Adoption, Adaptation, and Negotiation: Hybridity of Gamelan and Digital-Electronic Musical Instruments in the Jaran Kepang Dance Accompaniment

This study aims to reveal and explain the forms and processes of adaptation that occur in the hybridity of musical instruments accompanying the jaran kepang or horse dance in Indonesia. The research was conducted through an ethnographic approach based on participatory and collaborative activities with data collection techniques through observation, interviews, documentation, and literature studies. This research produces findings in the form of facts regarding hybridity that occurs as a result of the process of blending and mixing between two musical disciplines with different cultures, characteristics, and origins, namely between gamelan and digital-electronic, traditional and modern, local and global culture, as well as Javanese gamelan and Western music. Hybridity almost always begins with adoption practices, which are then followed by a process of adaptation as a form of response to negotiate the differences in systems and conventions of the devices used. This condition has illustrated the change in the image of Jaran Kepang art from classical-traditional folk art, which is considered rigid and simple, to a more varied, adaptive, advanced, and modern form of traditional art.