Gamelan

According to the globe-trotting musicians of Balungan, however, the train à grande vitesse is already at the station. The 13-member band kicks off its debut, Kudu Bisa Kudu, with the nostalgic steam whistle and intentionally garbled boarding call of “Javanese TGV”, but as soon as Franck Testut’s driving bassline gears ups, it’s clear that we’re riding a 21st-century conveyance. Gang vocals, hairpin-curve guitars, and accelerating arpeggios played on tuned percussion also announce that this is a multicultural journey—and in fact the group is made up of seven of Java’s most open-minded gamelan virtuosos, plus six equally adventurous rock musicians from the south of France.

Among the many composers who have drawn inspiration from the music of Indonesia, the one whose outlook became most pervaded by the structure of gamelan music may be Barbara Benary (b 1946), co-founder and guiding spirit of New York's Gamelan Son of Lion. A quiet, self-effacing presence on the New York music scene for almost four decades now, Benary has maintained a low profile, but behind the scenes she is well connected. A child of Manhattan's conceptualist movement, she was the designated violinist of early minimalism, a pioneer in American gamelan, and an early example of an increasingly frequent type, the ethnomusicologist-turned-composer.

Lou Harrison's ambitious composition "La Koro Sutro" (translated from Esperanto as "Heart Sutra") does not simply borrow from the gamelan tradition of Indonesia. An Americanized gamelan ensemble, with instruments built by William Colvig utilizing more Western tunings, allows Harrison's composition a new, more stable sonic texture, and the ability to add various different percussive sounds that build on the virtues of the ancient metallophone. The American gamelan is complemented by the 100-voice choir of the University of California, Berkeley, along with harp, violin and organ players, and percussion instruments consisting of inverted metal garbage cans, bell-like oxygen tanks with stripped bottoms, brake drums, aluminum sheets, and a gigantic over six-foot triple contrabass metallophone made of huge PVC pipes, tin can resonators, and steel and aluminum components.

A historic live recording celebrating the 40th anniversary of a landmark cultural moment including performances by Echo & The Bunnymen, Peter Gabriel, Simple Minds, The Beat, The Drummers of Burundi, The Musicians of the Nile and many more.