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
Indonesian art "[[gambuh]]" and "[[topeng]]", Javanese "[[wayang wong]], [[ketoprak]]" and "[[ludruk]]"; Betawi "[[lenong]]"; Sundanese "[[sandiwara]]"; also colonial "[[toneel]]". [[File:Wayang Kulit - Museum Wayang 02.jpg|thumb|right|Indonesian Javanese "[[wayang kulit]]" shadow puppet.]] "Wayang" refer to a theatrical performance with puppets or human dancers. When the term is used to refer to kinds of puppet theatre, sometimes the puppet itself is referred to as "wayang." Performances of [[Shadow play|shadow puppet]] theatre is known as "wayang kulit", are accompanied by a "[[gamelan]]" orchestra in [[Java (island)|Java]], and by "[[Gamelan gender wayang|gender wayang]]" in [[Bali]]. It has been developed into a complete and refined artform, especially in Java