Bang on a Gong's History

Bang on a Gong

Facilitated by Jennifer Fraser and Students of Oberlin College and Conservatory

The Bang on a Gong program began as the brainchild of Jennifer Fraser, Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology at Oberlin College. She thought about creating a music program for kids using Javanese Gamelan for many years, but the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election prompted Jennifer to want to collaborate with a local community to create a program that brought people together and where all participants were welcome. As an ethnomusicologist, someone who studies musical practices in their sociocultural contexts, Jennifer wanted to use her skill set to create this program. Her main research takes place in Indonesia, a country in Southeast Asia. One of the kinds of music found there is called gamelan, which requires a group of people to play The instruments of gamelan include some that are similar to xylophones but made from metal; drums; and, most importantly, gongs. Jennifer’s knowledge, combined with access to Oberlin College and Conservatory’s set of instruments, was the perfect fit for a community-based, collaborative music project. Thus Bang on a Gong was born.

Even though Jennifer had access to these instruments and the knowledge of how to play them, she couldn’t create this program alone. First, she talked to a lot of people about her ideas, getting their suggestions and feedback. She then designed a college course--then called PACE752: Gamelan as Community Engagement--where students would learn about how to work with communities and help facilitate music making. The most important step was finding a community who was as excited about the project and its possibilities as she was. This was an important step because Jennifer wanted this project to be a collaboration, something she worked on with members of the community. With the help of Oberlin’s Bonner Center for Community-Engaged Learning, Teaching, and Research, she met Peter Ogbuji, a long-time community organizer and activist in the city of Lorain. His connections led her to the Salvation Army Lorain Corps where the director, Lieutenant Jimmy, and his staff were excited about the possibilities of this musical program for the kids in their after school program, the Learning Zone, for kids K-7th grade.

In that first semester, the collaboration lasted just 6 weeks, but the kids learned a lot, had fun, and put on an “informance”, an informal performance, that we called GongFest. One of the awesome things about this performance was that the little kids got to see Jennifer’s big kids play gamelan and the big kids got to see how awesome the little kids were. Plus, everyone got to mingle and snack during the intermission.

Spring 2018

Now in its second iteration, the program now lasted the whole semester, rather than just part of it. Some of the Oberlin students from the Fall decided to keep helping with the program. Since they had more time together to make music, they were able to create some fun and unique projects together. When Lieutenant Jimmy and the director of the Learning Zone saw the college students reading the musical notation used for gamelan, they thought maybe the kids at the Learning Zone could learn that, too, and requested they we help them learn. So the kids learned a children’s song called “Tukang Kayu” (The Carpenter) so they could learn the special notation of Javanese gamelan. The other special thing the kids did that semester was write their own song! They wrote the lines of the song and then composed the music about the jungle, inventing their own notation. At the end of the semester, the Bang on the Gong participants joined again with the Oberlin gamelan ensemble to put on GongFest 2, this time at the Cat in the Cream which has awesome cookies! The kids even taught the audience the Carpenter song so they could join in.

Fall 2018

In Fall of 2018, Jennifer wanted to keep the program going. She checked in with Lieutenant Jimmy at the Salvation Army and he was excited to keep the collaboration going. There were new teachers at the Learning Zone and new children, and Jennifer told them that everyone was welcome to participate in Bang on a Gong. Jennifer had two facilitators who continued to join her, and she taught another college course involving five new facilitators. In September, we participated in the Firefish Festival in downtown Lorain. This semester, we decided to create a story about the ocean this time: the kids chose their characters, wrote the story, and made their own puppets! This time our performance was held at the Salvation Army for family and friends in Lorain. Everyone really liked what they had created together.

In Spring of 2019, the kids and adults were still excited to make music with Jennifer and her students, but they weren’t able to travel to Oberlin to use the instruments there. So, Jennifer and her students put their heads together to come up with a way to create music together without all of the gamelan instruments. It was a hard challenge! Jennifer and her students came up with many ideas and brought as many instruments as they could with them to the excited kids. They brought some drums, some music sticks, and a few small gongs from a different part of Indonesia. Spring 2019 brought a lot of new things into Bang on a Gong. Everyone learned how to beatbox, to make a musical groove, and learned which parts of music they liked. They even created a way to write down the patterns of music they created.

Fall 2019-Spring 2020

The Bang on a Gong program took a break in the Fall of 2019 to allow Jennifer and her students to learn more things and brainstorm new ideas for collaborative projects. They were doing a lot of reading and learning. In the beginning of 2020, Jennifer found more students who were interested in helping with this program and connected with a new community partner excited about the program. We were all set to start making music together in April of 2020, but unfortunately, that is when the coronavirus in the United States made it unsafe for us to gather together in person and make music. At first, Jennifer and her students were sad that they wouldn’t get to make music with a new group of kids and community partners. Then, they remembered that they had been working on a website and they would be able to post videos and pictures of activities that people could do while they were at home! It wouldn’t be quite what they had planned, but it would still be fun and they would get to facilitate music making all over the country!

The Bang on a Gong program plans to start again in person in Fall of 2021 (Jennifer is taking a break to work on other projects during Fall 2020-Spring 2021), but until then, we hope the program continues online and in your houses! Check out some fun musical projects to do in your home on our Activities page!