Reimagining Tataluan in Gamelan Pelog-Salendro as a Sonic Memory in Sundanese Wayang Golek Performance

Abstract

In the contemporary context of the decline of interest in traditional music among millennial and Gen Z audiences, this study reclaims tataluan—a traditional opening in Sundanese wayang golek performance—not merely as a musical opening, but as a cultural memory in sonic codification. This study explores the performative, affective, and mnemonic dimensions of tataluan by reconfiguring gamelan Pelog-Salendro ensemble into a recomposed sequence. Based on fieldwork with master pangrawit, artistic praxis, and cross-cultural practice in Europe and America, the piece "Tatalu Wawayangan" is a hybrid work: neither entirely traditional nor entirely contemporary. In the process, the gamelan is transformed into a contact zone between memory and imagination, where melody and rhythm initiate intergenerational dialogue. The compositional form employed is a synthesis of Pande Made Sukerta's musical composition and Alma Hawkin's Moving From Within practice, in which affective movement, intuition, and listening in are highlighted. The musical narrative thereby created not only resuscitates tataluan as a performance sign but reconfigures it as an audible marker of identity, community ethos, and pedagogical potential for the revival of Sundanese performance arts. This work adds to the literature on intangible heritage by asserting that creativity within tradition is a form of poetic resistance and cultural survival.