Ombak is my new waves (1)

published: 2026-2-15

last updated: 2026-2-15

language: en

tags:

• personal
• music

First encounter

  An evening in summer 2012. I am sitting on the backseat of my mother’s car, listening to the shimmering voices and raging guitars of the contemporary pop-musicians that were all the rage back then. We are on our way home from my weekly Futsal(in-door soccer with smaller field, smaller goals) practice in a local PE gymnasium. After the routined 30 minute dummy match at the end of the practice session, I am swamped, head to toe, soaked in sweat, desperately clinging to the cool wind from the half-open window. Mother says something. I do not understand at first because of the wind. “Say again?”, “I said, ‘do you want to go to the Onsen?’, you know, the one that I’ve started working for.”
  One of the few perks of living in my hometown, not topping but not topped by the fact that it’s got some great bakeries, is that it is home to many natural hot springs. From early afternoon to late night, they were a place of relaxation for locals. And I remembered that my mother started her part-time job in one of the “Onsen(温泉)“s.
  As soon as I entered the building I noticed something. This place is different than other hot springs. I expected to be healed by the water from the deep underground, but what really healed me was the strange music they were playing in the background. Warm metallophone sound reminiscent of Buddhism sutra. Complex rhythm of ethnic quality, tapping ears with delicate patterns of acceleration and deceleration like waves, sometimes rapid and relentless as the estuary of a busy river, sometimes wide and firm as the movement of a giant fish. Inner is outer, outer is inner. As though face to face with the eye of a great whale, the kaleidoscope of rhythmic patterns captures my senses and I’m forevermore falling toward it.
  Certain feelings were invoked inside of me, something primordial, like a pure celebration for rhythm and a soothing warmth like a shoulder of the hill by the ocean under a sunny sky.
  As a 12-year boy with stern education in classic piano, and a little indulgence to the contemporary pops and rocks, I had truly never heard anything like that in my life. At the entrance to the bathhouses, We agreed on meeting again at the foyer 45 minutes later. I got out of the bath in 20 minutes, and was keenly listening to this strange, strange music…
  That was my first encounter with Gamelan Jawa.