Monash Music Archive
The Monash Music Archive contains valuable research materials including field recordings (many of which are annotated), rare musical instruments, theses, scores, sheet music, publications, artifacts, maps, memorabilia, photographs and slides from Southeast Asia (especially Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, and the Philippines), South Asia (especially North India and Srilanka), East Asia (especially Japan), Aboriginal/Indigenous Australia (especially the Pitjantjara area), and Jewish Asia and Australia.
Housed on the ground floor of the Performing Arts Centre (Building 68), its contents include:
- the Sumatra Music Archive
- the Australian Archive of Jewish Music
- the Asian Music Archive.
Sumatra Music Archive
The Sumatra Music Archive [PDF], consisting of an extensive collection of field recordings and accompanying visual and text documentation of all provinces of Sumatra, Indonesia, is available for use by interested researchers. Since the early 1970s, these materials have been collected in an ongoing capacity by Professor Margaret Kartomi, and also by Dr David Goldworthy, Dr Lyn Broadstock, and others.
Australian Archive of Jewish Music
The Australian Archive of Jewish Music [PDF] comprises collections of records (78 rpm, 45 rpm and 33? rpm) and other sound materials donated by members of the Jewish and wider communities, and also collections of sound materials recorded in the field in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region. Pictorial and bibliographic documents supplement the sound component. Interested researchers may investigate these resources by appointment only.
Asian Music Archive
The Asian Music Archive houses collections of field recordings, musical instruments and other materials from India (including the Louise Lightfoot Collection [PDF] and the Tagore Instruments Collection), music from most of the provinces of Indonesia (including the Jeune Scott-Kemball Collection and the Kartomi Collection), a T'boli kulintang ensemble from Mindanao, Philippines (collected by Manolete Mora), and many Sumatran and other Indonesian musical instruments collected by Kartomi. It also contains field recordings from the Philippines, Laos and Thailand. Copies of the Kartomi Collection have been deposited in the National Library, Jakarta, for use by bona fide users, at the request of the Indonesia’s Director-General of Culture, funded by the Australia-Indonesia Institute.
Gamelan Digul
The Asian Music Archive holds the beautiful-sounding but strange-looking Gamelan Digul, a Javanese gamelan slendro-pelog made in 1926 from any materials to hand (including kitchen utensils and old doors) by the Solo court musician Pontjopangrawit in the notorious Dutch prison camp for anti-colonial political prisoners in Digul (Papua). The gamelan soothed the hearts of its players in exile throughout the 1930s and early 1940s, when they and the gamelan were transported by the Dutch to Australia as they took refuge from the Japanese invaders, and where they worked with Australians toward achieving Indonesia’s Independence. This fascinating musical artifact, held by Monash University since 1977, symbolises not only the emergence of the nation from its colonial history but also the beginnings of friendship between the Indonesian and the Australian people (see further: Margaret Kartomi, The Gamelan Digul and the Prison-Camp Musician Who Built It, University of Rochester Press, 2002).
The School also possesses a complete Javanese gamelan orchestra from Solo with slendro and pelog instruments called Kyai Slamet, a set of wayang puppets, and puppet screen. Also in the collection is Dr Made Mantle Hood’s personal collection of Balinese instruments made available to students. His orchestra called Genta Semara is the only seven-tone gamelan of its kind created on the basis of an ancient palm-leaf manuscript by well-known gongsmith I Wayan Beratha.