KALAMAYA FOUNDATION
opposite of PARAMOUNT EMOTIONS, Sector 1, Aimnabad, Bisrakh Jalalpur, Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201318, India
Kalamaya Foundation is a quietly influential music and arts organization rooted in Bandung, West Java, whose outward modesty belies the depth of its mission. Occupying a renovated 1920s art–deco villa at Jalan Batu No. 8—its ochre façade half-swallowed by climbing bougainvillea—the Foundation feels less like an institution and more like a living house of sound. Inside, narrow hardwood corridors lead to three distinct spaces: a daylight-flooded rehearsal studio whose sprung bamboo floor is marked with decades of scuffs from dance and gamelan practice; a 90-seat “living-room” theatre where chairs can be cleared in seconds for silent-meditation concerts at sunrise; and an open-air patio that doubles as an intimate recording booth for birdsong, becak bells, and passing monsoon rain.
The Foundation was founded in 1989 by ethnomusicologist Dr. Sri Kalamaya Hadisumarta and sound-artist Rama “Maya” Permadi. Originally envisioned as an archive for rare Sundanese laras pelog tapes their parents had rescued from dying cassette stalls, the couple quickly realized those tapes were only the opening phrase of a larger story. Today Kalamaya’s archival vault contains over 12,000 field recordings—elderly talempong players in Agam, bamboo zithers from remote Waktu Telu ceremonies on Lombok, and the last complete version of the Tembang Sunda Cianjuran sung by the late Raden Eulis. The entire catalog is digitized at 96 kHz and is streamed free on their low-bandwidth website, an act of quiet resistance against corporate enclosure of heritage.
Yet Kalamaya is not a museum; it is a laboratory. Resident fellows—limited to four at a time—are given a modest living stipend and 24-hour access to the studio. Recent projects include Sinta Wullur’s microtonal metallophone prototype, Dewi Gita’s ambient-gamelan set built from up-cycled handphone housings, and an AI-driven “conversation” between Sundanese kacapi and Minangkabau talempong coded by young Bandung programmers. Every Wednesday night, the Foundation opens the patio to the public for “Nada Diskur,” a salon where scholars, buskers, and EDM producers debate tuning systems over copper kettles of Bandrek. Admission is always pay-as-you-wish, often settled in freshly-picked avocados.
Kalamaya’s most radical gesture may be its governance structure: a rotating council of nine artists—six human curators, two algorithmic “listeners” trained on the archive’s metadata, and one seat left deliberately empty to symbolize the yet-to-be-heard. Grants are never decided by résumés; applicants simply upload one unheard sound that changed them, and council members vote without names attached. In 2023 alone, the scheme funded a deaf children’s choir’s tactile choir performance and a Javan rhinoceros bio-acoustic conservation score. On quiet afternoons the villa smells of sandalwood incense and kopi robusta, and if you sit on the front steps long enough, a volunteer will appear, offering headphones and a whispered invitation: “Dengarkan, ini pagi masih belum memutuskan nada-nya” (“Listen, the morning hasn’t yet decided its pitch”).
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- Published: August 6, 2025
