Western Melodies, Eastern Instruments
Dr. Debra Jan Bibel | Oakland, CA USA | 07/21/2009
(3 out of 5 stars)
"Having learned how to play gamelan from Jody Diamond in the early 1980s, I was curious about this recording and found a very curious album of her compositions, with her as vocalist. After all, she opens by singing Wayfaring Stranger and ends with a Jewish Sabbath song. There is even a quote of the Balinese Kecak Ramayana monkey chant. The musicians at the Indonesian Institute of the Arts in Surakarta, Central Java, do occasionally play old Western tunes, so it is not out of character for them to assist in this fusion. Therefore, these pieces involve Javanese instruments and we do hear the Javanese musical style of layered rhythms and musical idioms and accents, in much the same way as classical composer Lou Harrison was influenced by Indonesian music in creating an American gamelan and writing music in slendro mode. But we would not regard either as contemporary Indonesian music. What then about the music itself? It all seems to be a preliminary experiment: some interesting tracks, some silly, some too contrived. It is a curio, and for that it may be worthwhile to own."