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
American Gamelan Institute around the world. The directories for North America (Canada and the U.S.), are maintained by Barbara Benary. In the early 1990s, AGI produced three gamelan festivals called "Planet Gamelan." The American Gamelan Institute is the publisher of all gamelan works by the American composer Lou Harrison, who built gamelan instruments with his partner William Colvig. American Gamelan Institute The American Gamelan Institute (AGI) is an organization devoted to promoting and documenting all forms of gamelan, the performing arts of Indonesia, and their international counterparts. The Institute was founded in Berkeley, California in 1981; the office moved to New Hampshire in