American gamelan materials including aluminum, tin cans, car hubcaps, steel, antique milk-strainers, etc. "American gamelan" may also describe the original music of American ensembles working with traditional instruments. Dennis Murphy is often credited as being the first American to build instruments modeled on those of the Javanese gamelan, circa 1960. This work led to his doctoral thesis at Wesleyan University, entitled "The Autochthonous American Gamelan". Murphy started a gamelan group with his instruments at Goddard College in Vermont in 1967; that group later became the community-based Plainfield Village Gamelan. There have been other American builders of gamelan as well, on both the
Gamelan in Central Javanese villages. Gamelan is also related to the Filipino "kulintang" ensemble. The variety of gamelan can befound in over 25 countries outside Indonesia, presenting both traditional and experimental repertoire. In oral Javanese culture distinctions are made between complete or incomplete, archaic and modern, and large standard and small village gamelan. The various archaic ensembles are distinguished by their unique combinations of instruments and possession of obsolete instruments such as the bell-tree ("byong") in the 3-toned "gamelan kodhok ngorek". Regionally variable village gamelan are often distinguished from standard gamelan (which have the "rebab" as the main melodic instrument) by