A celebration of rain and wind, in anticipation of Hurricane Sandy. Like the Hurricane, the program progressed from east to west, with music from Australia, Burma, Bhutan, India, Persia, Madagascar, Zimbabwe, Albania, the Hopi tribe, Bolivia, and Japan.
Indonesia folk music. The Tanjidor of the Betawi people of Jakarta, which is mostly played on European brass instruments, but based on Indonesian rhythmic structures. The gambang kromong, which started out as music accompanying festivities in rich Chinese Indonesian households, before the genre was democratized. We also explore the various incarnations of guitar music around the islands of Indonesia.
Classical music of Indonesia - we play Javanese Court Gamelan, alternating between the two schools of the two great centers of Javanese court culture, Surakarta (also known as Solo) and Yogyakarta. These were live recordings done at the respective palaces (where the musicians still play) in the 1970s.
We devote the last half-hour to the Balinese Gamelan Gong Gede tradition, which is a more stately but lesser-known counterpart to the Gamelan Gong Kebyar. Gong Gede is mostly performed in temple ceremonies.
