Gamelan Padhang Moncar featured on Metro TV news in Indonesia today.
Happy Indonesian Independence Day, 17th August!
Category: Asia
Gamelan Padhang Moncar @ Pataka Gallery
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5 Feb – 13 March 2016
ShadowPlay – an exhibition of wayang kulit shadow puppets from Cirebon (West Java) at Pataka Museum in Porirua. The antique collection of puppets was purchased by the late Allan Thomas (who also commissioned me to contribute to the book Jazz Aotearoa) in 1974 together with a set of gamelan instruments. Jennifer Shennan and Joko Susilo have worked to curate a unique exhibition showcasing these treasures.
Associated events:
Saturday 6 February, 11:30am, Performing Arts Studio, Pataka Art + Museum
Wayang kulit performance by Joko Susilo accompanied by The First Smile gamelan.
Sunday 7 February, 1:45pm
Concert by Gamelan Padhang Moncar.
Gamelan Padhang Moncar is a group of New Zealand musicians dedicated to the study and performance of Javanese music and based at the New Zealand School of Music (Victoria University campus) in Wellington. They are directed by Budi S. Putra, and managed by Megan Collins.
The group performs traditional repertoire from the courts and villages of central Java as well as contemporary works by New Zealand composers such as Jack Body and Gareth Farr. They also frequently accompany wayang kulit (traditional shadow puppetry) with Joko Susilo.
Members come from a diverse range of backgrounds and include: Judith Exley, Marie Direen, Jo Hilder, Greg Street, Pippa Strom, Mike Jones, Briar Prastiti, Jason Erskine, Helen O’Rourke, Stephanie Cairns, Carina Esguerra, Rupert Snook, Tristan Carter, Jack Hooker, Megan Collins, Anton Killin, Alisa Hogan, Bronwyn Poultney.
I’ll be joining the group in 2016, after performing with the Balinese gamelan ensemble Gamelan Taniwha Jaya in 2010 and 2015 and playing Javanese gamelan in Perth and travelling to Java in 2014.
The Javanese name can be interpreted in several ways. Continue reading “Gamelan Padhang Moncar @ Pataka Gallery”
安里屋ユンタオーバードライブ Asadoya Yunta Overdrive (Okinawa)
Here’s a new bonus track we’ve added to the album ネオン列車の風景 Neon Train Landscapes – our version of a traditional shima uta (island song) from 沖縄 (Okinawa).
Dave Black – sanshin, harmonica, field recordings
Nat da Hatt – acoustic & electric guitars, electronics
Cylvi Manthyng – shakuhachi
As you can hear, the music of Okinawa is quite distinct from that of mainland Japan.
Fringe Festival 2016: East to West
Here’s my first major project for 2016, as part of the New Zealand Fringe Festival:
The show is a big OE epic of video & music from the Tasman to the Atlantic, a decade in the making.
It takes the audience on a journey half way around the world from New Zealand, across Australia, via a dozen countries including Indonesia, Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Mongolia, Russia, Albania, Portugal and more.
l’ll play a live soundtrack myself as a solo performance, to evoke each country… it’ll be a culmination of the travelling and field recording /world music direction I’ve taken over the past decade.
So far it’s screened in New Zealand Fringe Festival and also at the Southland Arts Festival in Invercargill.
My 2005 Fringe show Ascension Band won best music award. So did the 2006 Lines of Flight show in Dunedin that I was part of.
Yogyakarta, Indonesia
Here’s video from my two visits to Indonesia in 2014 – a fascinating new country that I’m only just beginning to explore, and can continue to do so through gamelan (like Indonesia itself it gets more complex & interesting the more you look).
Partly because I’ve visited several countries in East Asia now, and lived in two (Japan and South Korea), Indonesia seems like something else entirely. It’s less Chinese-influenced and has a style of its own.
[Diary from September] This trip was just enough for an introductory sampler. I decided to focus on the arts this time rather than the mountains, ocean and jungle which would require more time, money and preparation.
I had mixed results in my cultural studies mission this morning. Continue reading “Yogyakarta, Indonesia”
Gamelan Taniwha Jaya 2015
Thanks to everyone who came to see Gamelan Taniwha Jaya play in Wellington recently!
Gopala
Tabuh Telu
In 2015 we’ve also performed at the Newtown Festival, the Southeast Asian Night Market, and Indonesia Day.
Gamelan Taniwha Jaya, 2015
Gamelan Taniwha Jaya, 2015
Gamelan Taniwha Jaya, 2015
Gamelan Taniwha Jaya
Gamelan Taniwha Jaya, 2015
Wellington Southeast Asian Night Market
Gamelan Taniwha Jaya
Gamelan Taniwha Jaya
Gamelan Taniwha Jaya
Gamelan Taniwha Jaya
Gamelan Taniwha Jaya
Gamelan Taniwha Jaya, 2015
Here are a couple of recordings of two of the pieces we played:
https://soundcloud.com/user521325057/margapati-rehearsal-feb-2015/s-rQW6u
These are in the Balinese gong kebyar style of gamelan, which is loud, fast, intricate and modernist. For more info see http://gamelan.org.nz/
Gamelan Taniwha Jaya is a group of New Zealand musicians dedicated to the study and performance of Balinese music. They specialise in contemporary music for Gamelan Gong Kebyar, and frequently incorporate western instruments into the ensemble. Continue reading “Gamelan Taniwha Jaya 2015”
Little India, Singapore
A major highlight of 2014 for me was visiting some new parts of Southeast Asia. I enjoyed the Tamil Indian culture in Singapore and Malaysia, which has sated my curiosity for India itself for the moment.
The sensory overload of the Hindu temples was an intriguing contrast from the elegant minimalism of the Japanese approach, and the mix of Indian, Chinese and Malay cultures is like having three different Asian countries in one.
East to West: Japan
Back in April we performed Dave Black & Snake Beings: East to West at the Audio Foundation in Auckland. Here’s a first excerpt from the show, which took the audience all the way from NZ to Portugal. This chapter is set in mainland Japan, and takes in Kyoto, Mount Fuji, and 1990s Tokyo. The soundtrack was performed live.
We’ve recorded an album’s worth of material, which is now available: Ngumbang
www.fiffdimension.com www.snakebeings.co.nz
In the meantime for other original music inspired by Japan, and more Japanese mountaineering, see ネオン列車の風景 Neon Train Landscapes by Dave Black & Nat da Hatt.
Bali, Indonesia
There’s my first video from Bali, from footage taken on my earlier visit in August. Note the gamelan (bronze percussion) and rindik (bamboo percussion) soundtrack.
I left my job in Perth and am on my way home to New Zealand, so I’m nervous about jobhunting & starting all over again (again). On the way home I’m spending a week on a smaller island, Nusa Penida, doing conservation volunteer work with www.fnpf.org If you’d like to help me afford to stay longer and make more of a contribution ($20 = 1 day’s expenses) please 
– or even better, buy some of our music.
Bali is (once you get away from the main city and the tacky resorts in the south) an almost absurdly beautiful place… frangipani and Indonesian flags (preparing for the August 17th independence day celebrations) everywhere, majestic hillsides lined with centuries-old rice terraces, and too many Hindu temples to count (each family has t…heir own). That plus the many international flights, and entertainment options from adventure sports to nightclubbing to traditional arts make it easy to see why it’s such a popular destination (I read somewhere that 80% of visitors to Indonesia go to Bali and nowhere else, which makes me glad I saw Java first).
Nusa Penida, Indonesia
Nusa Penida is a smaller island between Bali and Lombok, about an hour by boat from Sanur in Bali.
I spent a week as a volunteer with Friends of the National Parks Foundation. I helped with feeding the Bali starlings (critically endangered due to poachers – the population was down to 10 at one point but is now over 100 thanks to the translocation project), along with plant nursery maintenance, a beach cleanup of plastic waste, and construction of the new FNPF premises (thatched huts on a terraced hillside, and gardens that will be beautiful once established).
Nusa Penida is much less developed than Bali, and resembles Bali as it might have been 40 years ago before the tourism boom. Accomodation is simple, with basic facilities (eg cold showers – actually very pleasant in the tropical climate – bucket-flush toilets, and limited food variety).
For tourists it offers great snorkelling & diving,
and enough Hindu temples & local colour to make it interesting culturally. It’s nice to not be hassled to buy things as much as in Bali. Mostly people just say ‘hello’ (in some cases it’s the only English word they know).
I also need to mention The Gallery, run by an English expat Mike Appleton – it’s THE place to go for local information, language interpretation, western food, and to support local artists.
The main amenity I missed was reliable internet connections – there was no access at all for five of the nine days I was there, and when it was available it was patchy & unreliable even at the one internet cafe in town. Lesson from this for me was to finish all travel bookings before going somewhere remote like this. Even back here in Bali the connection is too slow for me to upload any sounds or other photos, so I’ll add more later.
I also had a motorbike accident, though not the kind you’d expect. Continue reading “Nusa Penida, Indonesia”
fiffdimension 