Tag: travel

Gamelan Dimensi Kelima (Indonesia, 2014)

Field recordings and gamelan from my visits to Indonesia in 2014.

As well as the tracks recorded in Indonesia, the album includes gamelan ensembles in Western Australia, and NZ between 2010-2018.

Listen


About

The album title translates to “Gamelan Fifth Dimension”.

Gamelan was introduced to New Zealand in the 1970s. It has an active scene in Wellington (my birthplace, where I first encountered it in 2010 – thanks to www.gamelan.org.nz ).

From 2012-2014 I lived in Perth, Western Australia, and played in the ensemble Gamelan Sekar Puri. From there I was able to visit Indonesia (and Malaysia) relatively affordably.

On returning home to New Zealand at the end of 2014, I spent the next few years as a member of the Wellington gamelan ensembles: Gamelan Taniwha Jaya (Balinese) and Gamelan Padhang Moncar (Javanese). In 2017 I moved to the Wairarapa, so travelling for regular rehearsals became impractical.

The field recordings were made in 2014 in Indonesia -in central Java, then Bali and Nusa Penida islands;

As well as very different scenery, cultures, cuisines and religion – the islands have strikingly different subgenres of gamelan. Stereotypically, the Javanese style is more hypnotic and meditative, while the Balinese style is faster and complex.

Yogyakarta and Surakarta, Central Java

  • Central Java, Indonesia
  • Borobudur temple, Central Java, Indonesia
  • Borobudur temple, Central Java, Indonesia
  • Borobudur temple, Central Java, Indonesia
  • Borobudur temple, Central Java, Indonesia
  • Borobudur temple, Central Java, Indonesia
  • Borobudur temple, Central Java, Indonesia
  • Borobudur temple, Central Java, Indonesia
  • Borobudur temple, Central Java, Indonesia
  • Borobudur temple, Central Java, Indonesia
  • Borobudur temple, Central Java, Indonesia
  • Borobudur temple, Central Java, Indonesia
  • Borobudur temple, Central Java, Indonesia, 2014
  • Borobudur temple, Central Java, Indonesia
  • Borobudur temple, Central Java, Indonesia
  • Borobudur temple, Central Java, Indonesia
  • Borobudur temple, Central Java, Indonesia
  • Borobudur temple, Central Java, Indonesia
  • Borobudur temple, Central Java, Indonesia
  • Borobudur temple, Central Java, Indonesia
  • Borobudur temple, Central Java, Indonesia
  • Borobudur temple, Central Java, Indonesia
  • Borobudur temple, Central Java, Indonesia
  • Borobudur temple, Central Java, Indonesia
  • Borobudur temple, Central Java, Indonesia
  • Borobudur temple, Central Java, Indonesia
  • Javanese shadow puppets, Indonesia, 2014
  • Javanese shadow puppets, Indonesia
  • Javanese shadow puppets, Indonesia
  • Javanese shadow puppets, Indonesia
  • Javanese shadow puppets, Indonesia
  • Javanese shadow puppets, Indonesia
  • Javanese shadow puppets, Indonesia
  • Javanese shadow puppets, Indonesia
  • Javanese gamelan, Indonesia
  • Javanese gamelan, Indonesia
  • Javanese gamelan, Indonesia
  • Central Java, Indonesia
  • Central Java, Indonesia
  • Javanese shadow puppets, Indonesia
  • Central Java, Indonesia
  • Central Java, Indonesia
  • Central Java, Indonesia
  • Central Java, Indonesia
  • Central Java, Indonesia
  • Central Java, Indonesia
  • Central Java, Indonesia
  • Yogyakarta, Central Java, Indonesia
  • Yogyakarta, Central Java, Indonesia
  • Yogyakarta, Central Java, Indonesia
  • Yogyakarta, Central Java, Indonesia
  • Yogyakarta, Central Java, Indonesia
  • Yogyakarta, Central Java, Indonesia
  • Central Java, Indonesia
  • Yogyakarta, Central Java, Indonesia

Bali and Nusa Penida

  • Bali, Indonesia
  • Bali, Indonesia
  • Bali, Indonesia
  • Bali, Indonesia
  • Bali, Indonesia
  • Bali, Indonesia
  • Bali, Indonesia
  • Bali, Indonesia
  • Bali, Indonesia
  • Bali, Indonesia
  • Bali, Indonesia
  • Central Java, Indonesia
  • Nusa Penida, Indonesia
  • An endangered Bali Starling, Nusa Penisa, Indonesia
  • Bali, Indonesia
  • Bali, Indonesia
  • Bali, Indonesia
  • Bali, Indonesia
  • Bali, Indonesia
  • Bali, Indonesia
  • Bali, Indonesia
  • Bali, Indonesia
  • Bali, Indonesia
  • Bali, Indonesia
  • Nusa Penida, Indonesia

Credits

  • Dave Edwards – saron, jublag, jegogan, field recordings, bass, electric guitar, tenor saxophone

The field recordings are mixed alongside gamelan ensembles, recorded between 2010-2018;:

Other collaborators

The album also includes other, more experimental Indonesia-inspired 2010s collaborations with fellow postpunk expat ethnomusicologists:

Tracklist

1.Gamelan Taniwha Jaya – Gareth Farr: Mummy, do monsters clean their teeth? (2010) (bonus) 01:20
2.Gamelan Sekar Puri – Ladrang (ayum jantan dari Perth?) 02:14
3.Borobudur ke Kraton ke Prambanan (Yogyakarta) 04:08
4.Gamelan Pura Mangkunegaran – Slendro dan pelog (?) 04:00
5.snakebeings + fiffdimension – Kuningan dan perunggu 02:50
6.Gamelan Taniwha Jaya – Gopala (Bali) (live at NZ School of Music, 2015) 01:15
7.Ubud scenes (Bali) 02:30
8.Nat da Hatt + fiffdimension – Lost in the Monkey Forest 03:47
9.snakebeings + fiffdimension – East to West: Indonesia (live at the Audio Foundation, 2014) 04:33
10.snakebeings + fiffdimension – Sampak Membengkak 03:41
11.Gamelan Padhang Moncar – Ladrang Slament Slendro Manyura + Ketawang Sinom Parijata 02:01
12.Gamelan Padhang Moncar – Nusantara (live at Te Papa, 2016) 02:29
13.Gamelan Padhang Moncar – Improvisasi (di musim panis Wairarapa) 01:49
14.Dimensi keempat dan kelima (2023) 08:13
15.Gamelan Taniwha Jaya – Teruna Jaya (live at Te Papa, 2016) 01:00
Continue reading “Gamelan Dimensi Kelima (Indonesia, 2014)” →

Isa Lei, and the Yasawa islands, Fiji

This rearrangement of a traditional Fijian folk song was inspired by hearing the song sung there.

In May I visited the Yasawa Islands, to the northwest of Nadi and the main Fijian island Viti Levu.

Yasawa islands, Fiji
Yasawa islands, Fiji
Yasawa islands, Fiji

The boat ride took 3 hours, and enjoyably scenic. Each of the many small islands we passed was different in some way but all stunning

The marine life included

Part of Other Islands: 2012-2018

– recent highlights recorded in New Zealand, Western Australia, Fiji, Indonesia and Okinawa

Other Islands: 2012-2018

“The 20 song album covers traditional Javanese and Balinese gamelan, Asian folk music, to free jazz, and free noise. It’s not for anyone with narrow preconceived ideas about what music is, but it is for everyone else.

“If you have an open inquiring mind and love hearing a variety of sound, this is excellent.” – Darryl Baser, muzic.net.nz

by Dave Black (acoustic & electric guitars, banjo, harmonica, laptop, bass, tenor saxophone, field recordings, piano, ukulele, sanshin, saron, jublag, demung, vocal), with

Featuring tracks from the albums

If you enjoy this, try the previous compilations

Gleefully Unknown: 1997-2005 

and Fame & Oblivion: 2005-2012
Fame & Oblivion: 2005-2013

Viti Levu, Fiji

My first visit to a Pacific island country, apart from my own (though the term is ambiguous – I’m not counting Australia, Indonesia or Japan).  I’d always wanted to visit Fiji, due to family connections… I may have even been conceived there.  A week’s visit to Viti Levu, the largest and most populated island, in September was all too short but still a great introductory taster.

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First stop was Nadi, Continue reading “Viti Levu, Fiji” →

Fringe Festival 2016: East to West

Here’s my first major project for 2016, as part of the New Zealand Fringe Festival:

 East to West flyer1

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.

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I had mixed results in my cultural studies mission this morning. Continue reading “Yogyakarta, Indonesia” →

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).

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Continue reading “Bali, Indonesia” →

Nusa Penida, Indonesia

Nusa Penida is a smaller island between Bali and Lombok, about an hour by boat from Sanur in Bali.

P1000124
View from Nusa Penida towards Bali and Mt Agung

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).

An endangered Bali Starling, Nusa Penisa, Indonesia
An endangered Bali Starling, Nusa Penisa, Indonesia

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,

P1000214

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).

P1000546

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” →

Singapore

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If you’ve never been to Asia before, don’t speak any Asian languages, and have only a day or two available, Singapore would be a great introduction.

You can find tropical rainforest and the sea,  traditional and modern architecture, and the cultures of China, India, the Middle East and the West all in one city.Most people speak English, buses are frequent and on time, and it even has a nice airport complete with indoor gardens.

Just try not to think what it would cost to live here… and with Malaysia and Indonesia still to go on this trip I imagine things will get more chaotic as I go! I made some sound recordings, which will find their way into some new music pieces eventually.  In the meantime here are a few photos.

Dave Black & Snake Beings: East to West

East to West brings together for the first time two of New Zealand’s more unusual artist/musician/filmmaker/ethnomusicologists, taking the audience on an epic journey from one side of the Eurasian continent to another in the space of an hour. Continue reading “Dave Black & Snake Beings: East to West” →