Gamelan Salukat was founded in 2007 by Dewa Alit, and it refers to both its some 25 musicians and its unique set of Balinese gamelan instruments that Dewa Alit designed, both of which are very essential to Dewa Alit’s most new, experimental and challenging compositions for gamelan.
The group has toured to USA in 2009 and 2010 with Bang on the Can All-Stars, USA for “A House in Bali” production, as well as solo tours to Europe in 2018, 2022 and 2023, and to Sharjah, UE in 2019.
The word "Salukat" is Dewa Alit's original combination of two words; "salu" and "kat". "Salu" means house, "kat" signifies regeneration and the cycles of rebirth, and together it makes a place for new creativities based on the tradition.
Gamelan Salukat is a set of new gamelan instruments developed by Dewa Alit, reflecting Dewa's strong root in traditional music as well as his hope to accommodate challenges he faces in creating new music in Bali.
While the basic concept remains same, this unique set has gone through a few experimental stages of different tunings since first built in 2006.
In the latest, and hopefully the last, tuning system, the instruments are tuned in two different sets of 7-tone scale. There are 4 keys out of 7 tones which are shared among them, 3 are different, and this allows the set consisting of 7-tone-key instruments to have 10 tones as the whole ensemble.
The members of Gamelan Salukat consists of some 25 young musicians from Ubud and beyond. They are not only musicians with high skill and knowledge in traditional gamelan, but also are enthusiastic about being on the very front line in the Balinese gamelan music scene by playing Dewa Alit's most new and challenging music.
2009 & 2010 | "A House in Bali" US Tour |
Zellerbach Hall, Cal Arts, Berkeley
Cutler Majestic Theatre, Emerson Collage, Boston Next Wave Festival, Brooklyn Academy of Music, NY |
2013 & 2015 | Malaysia |
International Gamelan Festival Universiti Teknologi Mara, Kuala Lumpur |
2018 | Europe Tour |
International Gamelan Festival, Munich, Germany
Sommerscen Festival, Malmo, Sweden Roskilde Festival, Denmark Rudolstadt Festival, Germany |
2019 | Sharjah, UAE |
Sharjah Architecture Triennial 2019 |
2022 | Europe Tour |
REWIRE Festival, Den Haag, the Netherlands
Bourse de Commerce, Paris, France |
2023 | North Europe Tour |
Borealis Festival, Bergen, Norway
Sixth Edition Festival, Stockholm, Sweden |