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 annually by the Indonesian Ministry of Training, Tradition, Analysis and Expertise.
Andrew was one in every of solely three recipients of the AKI Award within the International Establishments and People class, the opposite recipients hailing from Poland and Netherlands. Timar obtained the Certificates of Advantage in particular person in Jakarta from I Gusti Agung Wesaka Puja, Govt Director of the ASEAN Institute for Peace & Reconciliation.
The Certificates of Advantage 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 a long time 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 all the time keen on music from different locations outdoors 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 review 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 undertaking 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 at the moment, 41 years later. Regardless of its longevity, nevertheless, Indonesian music remains to be not frequent to search out in mainstream live performance halls. “The concept 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 be to make use of the gamelan in modern compositions that drawn on conventional music, however different sources as nicely. 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 might include gongs, drums, cymbals, xylophones, and others, together with bamboo flutes and string devices.
Timar performs the suling, a flute made 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 general in North America, he believes some inroads have been made by folks like him who’ve been educating the artwork as nicely. “I’ve been doing my finest over the past a long time,” 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 Normal 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 probability 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 instructed it’s political.”
To his shock, he received 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 sort of a milestone for me, and a vital one,” Andrew says.
It’s additionally led to a brand new tour that he’ll soak up Indonesia in 2025. “I met with quite a few people there, each musicians, dancers that I’ve recognized throughout my profession, and likewise new ones, the dean of a college who’s keen on my work (and others). These sort of people had been keen on 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 folks 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 every 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 a long time. Mutual respect is essential.”
The AKI Award means that his model of Indonesian fusion has discovered its viewers. Music, as all the time, can construct bridges the place diplomats have problem.
“It’s unbelievable 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.
