From Ethan Sent Mon, Jun 7th 1999, 06:17
From Ethan Sent Mon, Jun 7th 1999, 06:17
just picked up a used copy of "music from the morning of the world: the balinese gamelan & ketjak: the ramayana monkey chant" on nonesuch/explorer. excellent stuff - it was recorded in 1966 and features some great playing. I wasn't sure when I picked it up what the monkey chant would be, but my suspicions were correct. if you've seen the movie 'baraka,' [I think] there's a sequence with a group of people seated in concentric circles, chanting rapidly and moving their arms in the air. that's the monkey chant - on the CD a 22 minute recording of its enactment of the ramayana, monkey hordes rushing to aid prince rama in his battle with the evil king ravana. "complete with monkey chorus" in general the balinese gamelan music is much faster than that of java or sumatra, but local styles of music vary widely across the population of 213+ million on 6000 islands as do the various classical and folk musics. thus the 17 so-far volumes of the smithsonian folkways series, all of which are amazing, I'm sure. I only have volume 8. there's a page of gamelan-related links at http://www.gamelan.org/AGI/jd.websites.html and short reviews of gamelan CDs here: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gjvo/gamelan/gamelan_reviews.html directory of gamelan groups in the US, canada and europe http://www.glue.umd.edu/~satu/gamelan/list.htm ethan