altsounding's Podcast: Recent Episodes
Dave M
altsoundings podcast offers a diverse range of soundscapes & performances from Sth Asia, SE Asia & Australia
I've recently been in long term travel mode ... busy documenting in India, Nth Vietnam & Indonesia. Much new material will be uploaded over the next few weeks & months ... including Australian performances & soundscapes.
All recordings & images are by Dave M unless credited to someone else.
NEW: This site is reverting to 'basic' ... as I'm now integrating both sound & image into my own website domain - http://altsoundings.com
Bamboo Clapophone performance - 1.6mins
This beautifully mellow sounding instrument is played by gently clapping in front of the open-ended bamboo tubes. In Australia & elsewhere in the 'west' this instrument is usually known as a thongophone ... due to it being played in a rather less dignified manner by slapping the open-ended tubes with rubber thongs (flip flops).
Another Ngada traditional acappela - 4.7mins
Led by Pak Nardus & his son Nikolas to the left & Armin to the right ... & supported by a chorus of family & friends.
Recorded at night during a 3 day ceremony for Kampung Beiboso near Bajawa hill town in Flores. The ceremony, involving the sacrifice of 128 pigs & 6 buffalo (cut up & cooked on the spot!), is unlikely to be repeated for 50 to 100 years as they are so expensive. Apart from the locals ...several thousand people from surrounding villages attended the ceremony. The traditional acappela singing was performed privately in some kampung houses.
Bamboo Xylophone performance - 1.8mins
Almost a thousand years ago the 'Temple of Literature' was Vietnams first University. Recently restored it's a showcase of Vietnams cultural history & a homage to it's early graduates.
In one of it's pavilions ... traditional folk instrument performances are presented daily.
Folk music performance - 5.8mins
Featuring Mr Pandungon (?) on Violin playing The story of the harvest day. The twice daily concerts are at the ancient 'Hoi An Performance House of Traditional Arts'.
It's in the entrance hall to to the 'Hoi An Artcraft Manufactural Workshop'' ... so there's a lot of noisy traffic back & forth through the concert space.
Rajasthani desert folk tune - 5.5mins
For most of the year you can find Kishna and / or his brother Neru around Gangaur Ghat in Udaipur playing Rajasthani folk tunes from the desert on their rawan-hatta's.
These instruments normally have one main horsehair string and a longer steel string with up to a dozen or more steel sympathetic strings under the bowed ones. The bow uses horsehair and has a cluster of small bells at the tip.
The strings are attached to a bamboo stem one and a half to three feet long which in turn is attached to a half shell of coconut with a goat-skin resonator. Due to the shortage of horse-tails in Udaipur ... they now use a long-lasting thicker nylon main string and violin nylon strings for the bow. The horsehair strings wore out very quickly and the few horse owners in Udaipur started complaining!
Photo: Kishna performing at Gangaur Ghat on Lake Pichola, Udaipur
Rajasthani desert folktune - 3.3mins
For most of the year you can find Neru and/or his brother Kishna on or near Gangaur Ghat in Udaipur playing Rajasthani folktunes from the desert on their ravan-hattas. These instruments normally have one main horsehair string and a longer steel string with up to a dozen or more steel sympathetic strings under the bowed ones. The bow uses horsehair and has a cluster of small bells at the tip.
The strings are attached to a bamboo stem one and a half to three feet long which in turn is attached to a half shell of coconut with a goat-skin resonator. Due to the shortage of horse tails in Udaipur ... they now use a long-lasting thicker nylon main string and violin nylon strings on the bow. The horsehair strings wore out very quickly and the few horse owners in Udaipur started complaining!
Photo: where's Neru?
From Udaipur in Rajasthan - 10.5mins
Shariq has created a new hybrid musical instrument that fuses the best qualities of both the slide-guitar and the traditional Indian sarod. Until he hits on a great name for this new instrument ... Shariq calls it a meditation guitar.
There are 2 self published CD's of this meditation guitar available through Shariqs website. This track is from one of them. It's a relaxing evening raga called Raga Jhinjhoti and is based on Teental rhythm.
Meditation Guitar: Shariq Parvez
Tablas: Raju
Photo credit: Shariq Parvez
An evening with Sitok - 87mins
Leading Indonesian poet Sitok Srengenge presents his poems in bahasa Indonesia ... alternating with Harry Aveling, a prolific translator of Indonesian poetry and prose, providing english readings. One of the published poems later in the evening was read by Geoff Fox ... a long time friend of Sitok. This one is not for the faint hearted ... however Sitok explains the context.
Before Sitok and Harry ... Javant Biarugia, who did an Asialink Writer in Residence to Indonesia around the time of President Suharto's downfall, gives a reading from one of his plays about a Dutch Indo woman's reminiscences of living through the Japanese occupation in the early 40's.
From 25 minutes in ... to the end of the evening it's all Sitok and Harry [& Jeff].
For some idea of the artistic and political forces which Sitok participated in / lived through during his formative student years ... you could read a 1998 article from Inside Indonesia titled "Cleansing the earth"
Bar Open is a great performance venue & bar in Fitzroy Melbourne Australia.
The event was organised by the now defunct Indonesia Interest Group under the umbrella of AsiaLink.
Photo credit: Komunitas Salihara via Flikr
Contemporary OZ music live from the Boite World Music Cafe - 9mins
This is the only performance not fully improvised from a night of improvised music titled 'silouettes scampering' at the famous Boite World Music Cafe in Fitzroy Melbourne Australia.
This moving piece was improvised around a composed section by vocalist/violinist Jess Ipkendanz ... based on a fragment from a poem by Rilke. Their improvisations are stunning.
To quote Jess:
"So the next little number is with me & Mel ... and we've decided to start this improvisation with something written. This is a piece that I wrote just the other day and it's inspired by the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. It's a mourning song for the death of Eurydice and the words that I've taken are just a fragment of the beautiful poem that I was very lucky to have read. If you haven't yet read it ... go read it because it's absolutely stunning. It's by Rilke.
So I've just taken a little fragment of that poem and set it to music. And from there ... we will go forward."
Jess Ipkendanz : voice & violin
Melanie Robinson : Cello
Photo credit: http://www.myspace.com/mrsisterfeaturingmelrobinson/photos/
Singing "the old music from long ago" - 6.4mins
Florian Lengu and the old women take the lead here ... with the rest of the group singing as chorus.
Singing "the old music from long long ago" - 16.6mins
4 ancient, funny and feisty women from Kampung Borani near Bajawa hill town in Flores [Indonesia] grapple with recalling all the words to "the old songs from long long ago". I was informed that there are 2 types of such song forms ... Teke for more formal events ... and Seuaze which is usually sung at more casual occasions such as after a days work in the fields etc. The songs recorded were mostly Seuaze.
The recording here shows this process of summoning the old songs through several takes of a song ... interspersed with various arguments, laughter and remembering new fragments ... taking them straight on to a new take. Finally they all come together for a fairly complete rendition of each song.
Around a half dozen villagers who knew some of the old songs were drawn in to join and fill out the acappella group. Upon completion of the recording session ... the old women seemed immensly pleased to be honoured and given the opportunity to come together and summon the old times.
The recording session took place in the living-room of a long time friend of mine, Florian Lengu, who also organized the event.
Saraswati Festival at Batuan Temple in Bali - 31mins
Originally went to Batuan to hear a friend of a friend, Marcu, and his ASTI Gamelan ensemble at the Batuan Banjar for the Saraswati Festival. Soon I was told there was a leading Dalang Master preparing for a Wayang Kulit/Shadow Puppet performance in the Batuan Temple across the road and I was welcome to enter.
I duly did so. There was already a large audience waiting patiently. I positioned myself at the back of the screen and beside the compact little gamelan group behind the Master Dalang. He was unpacking the puppet figures one at a time and as in a trance appeared to be absorbing their spirit and character before sticking them onto a soft banana (?) trunk by the screen ready to infuse life into them for his story.
The small group played their music in brackets between which the full gamelan performing in the Banjar outside could be heard in the distance. It almost seemed like it was meant to be so. After a long long preparation ... the Dalang began his shadow play performance. Just in front of and above the Dalangs head ... the large flame flickering kerosine lantern projected ghostly shadows of the animated puppet characters onto the screen.
Unfortunately the battery in my DAT walkman died soon after he began. The show continued for many hours into the early morning.
Question: Does anyone know who the "leading Master Dalang in Bali" around 1990 might have been & is he still performing? Or rather ... does anyone know who the Dalang is in this 1990 recording?
North Indian Morning Raga - 49mins
Recorded live at the Kathakali Centre, an excellent performance venue in Fort Kochi Kerala.
Each morning at 8am the Centre provides a 1 hour meditation session with sitar and tabla performing a Nth Indian morning raga.
Sitar: Basil
Tabla: Ravish Shet
Balinese evening soundscape - 3.5mins
Walking home from the incredible Ubud night market [ sadly no longer in existence ] --- as I arrived at the Banjar Kalah Corner just past Peliatan, I heard the sounds presented here. Continuing down the track towards the rice paddies and my losmen, a passing Yamaha set the night dogs barking ... and as the bike had gone they chose me to bark at till I arrived at my losmen. It's said that the many dogs in Ubud and surrounding districts who sleep all day ... are taken over by demons in the dark of night.
'Bhajan' - North Indian devotional music - 76mins
Recorded live at the Kathakali Centre, an excellent venue in Fort Kochi, Kerala.
Singer: Raghuraj R Shet
Harmonium: Satish
Tabla: Ravish Shet
Ngada kampungs music contest - 8.5mins
Bajawa is the main town of the Orang Ngada Region. It's a hill-town [1,100 metres] in SW Central Flores ... one of the Eastern islands between Bali and Timor. Almost all of the Ngada people are either animist Catholics or to a lesser extent animist Protestants [both Portugese and Dutch influence here ].
In Bajawa at the 17th of August 'Hari Proklamasi 1990' Indonesian independence day celebration there were many local kampung music groups fiercely competing against each other. What stood out was that there was such diversity of music styles between neighbouring villages. However most of the villages performing there had vigorous 'war drum' percussion groups.
Last year [August 2010] I revisited Bajawa to find out why such diversity, to see if they still exist and if they still compete at Hari Proklamasi celebrations in Bajawa. Soon I will present what I found out in Bajawa & surrounding Kampungs last year ... both here & on a linked Photo-gallery site. Included will be recordings & images from the 2010 visit.
Of special interest was the row of trombone like bass-line bamboo 'flutes' [bombadoms]. They sounded awesome ... so mellow.
And yes ... the group did win the contest! However they had to wait through a tug o' war [rope] and a push o' war [bamboo pole] contest before the results were announced. You can hear the bamboo pole push o' war after the group finish playing.
You can also see higher resolution images of the 1990 Ngada kampung music contest at this photo-gallery site. The best view can be had by pressing the slideshow button at the top RHS for a full-screen slideshow.
Ngada kampungs music contest - 15.5mins
'War drums' percussion group competing in a fierce music contest during August 17 1990 Indonesian Independence Day celebrations on a large soccer-field in Bajawa hill town [SW Central Flores - between Bali & Timor].