It’s a gender wayang, a smaller type of gamelan that can be played by two or four people. Some people consider it harder to play than the larger gamelan because you have to use two mallets and play both the melody and interlocking patterns, a little like a piano, but I think it’s easier to teach, in part because you don’t need as many people to start a group.

I learned to play the gamelan by watching performers in my village, but this was the first instrument I took lessons to learn to play. I began taking lessons when I was 10, and two months later my teacher (who was also my father, I Gusti Ketut Kerta) thought I was ready for my first performance in front of people. I was so small I needed to sit on a stool to reach the keys, and the day of the ceremony my father forgot the stool. They found me one but it had a broken leg, and I was shaking and sweating the whole time.

After that we did a longer performance with a shadow-puppet master. He started doing pieces I didn’t know, and I had to sit there while the other three musicians played them. I was embarrassed, but from that experience I understood that you need to know a lot of pieces of music and a lot of instruments. Now I can play the drums, I can play flute — whatever they ask, I can do it.

— Interview by Matt Hughes