gtaylor@cornell.UUCP (04/24/84)
The response to my little mention of the gamelan-derivative rambunctiousness of Other Music has been MUCH heavier than I'd ever have predicted. But it appears that I should have said a few things about the availability of regular Gamelan stuff out there. Beyond that, I'd like to recommend a whole series of albums to you: Gamelan: This is a genre of music (the name referring to the collection of instruments, like "orchestra" in English), which shows an enormous variety all over Indonesia. You'll find three basic styles of play, each of which is related to a geographic area of Indonesia. Gamelan from BALI uses a vigourous, syncopated style known as kebyar-its what most Americans have heard and the stuff that Steve Reich looted for ideas (See Nonesuch Explorer series "Music from the Morning of the World"). The music of Sunda isn't really well represented that I know of, but uses long sinewy flute lines similar in construction to some Indian flute work.(No Records I can think of).JAVA produces what you could sort of think of as the "fine art" tradition. It's considerably more refined and gentle, and has quite a lot of vocal tradition associated with (as is not surprising, the vocalizing makes Western singing seem like a simple case of "hitting the pitch", but is hard to listen to for somw ears)it. I'd recommend the Nonesuch "Javanese Court Gamelan" albums. There are three of them, from three different court centers in Java. Volume 2 from Surakarta is my favourite, and seems to have the greatest variety. There is also a recording of music for the wayang, and a very western sounding gamelan on "gamelan of the Love God" that you might like. It's the closest in sound to Sundanese, I think. Other Music from Who Knows Where: You might want to find a store that can get the OCORA label for you. It's the official label of the French Broadcasters RTF, and their series on world music is uniformly excellent. The recordings are marvelous (as opposed to the average Ethno field buzzfest), and I have yet to hear one that did not manage to stir my sense of wonder. There are two really nice OCORA gamelan records out there, too:"Joged Bumbung" is a sort of poorman's gamelan played in Bali, and made of bamboo. An example of the Indonesian flair for makin do and coming up with something of inventive beauty. There is also an album of Javanese royal court music that is marvelous. They make very nice gifts for your friends who haven't had their sense of wonder bludgeoned into submission yet g(Not an enginEAR)taylor@cornell
emjej@uokvax.UUCP (04/29/84)
#R:cornell:-771100:uokvax:4000027:000:194 uokvax!emjej Apr 28 08:52:00 1984 For more music inspired by gamelan (well, the pelog scale, anyway), I recommend Neil Ardley's *Kaleidoscope of Rainbows* (on the "Gull" label, I think a subsidiary of Decca). James Jones