TheAmerican Gamelan Institute (AGI) is an organization devoted to promoting and documenting all forms ofgamelan, the performing arts ofIndonesia, and their international counterparts.
The institute was founded byJody Diamond inBerkeley, California, in 1981.[1] The office moved toHanover, New Hampshire, in 1990.[2] AGI publishes scores, recordings, monographs, translations and other material. AGI has an online library with a wide variety of monographs, collections of notation, and a font for the cipher notation commonly used for gamelan, called KepatihanPro. These materials may be freely downloaded for educational use. AGI maintains an extensive archive of notation and scores for both new and traditional gamelan music, scholarly writings on gamelan, as well as audio and video recordings.[1]
The organization's scope includes gamelan music as practiced in Indonesia as well as around the world. The journalBalungan was started in 1984 to encourage a dialog between artists and scholars involved in gamelan.[3] Current and back issues ofBalungan are on line, and many libraries have subscriptions. The sixteenth issue was printed in December 2010.
AGI also has apodcast, calledGongcast, and hosts directories of gamelan groups around the world. The directories for North America (Canada and the U.S.), are maintained byBarbara Benary. In the early 1990s, AGI produced three gamelan festivals called "Planet Gamelan".[4]
AGI is the publisher of all gamelan works by the American composerLou Harrison, who built gamelan instruments with his partnerWilliam Colvig.