24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Rare Moment in Balinese Music, Timeless and Teasured!!!, September 21, 2001
This review is from: Bali: Roots of Gamelan (Audio CD)
Very extraordinary cd, its not everyday that one would come along and find a cd with such wonderful music apart from the constant hissing since they where recorded on old records. This has to be one of the earliest recordings of Balinese gamelan music before the war or ever in the whole world when Bali was just opening up to tourism in the 1930s. Most of the records often indicated that the musicians were actually experimenting with new repertoires for the kebyar style which took Bali by storm a few years after the puputan massacre. This style was just slowly beginning to take root as I can still hear from the playing style they have taken repertoires from gamelan gong gede and transplanted it into the new and more modern kebyar style. The recording still has traits of that distinct old style gong gede and pelegongan from the metallophones and large boss gongs as it slowly punctuates through each track, yet the music didnt show any fast tempos, it was stately and grand but over the decades with some recordings the tempo has gone from stately to really fast and chaotic at times. Apart from the tempo speeding up over the decades, the gong gede playing style also disappeared moving away from its early beginnings as kebyar style was taking its true form that we often hear today, but somewhere along the line the gong gede style goes unnoticed and is very hard to pick up in the music and the only possible give away would be the title or the name of the piece being played which will determine whether its secular or ceremonial piece, or when the piece is to be played on the more ancient orchestras that the piece was intended. This has to be the original recordings to Balinese gamelan music.
Other orchestras included gamelan pelegongan which was a five tone version of the seven tone semar pegulingan or better known as music for the royal bedroom or music from the God of Love Semara. The gamelan pelegongan carried wonderful virtuosic sounds and repertoires from the semar pegulingan which soon became are and faded with the royal aristocracy. The sounds were divine with the light sounds, tones and colours of the music being performed for the recording. Apart from gong kebyar and pelegongan there were also gender wayang quartet with their mysterious and shimmering tones as musicians struck each key. Jangger I found was much similar to the kecak that was performed for tourists yet it was also a little bit different because it contained female vocals a rebab which is a two-stringed fiddle and a frame drum making this particularly unusual in the chanting sounding as though if it was a tribal dance. Gamelan angklung was really sweet in sound and in texture. The vibrant tones were bitter sweet and often I could actually pick out in the background the angklung or bamboo rattles which were shaken accompanying the orchestra, however with time angklung had disappeared and has only remained in name for the orchestra making it much rarer to hear in the recording.
There were also transcription of ceremonial music by Colin Mcphee and Benjamin Britten on piano which was wonderful I found it very interesting to see that the Colin Mcphee and his partner were actually experimenting with the music and it did make a contrast one piece that I was familiar with was track 19 Pemungkah that would be used at any ceremony at an opening piece. Track 19 Pemungkah is similar in playing style to Gamelan Music of Bali recorded by Deben Bhattacharya in track 2 Mahabharata (from a shadow play called Wayan Kulit) which played an exact opening piece in the same repertoire. Also there were transcriptions by Georges Barrere playing the flute with Colin Mcphee as the pianist.
I found this cd to be a wonderful and rare moment in music because, Colin Mcphee had put so much effort into his study of Balinese music that he made recordings that were to be or supposed to be publicised to the whole world in the form of a 78 rpm discs. The contents are pretty rare, despite the constant hissing. I guess the musicians in the gamelan where also experimenting with music and they showed a lot of skill in the playing style. The contents were great and the booklet contained a lot of information that was well researched regarding each track which is useful for the listener which is I am happy to comment on. There were a few photos including the famous composer I Wayan Lotring and a few other photos which make it more wonderful to see rare photos of musicians playing with their musical instruments. I can recommend this cd to anyone who is interested regarding the first recordings of gamelan music development with the radical kebyar style in Bali which started a few years after the Dutch takeover of Bali as well as the gamelan pelegongan, gender wayang etc I give it the thumbs up.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Shame there's not more of this., August 11, 2010
This review is from: Bali: Roots of Gamelan (Audio CD)
Remarkably good sound for something that is almost a century old. It's unlikely there exists much more recorded music from Indonesia from before this time so I guess we should be grateful for this.
It's a small shame that the focus is on Bali. It would have been special to have recordings from across the archipelago alongside the Balinese gamelan presented here. Perhaps, somewhere, such stuff still exists. Mudah-mudahan....
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1 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful!, November 26, 2002
This review is from: Bali: Roots of Gamelan (Audio CD)
A worthy addition to any music lover's collection.
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