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Thursday, November 19, 2009

Gamelan



It happens I'm a fond Gamelan music scholar (trying to play it on properly tuned acoustic guitar and Echoplex - i.e. my "Loops in Faboola" project...) - with both sampled and real tablas, dumbek and mrdigham percussions - since early '00s!) and hard-core lover since my month-long stay in Ubud, Bali some years ago, still much lovingly remembered...

After that stay, I re-listened several times to McPhee's "Tabuh-Tabuhan" and Lou Harrison's works with a brand-new ear...

Of great support on the matter has been - in the years - a book: "Balinese Music" by Michael Tenzer - Periplus Editions Inc. - Berkeley 1991 - ISBN 0-945971-30-3.

The Gamelan-related bibliography and discography section are well worth the search and purchase of the above mentioned book.

Must be said that this very music fully blossoms at its best during Balinese traditional funerals... still cherishing the remembrance with shivers of a ceremony on a beach, with a huge fire, percussions and olfattive hintings... a blend impossible to forget, indeed.

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