and drums (kendang, played here by Undang Sumarna and Yoseph Iskandar) in April, 2002. Penca Silat refers to a variety of martial arts forms in Indonesia. This dance, and its stylized movements, belong to a style of Penca Silat called Mande Muda ("Mande" is from Cimande, a place in West Java, and "Muda" means "new" or "young"). The Mande Muda style of martial arts, which combines 17 different styles from around West Java, was created by Uyuh Suwanda and his wife Mimi Rukmini in 1951.
Guest artist Ben Arcangel dances the character Gatotkaca, one of the most beloved figures in Javanese mythology. Ben Arcangel performs frequently in Pitt Gamelan events. At the time of performance, he was pursuing an M.A. in Asian Studies at the University of Hawaii.
The character Gatotkaca is brave, clever, alert, tenacious, agile and determined. His sense of responsibility has no rival. In the wayang (puppet theater), he speaks in gruff tones, and does not bow down to anyone. Gatotkaca possesses magical powers that enable him to fly. He is a fierce warrior, but never uses a weapon in battle. Like an eagle, he can swoop down from the sky and break his enemy's neck with his bare hands.
Ben Arcangel studied at the music and dance conservatory in West Java during 1998-99 under the auspices of a student fellowship from the Indonesian government. In 2002, he was awarded the most Outstanding Performer in the Southwest Regional Competition of the American College Dance Festival in Arizona.
The participants in the gamelan program are encouraged to use Sundanese processes of learning as much as possible; oral transmission of musical parts is preferred over written notation and working together as an ensemble is more important than developing individual talent. No large image available.
Tabla master Pranesh Khan conducting a workshop with Andrew Weintraub and the Pitt Gamelan, Fall '03.
Tabla master Pranesh Khan conducting a workshop with Andrew Weintraub and the Pitt Gamelan, Fall '03.

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