Musik Baru
Samagaha
Samagaha, Pusaka Sunda's second recording, is a representative selection of music from the group's recent performances. The pieces showcase a variety of contemporary gamelan degung music styles. The majority of the pieces have either been composed or reinterpreted by artistic director Burhan Sukama.
Pusaka Sunda was formed in 1988 by Burhan Sukarma and is based in San Jose, California. The group performs on a ten-piece West Javanese gamelan degung built by Tentrem Sarwanto in 1993.
Burhan Sukarma's style of playing the suling (bamboo flute) has influenced several generations of players in West Java. Burhan first came to the attention of Western listeners through the perenially popular album 'Sangkala'. For many people this recording was their introduction to Sundanese music. It was played and sold throughout Indonesia and was released in the US in the '80s. The sweet gentle tones and harmonious bird-like calls of the flute and tinkling water falls of the Sangkala sounds floated from Bandung across to the rice-fields of Bali and became an icon of the expression of the essence of Indonesia through its music.
Since relocating to San Jose in 1988, Burhan has experimented with ways to transplant and transform his art in this new context. Burhan has appeared all over the US and internationally. Pusaka Sunda provides a voice for Burhan's own compositions as well as a means for promulgating the traditional music of West Java.Undang Sumarna learned Sundanese music as a young boy in a family of famous musicians, he absorbed the intricacies of Sundanese gamelan by following his grandfather and uncles to performances, learning to play the gamelan instruments one bY one, first by watching, then by doing, on stage. In 1976 Undang began teaching at University of California. Since then he has introduced thoudands of students to Sundanese gamelan music and dance.
Suara Indonesia Radio Show, Byron Bay Australia gratefully acknowledges the support of Pustaka Sunda in the donation of "Samagaha" to the show.
For furthur information contact:
Pusaka Sunda
PO Box 721011
San Jose CA 95172 USA
Email: rstahl@email.sjsu.edu
Discover Indonesia
Story from SonicNet Music News Of The World
http://www.sonicnet.com/news
An excerpt from an article by Chris Nickson
Discover Indonesia Distills Music Of 13,000 Islands
Ethnomusicologist's 20-volume Smithsonian-Folkways series concludes with single-disc sampler.
Ethnomusicologist Philip Yampolsky must love a challenge how else to
characterize his attempt
to document the music of Indonesia, whose 13,000 islands cover an area the
size of Europe and whose population speaks nearly 300 languages?
The result of his ambitious Smithsonian-Folkways project was Music of Indonesia, a 20-volume series that began in 1991 with East Java 1 Songs Before Dawn: Gandrung Banyuwangi and concluded last year with Indonesian Guitars.
The series has been distilled into a single-disc introduction, Discover Indonesia, which cherry-picks from among the collection. "It wasn't a one-man show," said Yampolsky, who recorded, compiled and annotated hundreds of tracks for the complete series. "I was the director, but it was a collaborative work."
In winnowing down the series, Yampolsky tried to choose selections for an audience that didn't know the music. "In fact, the whole series is like that," he said. "We wanted material that would be attractive to open-minded, nonspecialist listeners."
There's no lack of novelty and diversity here. The gambang kromong music of "Stambul Bila" (RealAudio excerpt), for instance, sounds like a mad Dixieland jazz band adrift in the South China Sea, while the disc overall rather resembles a portal to another world. It offers an overview of regional styles that rarely overlap across the entire archipelago, according to Yampolsky.
"Very few musics have an appeal across the country, except national popular music and certain religious music," he said. "Everything else is regional, because it's either sung in regional languages or it's identified with an ethnic group or geographical region."
Some of the music he recorded may not even exist in a few years, Yampolsky surmised, given that it's now mainly played by persons middle-aged and older. "Some of it doesn't interest young people much," he said. But he also remains hopeful, since "it's hard to imagine that even the young would only play pop for family weddings or funerals. They'll more likely return to the traditional forms." And while American popular music has a following in large cities such as Jakarta, in rural areas, which make up most of Indonesia, local music remains prevalent.
Yamplosky's love affair with Indonesia began in the 1970s, when, as an ethnomusicology student in California, he began to play Indonesia's best-known music in a gong-oriented gamelan ensemble. In 1971 he traveled to the country for the first time and has spent much more time there since 1979. The tracks that make up Music of Indonesia were recorded over a period of seven years.