Gamelan Sekar Jaya

Art Center · Berkeley, CA, United States

About Gamelan Sekar Jaya

Founded in 1979, Gamelan Sekar Jaya is a Balinese performing arts organization based in Berkeley, California, made up of roughly sixty musicians and dancers who study and perform the gamelan music and dance traditions of Bali. The group is widely regarded, per coverage in San Francisco Classical Voice and a profile from the Alliance for California Traditional Arts, as one of the oldest and most established Balinese gamelan ensembles operating outside Indonesia, and it has received ongoing grant support from the California Arts Council.

Since 2022 the organization has operated out of a permanent home it calls the Banjar, at 3023 Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley, a name borrowed from the Balinese word for a neighborhood community association. Reporting by Berkeleyside on the space's opening describes it as serving three functions at once: rehearsal space for the ensemble's various music and dance groups, short term lodging for visiting guest artists from Bali, and a community gathering space open to the broader Bay Area public. Before acquiring the Banjar, the organization operated for decades without a fixed home base, renting rehearsal space as needed.

Gamelan Sekar Jaya's education program, detailed on its own website gsj.org, extends beyond its core membership through workshops and classes offered directly in Bay Area schools and community centers, introducing Balinese music and dance to students who might not otherwise encounter the tradition. The organization's own site also documents an active performance calendar and a formal classes structure for newcomers wishing to learn gamelan playing or Balinese dance styles.

This listing fills a real gap in the directory: the two existing Art Center entries, Langen Suka Gamelan Music Inc in Sydney and Het Gamelanhuis in Amsterdam, are both outside the United States, so Gamelan Sekar Jaya becomes the directory's first Art Center listing in the US despite the country's already large roster of restaurants, diplomatic missions, and banks. No public phone number could be verified for the organization, so that field is left blank rather than guessed.

Address

Contact

• Website: https://www.gsj.org

Category

Indonesian Art Center in United States

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