In Sepember 2024, Toronto musician, composer and educator Andrew Timar grew to become the primary Canadian to obtain the extremely regarded AKI or Anugerah Kebudayaan Indonesia 2024 cultural award. The award is issued every year by the Indonesian Ministry of Schooling, Tradition, Analysis and Expertise.
Andrew was considered one of solely three recipients of the AKI Award within the Overseas Establishments and People class, the opposite recipients hailing from Poland and Netherlands. Timar acquired the Certificates of Benefit in particular person in Jakarta from I Gusti Agung Wesaka Puja, Govt Director of the ASEAN Institute for Peace & Reconciliation.
The Certificates of Benefit notes Timar’s “experience as artist, composer, gamelan and suling participant, instructor, researcher, hybrid gamelan music activist in Canada, and his dedication to the development of Indonesian tradition.”
Together with a commemorative gold pin that depicts the Garuda bird-like determine of Indonesian legend, the Award comes with a money prize of 100 million Rupiah (about $8,825 CAD).
Timar’s recognition comes after many years of labor, each in Toronto as a musician, composer, and co-founder of the Evergreen Up to date Gamelan Membership, and as a frequent customer and collaborator with Indonesian musicians.
Andrew was additionally previously a Course Director/Teacher with The Royal Conservatory of Music.
We spoke to him in regards to the AKI Award, and dealing as a musician and composer for the gamelan in Toronto.
Andrew Timar and The Gamelan
The journey to Jakarta was newly over when LvT caught as much as Timar. “It’s lastly again all the way down to earth. It was fairly a visit to Indonesia and again,” he says.
The place did his fascination with Indonesian music start?
“I’ve coaching in ethnomusicology again in my undergrad days,” he recollects. “I used to be at all times fascinated with music from different locations exterior the Eurocentric custom.”
He started to find Indonesian and different non-Eurocentric music with LP albums again within the Nineteen Sixties. He’d go on to check in California, the place an American aficionado launched him to the gamelan. He first met colleague Jon Siddall at York College within the Nineteen Eighties.
Siddall wished to begin a gamelan orchestra in Canada to play modern music, and in 1983, he’d gotten funding from a Canada Council grant to buy the devices and kick begin the mission from scratch.
“I mentioned, what??” Timar recollects. “There was no gamelan course in Canada. There was nothing!”
However begin, it did, and Evergreen Membership Up to date Gamelan remains to be lively in the present day, 41 years later. Regardless of its longevity, nonetheless, Indonesian music remains to be not frequent to search out in mainstream live performance halls. “The thought of a gamelan remains to be a thriller to nearly all of Canadians.” Timar has not solely carried out with the ensemble, however composed lots of the works that Evergreen carry out. Evergreen seems to make use of the gamelan in modern compositions that drawn on conventional music, however different sources as effectively. Timar has Western classical music coaching.
The gamelan isn’t a single instrument, it’s an orchestra of conventional Indonesian percussion and different musical devices. The devices are sometimes ornate and hand-made, and may include gongs, drums, cymbals, xylophones, and others, together with bamboo flutes and string devices.
Timar performs the suling, a flute fabricated from bamboo or cane, and blown at one finish.
“In Canada, I’m the pioneer of this factor,” he says. Regardless of the low recognition for gamelan or Indonesian music total in North America, he believes some inroads have been made by individuals like him who’ve been educating the artwork as effectively. “I’ve been doing my greatest over the past many years,” he says of his efforts at educating a brand new era within the music.
The AKI Award
“It was a little bit of a course of,” he says of the nomination procedures. Formally, he was nominated by the Indonesian Common Consul in Toronto. Timar has been working with their workplace for greater than a decade on organizing journeys and academic efforts. An artist who he’d med some 22 years in the past in Jakarta additionally nominated him.
“I used to be flattered, however I felt that I had in regards to the likelihood of a snowball in Jakarta,” he says. He notes that his personal suling academics had been nominated beforehand, and didn’t obtain the award. “I used to be advised it’s political.”
To his shock, he bought the discover of his win a scant two weeks earlier than the ceremony. “The ministerial letter asserting my award, and what I wanted to do, was fairly in depth,” he says, saying it led to an intense 2-hour assembly. “I used to be more than happy, in fact, however daunted by what’s forward.”
Nonetheless, it was a novel honour and alternative to not be handed up. “It’s an honour as the primary Canadian.”
The journey to the ceremony in Jakarta was fruitful in different methods. He reconnected with a colleague he’d first met again in 1988. “It’s type of a milestone for me, and an important one,” Andrew says.
It’s additionally led to a brand new tour that he’ll absorb Indonesia in 2025. “I met with plenty of people there, each musicians, dancers that I’ve recognized throughout my profession, and likewise new ones, the dean of a college who’s fascinated with my work (and others). These type of people had been fascinated with what I used to be doing.”
He notes that Indonesia is a big, multicultural nation the place greater than 700 regional languages are spoken. The gamelan and its traditions are related particularly to Java and Bali.
“There’s some attention-grabbing parallels to Canada,” he says. “The individuals I’ve met are very hip.”
Up to date Canadian music for the gamelan isn’t conventional music, that’s understood. “I’m not a spokesperson for some other tradition than my very own. By definition, that makes my work a hybrid,” he says. “I’ve been negotiating these cultural bridges for 4 many years. Mutual respect is vital.”
The AKI Award means that his model of Indonesian fusion has discovered its viewers. Music, as at all times, can construct bridges the place diplomats have problem.
“It’s incredible to be acknowledged overseas.”
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Anya Wassenberg is a Toronto Metropolis Editor at Ludwig Van. She is an skilled freelance author, blogger and writing teacher.
