Answer:
- I think there is no strong connection with Mindanao and if there was any, it probably flowed from Java north to the Philippines.
Explanation:
Gamelan was most likely brought to Java by Indian immigrants around the first century, something confirmed by old carvings of a gamelan on mountains in India. There are stone carvings on the Borobudur as well, showing gamelan-styled instruments. Javanese tradition has it that the god Sang Hyang Guru, living up Mount Lau, used a gong to summon all other deities together and as the messages from these deities became more complex. It has been suggested that somewhere in the year Saka 167 -that’s 230 AD- this god started to use a set of three gongs with different pitches, which in effect became the very first gamelan.
The gamelan was therefore considered a sacred instruments, able to communicate with the gods and in those days often had only three tones and three gongs. Later, the kakawin poems such as the Arjunawijaya, written in the 11th to 15th centuries, mention gamelans played in courts at weddings or parties. These poems could also be recited with an accompanying gamelan. A few centuries later, when Islam was adopted in Java, so did all kinds of string instruments that were carried across the oceans to Java. By that time gamelan has also branched out to accompany wayang, dance and theatre performances as well as rituals, life events and, more recently, tourist entertainment in hotel lobbies.
Over time, different styles evolved as more tones and instruments were added to this earliest of gamelans and eventually, the classic “Central Java” style emerged, considered the oldest of all, from which later a Sundanese -more percussion and flutes and general improvization-, a Balinese -generally lauder and wilder in style- and an eastern Java style emerged. In a sense, gamelan was used to forge regional identities.
The oldest still functioning gamelans are in the Solo and Yogyakarta courts and said to date from the twelfth century and many of them are still considered sacred. They carry the mark of the sultan and people give incense and flower offerings on special nights to the gamelan’s largest gong. But it was later, somewhere in the seventeenth century, when more instruments such as suspended kettles hating from a frame were included - that the gamelan as we know it was born.
