In Sepember 2024, Toronto musician, composer and educator Andrew Timar became the first Canadian to receive the highly regarded AKI or Anugerah Kebudayaan Indonesia 2024 cultural award. The award is issued each year by the Indonesian Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology.
Andrew was one of only three recipients of the AKI Award in the Foreign Institutions and Individuals category, the other recipients hailing from Poland and Netherlands. Timar received the Certificate of Merit in person in Jakarta from I Gusti Agung Wesaka Puja, Executive Director of the ASEAN Institute for Peace & Reconciliation.
The Certificate of Merit notes Timar’s “expertise as artist, composer, gamelan and suling player, teacher, researcher, hybrid gamelan music activist in Canada, and his dedication to the advancement of Indonesian culture.”
Along with a commemorative gold pin that depicts the Garuda bird-like figure of Indonesian legend, the Award comes with a cash prize of 100 million Rupiah (about $8,825 CAD).
Timar’s recognition comes after decades of work, both in Toronto as a musician, composer, and co-founder of the Evergreen Contemporary Gamelan Club, and as a frequent visitor and collaborator with Indonesian musicians.
He was also Gamelan Course Director at York University and Royal Conservatory of Music. in 2000 he founded the Gamelan Program at the Toronto District School Board which has been hosted by over 100 schools.
We spoke to him about the AKI Award, and working as a musician and composer for the gamelan in Toronto.
Andrew Timar and The Gamelan
The trip to Jakarta was newly over when LvT caught up to Timar. “It’s finally back down to earth. It was quite a trip to Indonesia and back,” he says.
Where did his fascination with Indonesian music begin?
“I have training in ethnomusicology back in my undergrad days,” he recalls. “I was always interested in music from other places outside the Eurocentric tradition.”
He began to discover Indonesian and other non-Eurocentric music with LP albums back in the 1960s. He’d go on to study in California, where an American aficionado introduced him to the gamelan. While in Cali, he studied gamelan degung and suling with Sundanese master musician Burhans Sukarma. He first met colleague Jon Siddall, who also studied and performed gamelan in California, at York University in the 1970s.
Siddall wanted to start a gamelan orchestra in Canada to play contemporary music, and in 1983, he purchased the instruments to kick start the project from scratch.
“I said, what??” Timar recalls. “There was no gamelan course in Canada. There was nothing!”
But start, it did, and Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan is still active today, 41 years later. Despite its longevity, however, Indonesian music is still not common to find in mainstream concert halls. “The idea of a gamelan is still a mystery to the majority of Canadians.” Timar has not only performed with the ensemble from its inception, but composed dozens of the works that Evergreen perform. Evergreen looks to use the gamelan in contemporary compositions that drawn on traditional music, but other sources as well. Timar has Western classical music training.
The gamelan isn’t a single instrument, it’s an orchestra of traditional Indonesian percussion and other musical instruments. The instruments are often ornate and hand-made, and can consist of gongs, drums, cymbals, xylophones, and others, along with bamboo flutes and string instruments.
Timar plays the suling, a ring flute made of bamboo or cane, and blown at one end.
“In Canada, I’m the pioneer of this thing,” he says. Despite the low recognition for gamelan or Indonesian music overall in North America, he believes some inroads have been made by people like him who have been teaching the art as well. “I’ve been doing my best over the last decades,” he says of his efforts at educating a new generation in the music.
The AKI Award
“It was a bit of a process,” he says of the nomination procedures. Officially, he was nominated by the Indonesian General Consul in Toronto. Timar has been working with their office for four decades organizing a community gamelan group, workshops, concerts and educational outreach projects. An artist who he met some 22 years ago in Jakarta also nominated him.
“I was flattered, but I felt that I had about the chance of a snowball in Jakarta,” he says. He notes that his own suling teachers had been nominated previously, and did not receive the award. He notes that the award reflects Indonesian cultural values and political aims.
To his surprise, he got the notice of his win a scant two weeks before the ceremony. “The ministerial letter announcing my award, and what I needed to do, was quite extensive,” he says, saying it led to an intense 2-hour meeting. “I was very pleased, of course, but daunted by what’s ahead.”
Still, it was a unique honour and opportunity not to be passed up. “It’s an honour as the first Canadian.”
The trip to the ceremony in Jakarta was fruitful in other ways. He reconnected with a colleague he’d first met back in 1988. “It’s kind of a milestone for me, and a very important one,” Andrew says.
It’s also led to a new tour that he’ll take in Indonesia in 2025. “I met with a number of folks there, both musicians, dancers that I’ve known during my career, and also new ones, the dean of a university who’s interested in my work (and others). Those kind of folks were interested in what I was doing.”
He notes that Indonesia is a large, multicultural country where more than 700 regional languages are spoken. The gamelan and its traditions are relevant specifically to Java and Bali.
“There’s some interesting parallels to Canada,” he says. “The people I’ve met are very hip.”
Contemporary Canadian music for the gamelan isn’t traditional music, that’s understood. “I’m not a spokesperson for any other culture than my own. By definition, that makes my work a hybrid,” he says. “I’ve been negotiating these cultural bridges for four decades. Mutual respect is important.”
The AKI Award suggests that his brand of Indonesian fusion has found its audience. Music, as always, can build bridges where diplomats have difficulty.
“It’s fantastic to be recognized abroad.”
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