Leilani Hermiasih, M.A.

Forschung

My work sits at the intersection of ethnomusicology, affect theory, and the cultural politics of traditional arts—with a long-term focus on Javanese gamelan music and the institutions that transmit it.

My doctoral dissertation offers a contemporary account of rasa—the concept of feeling, sensation, and musical affectivity central to Central Javanese karawitan—as it is experienced, learned, and contested among academic gamelan musicians. Drawing on life story interviews, fieldwork, and self-learning practice, the study follows lecturers, students, and alumni of the Karawitan Department at Institut Seni Indonesia Surakarta, examining how rasa is shaped not only by personal sensibility but by pedagogical ideology, national cultural politics, and technological change. The research reconceptualizes rasa through a relational affect framework—as a mode of attunement to dynamic sensations across body and environment—situating it within the tensions between institutionalization and living practice.