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 Gadhon (end-blown bamboo flute), and siter (plucked stringed instrument). Vocal parts called gerong (for male singers) or sindhen (for female singers) can be added in certain sections of pieces, as can alok, vocal cries that accent certain parts of the form or melody. Gamelan Gadhon A Gamelan Gadhon is an ensemble consisting of the "soft" instruments of the Javanese gamelan. This can include rebab, gendér, gendér panerus, voice, slenthem, suling, siter, gong, kempul, kenong and kendhang. The rebab, a two-stringed fiddle, is the melodic leader of the ensemble. The rebab player signals changes between sections of a piece, and to a