According to legend, Balinese music began as a way of speaking to the gods. The Javanese tale tells of a god-king on a high mountain who forged the first gong to summon the heavens, then cast two more as his messages grew more complex. From those few notes came the gamelan, the bronze orchestra at the centre of music across Java and Bali ever since.

Sound is deeply embedded in everyday life in Bali. The island is often said to have the greatest concentration of musicians anywhere in the world: around fifteen hundred orchestras among just three million people, and hardly a village without one. It marks births, weddings and farewells, and fills temples on holy days, as essential as incense and flowers.

The gamelan brings together bronze gongs, metal chimes and drums, with ensembles ranging from a handful of performers to several dozen. What sets the orchestra apart is its shimmer. The gongs and chimes are tuned in pairs, each one set a little apart from its partner, so the two seem to ripple against one another. The Balinese have a name for it, ombak, meaning wave. No two gamelan ensembles sound quite alike: each is made and tuned as a single set, blessed by a priest and owned collectively by the village.

That reverence extends to the playing itself. Central to it is taksu, a grace or presence believed to come from the gods and settle on a performer. It is why a dancer with less technical skill can hold a room more completely than a flawless one; they possess taksu, and everyone feels it. Considered a gift, it is cultivated slowly through devotion and sincerity rather than talent alone. Yet taksu belongs to more than just people. It can rest in a carved mask, a painting, even a place: the Balinese speak of the taksu of the island itself, a living energy they take care to protect.

If the gamelan is Bali's grand voice, the rindik is its everyday one: gentler, sweeter, and often the first melody a visitor hears. In form, it is beautifully simple: a row of bamboo tubes of different lengths, laid in a wooden frame and struck with soft mallets. Two people usually play it together, sitting across from one another, hands weaving in and out until the two parts become a single tune. The sound is warm and welcoming, with melodies providing a sense of tranquillity and spiritual connection. 

Rindik comes from the rice fields. Farmers first played it to pass the long hours of the harvest, and in some villages it is still offered to Dewi Sri, the rice goddess, in thanks. It later accompanied a flirtatious village dance, in which a woman selects a partner from the crowd with a flick of her fan. Made by hand and tuned by ear, it holds centuries of island life in something light enough to travel. 

At Jumeirah Bali, on the limestone coast of Uluwatu, it is also one of the sounds of arrival. The resort takes its architectural cues from the island's Hindu-Javanese heritage, unfolding through monumental gateways, courtyards and water gardens above the Indian Ocean. Among the first details guests may register is not architectural at all, but musical: the clipped, woody notes of the rindik carrying through the open spaces.

The instrument can later be encountered at closer quarters. During the resort's rindik sessions, guests sit with Balinese musicians to learn how the instrument works before attempting its basic notes and patterns themselves. The apparent simplicity is deceptive. Producing a note requires little more than striking bamboo with a mallet; understanding how that note fits into a composition - and how one player's part relates to another - is another matter.

That distinction reveals something fundamental about Balinese music. Much of its complexity is collective. Interlocking parts rely on players listening closely to one another, each contributing only a portion of what the audience ultimately hears. A beginner may be able to pick out a short phrase relatively quickly, but the music's fluency comes from repetition, memory and the instinctive exchange between musicians accustomed to playing together.

For a visitor, that may be the more interesting lesson. The rindik is not a miniature version of Bali's grander musical traditions, nor simply the gentle music heard in hotel lobbies. It belongs to a broader musical culture that has moved between fields, villages, dance performances, ceremonies and contemporary hospitality without becoming fixed in any one of them.

And perhaps that is why it makes such a persuasive introduction to the island. Bali is often encountered first through its images - temple gates, rice terraces, offerings laid on pavements, the Indian Ocean below Uluwatu's cliffs. The rindik asks the visitor to pay attention to something less visible: the way a culture can also be understood by listening to it.