Here is a great trip that you can take that is truly hands-on. The Indonesian Embassy is fantastic for welcoming students to tour their spectacular building on Massachusetts Avenue. But the really exciting part of the tour takes place in the Gamelan room in the basement.Gamelan is a form of traditional Indonesian music which includes several types of brass percussion instruments. Students were able to choose from brass xylophones to gongs and variations on these two types of instruments. Our instructor was very patient in teaching students how to hold the instruments while at the same time teaching us how to play traditional atonal music that we grew accustomed to listening to over the course of our hour together.
We then moved to working with bamboo insturments that we had to shake in order to get a note. These were scaled so that each person was holding a separate note. These instruments became more familiar once our instructor pointed to each one of us to play our note. He kept it up until we could recognize great tunes like "Happy Birthday" and "Do-Re-Mi" from Sound of Music. This was a great activity because it allowed students to branch out of their comfort zones by playing familiar songs on unfamiliar instruments.
This is one of the best hands-on embassy tours you can take and I highly recommend it!
Contact Info
Indonesian Embassy
2020 Massachusetts Ave. N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20036, USA
Tel 202 775 5200 - Fax 202 775 5365
Website: www.embassyofindonesia.org
Email: imade@embassyofindonesia.org
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