Gamelan Council non-partisan consulting firm created under the aegis of Global Student Response (GSR) and focused on supporting international development efforts which has since been disbanded. As GCG’s efforts became more geographically focused on the Asia-Pacific region and thematically focused on microfinance and public health developmental issues, the Gamelan Council formed to focus specifically on these areas. The name of the organization is a combination of the Indonesian word referring to a music ensemble, ‘Gamelan,’ and an English word referring to a Native American, community-fostering ritual, ‘Council’ (the same term used to refer commonly to a group of individuals providing advice and
Gamelan outside Indonesia instruction by a community arts organization, which gave its first performance in May 1978. The organization incorporated in 1980 as Friends of the Gamelan and continues to perform with two central Javanese gamelan sets that it has acquired. Many schools, universities and other institutions in North America own sets of gamelan instruments. These gamelans are typically played by mixed-gender groups of students, a practice that is rare in Indonesia for religious reasons. Among the earliest such groups were Wesleyan University and UCLA. Established institutional gamelan ensembles in the U.S. include Gamelan Nyai Saraswati at University of North Carolina at Chapel