Indonesian Music Archive
The Indonesian Music Archive consists of approximately 193 hours of audio recordings made in Indonesia between 1952 and 1977. While the majority consists of Central Javanese gamelan recordings, it also includes significant recordings of traditional music, rituals, and stories from various locations in Java, Lombok, and Aceh.
The collection began as the 'Field Recording Archive,' a project initiated by John Pemberton (PhD 1989, now at the Department of Anthropology, Columbia University) while he was still a graduate student. The project unified and documented reel-to-reel recordings, most of which were made in the 1970s in the court cities of Surakarta and Yogyakarta. Many recordings were made by Pemberton himself, while others were created by fellow Cornell scholars: Nancy Florida (PhD 1990), Jennifer Lindsay (MA 1980), and Professor Emeritus Martin Hatch. Additional recording contributions came from other researchers and Javanese gamelan enthusiasts, including Alan Feinstein, Alex Dea, and Laurie Kottmeyer.
The collection also includes several historical recordings from Java, including recordings from the Surakarta Conservatory of Traditional Music (Konservatori Karawitan Surakarta) from 1952, just two years after its establishment. There are also recordings from the Surakarta Kraton from 1965 donated by Nusyirwan Tirtaamijaya and the late Professor Emeritus Benedict Anderson, and dance repertoire recordings made by Benedictus Soeharto in Yogyakarta in 1967.