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Posted By: AnnaStrophic Time for a music thread! (Bingley?) - 12/03/03 01:02 AM
I was just listening to Peter Schickele (he of PDQ Bach), who does a weekly program on NPR on all kinds of musics, with themes and such. This week he featured some Javanese and Balinese gamelan pieces. I love this and have a couple of albums but am wondering -- too much of it puts me into a trance and that's not always convenient -- he mentioned some arrangements by Keith Jarrett, and what I'd like to know from you Bingley is if there are any recordings you know of and could recommend?

Posted By: Bingley Re: Time for a music thread! (Bingley?) - 12/05/03 08:15 AM
Not really. Most of the recordings here are probably purely local and wouldn't be available elsewhere.

Bingley
check here:
http://www.worldmusicstore.com/store.asp

my friend runs this, so if you can't find anything you like I can talk to him and see what he can find. another friend of mine runs the Gamelan here in town, and may have something available. I once had a recording of the Monkey Chant, not sure where that is.

Posted By: Bingley Re: Time for a music thread! (Bingley?) - 12/06/03 06:23 AM
Monkey Chant sounds like the kecak dance. The story of the Ramayana is told through dance, but there is no music, only about 50 or 100 guys representing monkeys and chanting kecak kecak kecak at varying tempos, pitches, and volumes.

I think orchestral music like gamelan is very much seen as background music here rather than an art form in its own right. There's certainly no tradition of going to a gamelan concert. You might go to an event and there will be gamelan playing in the background, but you wouldn't normally be going for the gamelan itself. With wayang kulit, for example, the focus will be on the dalang (the puppetmaster) rather than on the gamelan accompanying him.

Bingley
Monkey Chant sounds like the kecak dance.

yep! that's it. I couldn't remember. it's great! (if you like that sort of thing! real organinc Philip Glass...)

I think here, gamelan is becoming a bit more of a concert event. although our local gamelan doesn't play that often, and sometimes they are background music at a fair or something, people usually gather around and listen.

my elementary students and I once made a fair copy by using xylophones and tuned coffee cans to accompany a shadow puppet show. great fun!

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