Why a Booktrail?
WW2 and before – Just what kind of music is Balinese Gamelan music?
A House in Bali
What you need to know before your trail
When young American composer,Colin McPhee stumbles upon some recordings of Balinese gamelan music, he has never heard anyting quite like it. The music has a huge effect on him and he makes it his mission to hear every Gamelan in the country that he can. Then he wrote a book about what he finds and the music he not only hears but experiences. All in the weeks and days leading up to WW2.
Travel Guide
Bali as captured on a musical score – sung with words that you read via the pen of a musician. Each of the experiences that Colin had with this music are far reaching and its this musical obsession that opens up this new world for him and for the reader.
This type of music which was and often still is largely unknown in the west. Imagine hearing a piece of music and being so moved by it that you’re destined to go to the island of its birth? Then by writing about it and bringing it back to the West, be the person responsible for celebrating it all over again.
Bali itself is fascinating – it’s a community, a city, a way of life so far removed from anything the West or the Westerners such as Colin has seen. But these people have an unfailing pride in their culture and their sense of belonging and art and music is a reflection of that. Music is like a king here, something to be worshipped and treasured. It has meaning and significance
This is the story of Bali and of its music through the eyes of a Western Musician when Bali was a colonial city but where the music and its artistic beauty shone and where the cultural superstitions ruled. All of this mixes to create the music which captured Colin’s heart. If only this book came with some musical samples of its own – Gamelan,(pronounced Gah-Meh-Lahn) are usually percussion oriented orchestras, but some may feature flutes, bowed and plucked strings, or vocalists.
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