Voices In Bali

A scholar and trained performer of Balinese vocal music and dance, ethnomusicologist Edward Herbst brings unique talents to bear in this provocative book. The lessons of his Balinese masters enable him to offer fresh insight to this culture's aesthetics and cultural elements. Appropriating John Cage's effective style of "mixing theory, anecdote, context, philosophy, and humor," Herbst crafts an accessible body of work, compelling in substance and form. By merging the "Balinese concept of place-time-context with Cage's concepts of structure, method, and form, [Herbst] returns to the critical issue of what scholars and intercultural artists are doing, and 'what' is their 'object' under study." Undergraduates and scholars in fields as varied as theater studies and anthropology will find this book and companion CD (in print editions) an important resource not only for its knowledgeable treatment of Balinese culture, but as an example of a more personal and engaging style of scholarly discourse. The ebook edition includes embedded audio.

This critical edition is at once a memorial to Bapak I Wayan Loceng following his passing in October, 2006, and a tribute to his great musical genius. This edition documents nine compositions from the esteemed Balinese gender wayang or shadow play repertoire. The music documented derives from the musical mastery of Bapak I Wayan Loceng (1926–2006), arguably the most renowned gender wayang expert in Bali, who lived in the village of Sukawati. This edition places the music within a historical, cultural, and biographical context and introduces a broad theoretical framework that contains a new definition for the discipline of ethnomusicology, and substantial discussion of the genres of musical biography, musical ethnography, and ethnomusicology of the individual. This edition will introduce the reader to pertinent scholarly perspectives, offer biographical information pertaining to Bapak I Wayan Loceng, delineate the cultural concepts and contexts for performance and background of the shadow play tradition in Bali, and clarify key aspects of the music itself.

While many Western scholars have discussed the technical aspects of Balinese music or the traditional contexts for performance, little has been written in Western languages about Balinese discourses on their music. This dissertation seeks to understand the experience of music in Bali according to Balinese voices through an analysis of oral and written dialogues on music, mainly by musicians and dalangs (shadow play puppeteers) from the village of Sukawati, scholars, teachers, administrators and students from the Indonesian College of the Arts (STSI) in the City of Denpasar. The study examines the influence of modernization on the traditional arts and their role in society. A concentration on Balinese discourses enables individual performers and scholars to represent themselves to a greater extent than previously seen in ethnomusicological scholarship, making this study more of a critical discussion among equals than a Western interpretation of 'others'. This approach permits a rare view into contemporary Balinese conceptions and practices of music.

Sounding Out the State of Indonesian Music showcases the breadth and complexity of the music of Indonesia. By bringing together chapters on the merging of Batak musical preferences and popular music aesthetics; the vernacular cosmopolitanism of a Balinese rock band; the burgeoning underground noise scene; the growing interest in kroncong in the United States; and what is included and excluded on Indonesian media, editors Andrew McGraw and Christopher J. Miller expand the scope of Indonesian music studies. Essays analyzing the perception of decline among gamelan musicians in Central Java; changes in performing arts patronage in Bali; how gamelan communities form between Bali and North America; and reflecting on the "refusion" of American mathcore and Balinese gamelan offer new perspectives on more familiar topics. Sounding Out the State of Indonesian Music calls for a new paradigm in popular music studies, grapples with the imperative to decolonialize, and recognizes the field's grounding in diverse forms of practice.

This book is an examination of the music of the Balinese gendér wayang, the quartet of metallophones - gendér - that accompanies the Balinese shadow puppet play - wayang kulit. The book focuses on processes of musical variation, the main means of creating new music in this genre, and the implications of these processes for the social and historical study of Balinese music, musical aesthetics, concepts of creativity and compositional methods. Dr Nick Gray tackles a number of core ethnomusicological concerns in a new way, including the relationship between composition and improvisation, and also highlights issues specific to Balinese music, including the importance of flexibility in performance, an aspect that has been largely ignored by scholars. Gray thus breaks new ground both in the study of issues relating to improvisation and composition and in Balinese music studies.

This study examines the effect of the mask upon the masked performer int he Balinese Topeng and Calonarang dance dramas and Japanese Noh Theatre. It represents the first systematic study of the relationship between the actor and the mask from the performer's perspective. The approach is largely empirically based and draws upon the author's extensive field research in Bali and Japan which included interviews with performers and mask makers, study of mask carving and dance and observation of private lessons and public performances. This study will be of interest to scholars and students in many fields including Anthropology, Cultural Studies, Performance Studies, Theatre, Dance and Visual Arts. It will be also of interest to theatre and dance practitioners, especially those working with masks or intercultural performance.

In Radical Traditions, author Andrew Clay McGraw shows how music kontemporer embodies the tensions between culture as represented and lived. Through a highly interdisciplinary approach this book presents an all-encompassing social and musical history of musik kontemporer.

This book is an in-depth study of the voice systems of Totoli, Balinese, Indonesian, and Tagalog, which shows that the symmetrical nature of these systems poses a problem to current linking theories. It provides an analysis of symmetrical linking within two grammatical theories (LFG & RRG) and develops a modified LFG linking mechanism that sheds light on the differences as well as the similarities of symmetrical and asymmetrical voice systems.

First published in 1987. This book began in Bali during 1970–72, during the author’s Ph.D. research on the shadow theatre for the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. However, two subsequent trips to Bali in 1980 and 1984, when I studied other forms of dance-drama and ritual, greatly contributed to the work. The shadow theatre in Bali is described and its place in the society and culture explored. It is so called, as during the night performance puppets cast vibrant shadows against a white cotton screen which is illuminated by a flickering coconut-oil lamp.