ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how both creative teaching and creative learning can function in two contrasting non-Western cultures. In 1977, the Indonesian embassy in London acquired what was the first complete, playable Javanese gamelan in the UK. Both Indian and Javanese culture can be described as inherently conservative. Innovation is valued, and indeed occurs in every good performance, albeit in subtle ways that may not be apparent to all, and there are even some outrageously experimental new gamelan pieces, but iconoclasm based on ignorance is unlikely to gain the same respect. Along with the revolution in music education, which brought music closer to art and crafts by placing creativity above indirect traditional approaches, came a filtering down of the subdiscipline of ethnomusicology from higher to primary and secondary education. Music can be taught by example rather than by verbal explanation, which is how Indian musicians will teach.
