Gamelan music of Java – Kinds of flowers – Puspawarna -in Space (Yoyager Golden Record)
I find the Gamelan music of Java and Bali Indonesia intoxicating. Imagine something like a Western orchestra composed of numerous instruments – but ones that only play together as a complete entity. So, while the instruments stay constant over the generations, the various musicians change. Gamelan music can also be accompanied by singing. There are a selection of books on Gamelans available at the library as well as a wide variety of LP records and CDs.
There is even a national connection to Gamelan and the music of Indonesia through Colin McPhee who was a Canadian composer and musicologist and the first Western composer to seriously study and write about it. He was a pioneer in attempting to merge Eastern and Western music. The Library has both books and also CDs/LPs that cover his life and work. His best known work is Tabuh-Tabuhan.
PuspaWarna, a piece of gamelan music, was sent into space as part of the Golden Record on the Voyager Spacecraft (see below for more details). There are several different versions available to listen to at the Toronto Reference Library. Amazon has many Gamelan CDs available, including one that has two different versions of PuspaWarna.
Javanese Gamelan music has become quite popular in the United States as a musical endeavor – there are many non traditional groups who perform. Gamelan Nyai Saraswati is an ensemble group from the Music Department of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has one such group where they've done a version of Puspawarna/ Kinds of Flowers. There are several different versions available on Youtube.
There are some other recordings of Indonesian music at the Performing Arts Deptartment of the Toronto Reference Library, 5th floor. The Toronto Reference Library also has a small collection of books in the Indonesian language at the Languages Centre, 5th floor. Some of the books can be borrowed and some are to be used only at the library.
This is our third blog post, part of a series on the Voyager Golden Record that was launched into Space in 1977 on board the Voyager spacecraft. The astronomer and scientist Carl Sagan headed a team who selected images and sounds portraying the diverse life and culture on Earth, and here is the complete Voyager music list. Carl Sagan wrote the book "Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record" about the Voyager project.
The music and musicians featured in this blog series so far are:
More posts are coming!
4 thoughts on “Gamelan music of Java – Kinds of flowers – Puspawarna -in Space (Yoyager Golden Record)”
The Gamelon music of Java is quite different from the Gamelon music of Bali and I prefer the former. It is calmer, I find.
Sheilah, thanks for your comments – I’m glad that someone else enjoys the gamelan as well. Lately I’ve been listening to the flute music of Paul Horn who performed IN the Taj Mahal, Agra and the Great Pyramid – very calm and relaxing – there are clips on youtube you might enjoy – we had his album growing up at home and I listened to it as a little kid all the time.
There are numerous gamelan groups in Canada, as well as contemporary
composers creating new works. The most active such group is the Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan (ECCG), Canada’s first gamelan group (est. 1983), here in Toronto. With over 10 albums and 200 newly commissioned compositions, it is among the leading gamelan ensembles in the world. http://www.evergreenclubgamelan.ca
I’m playing with ECCG this evening. Why not come down to see and hear what all the excitemen’s about?
Tuesday, June 14, 8am
Music Gallery
http://www.musicgallery.org
Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan
Part 1: Songs of Nano S.
An homage to one of West Java’s greatest songwriters, the Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan (ECCG)’s 2008 guest composer Nano S. (Suratno), with members of ECCG, plus guest vocalists Jennifer Moore and Maryem Tollar and the turntable duo InsideAmind.
Part 2: Adventures of the Smoid.The premiere of a new all-ages shadow theatre work by Richard Sacks with ECCG. http://www.evergreenclubgamelan.ca/concerts
Thanks very much for your comment and the information about the concert – I couldn’t make it ..but Toronto Public Library has two CDs from the Evergreen that can be listened to at the Toronto Reference Library 5th floor Performing Arts Dept audio lab free of charge:
http://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/search.jsp?Ntt=evergreen+gamelan
We also just had a series of talks about New Music including the Music Gallery where the performance was – synchronicity!
I hope to make one of your other concerts!