Volume 25 Issue 3 - November 2019

Gamelan Music of Cirebon, Indonesia:
Volume 3
Gamelan Sinar Surya; Richard North
Sinar Surya Records G5503
(gamelansb.com)
!!
Richard North,
the Californiabased
gamelan
musician and
lecturer at UC Santa
Barbara, has been
studying, teaching
and performing
gamelan music
and related arts since 1972. This passion has
taken him from Sundanese villages in highland
West Java to the coastal palaces of the
Sultans of Cirebon on the island of Java.
Recognized today as an authority on the
musical traditions of the ancient kingdom
of Cirebon, North has called it “an ancient
spiritual centre [where] all of the arts radiate
a wonderful vitality and energy.” His contributions
to the preservation, transmission and
development of Cirebonese gamelan music
have not gone unappreciated – they have been
rewarded by both Cirebon’s royal palace and
the Indonesian government.
Back home in Santa Barbara, North has
directed the community group Gamelan
Sinar Surya since 2002. The group plays two
complete gamelan orchestras. The prawa set
(in a 5-tone tuning without semitones) plays
gamelan repertoires of Cirebon, Sunda and
Malaysia. The pelog set (in a 7-tone tuning
with semitones) plays pelog gamelan musics
of Cirebon, as well as Sundanese degung
klasik music which typically uses instruments
tuned to a 5-tone subset of pelog.
The three CDs in this review are a record of
Gamelan Sinar Surya’s dedication to the study
and performance of a repertoire rarely heard
outside its Cirebon homeland.
Released nine years ago, Gamelan of
Java, Vol. 5: Cirebon Tradition in America
was a 2010 landmark: the first commercial
recording by an American group of examples
of five traditional gamelan genres practised
in Cirebon. It gave non-insiders a tantalizing
taste of the aristocratic and ritual music
of this rich 500-year-old musical culture.
This is music on a more intimate scale than
the larger and better-known gamelans of
Southcentral Java and Bali.
My favourite track is Pacul Goang (Chipped
Rice Hoe), characterized at first by the gentle
musical ambiance I associate with gamelan
Cirebon performance, which then turns fast,
fiery and dense in texture. Its atmospheric
hallmarks include the dynamic playing of the
kendang and larger bedhug (drums), the
characteristically sweet suling (bamboo flute)
melodic riffs in the soft sections, and the
upbeat alok vocalizations of the musicians
imbuing life to the instrumentals in the
animated fast section.
Gamelan Music
of Cirebon,
Indonesia (2015) is
the second volume
in the series.
Gamelan Sinar
Surya plays nine
pieces on gamelan
pelog and gamelan
prawa. Standouts for me are the performances
of the endangered ritual genres, the joyous
Something in the Air
Japanese Improvisation Moves Far
Beyond its Island Base
KEN WAXMAN
Legendary as the country where every type of Western music has
some followers and where every disc extant is rumoured to exist
in some form or another, Japan likewise has a healthy jazz and
free music scene. This appreciation extends to homegrown
improvisers, but few are known throughout the larger musical world.
Not only do these discs demonstrate how this situation is changing as
Asian players interact with more Westerners, but some outsider
players have also moved there since they found the country’s
audiences to be sympathetic to their music.
In the former group, one of the most prominent
is Hiroshima-born alto saxophonist/
clarinetist Akira Sakata, 74, who’s been improvising
in an individual free jazz style since the
early 1970s which also involves his off-thewall
vocalizing. A marine biologist as well as a
musician, Sakata organized the co-operative
trio Arashi a few years ago with Norwegian
percussionist Paal Nilssen-Love and Swedish
bassist Johan Berthling. The exciting Jikan Arashi (PNL Records PNL 045
paalnilssen-love.com) is its newest disc. Reminiscent of the heyday of
“The New Thing” sound explorers, on saxophone, Sakata has seemingly
never found a tone he couldn’t split or a timbre he couldn’t overblow. This
is demonstrated most convincingly on the extended Yamanoue-no-
Okura with a solo that’s all snarls and growls, and that inflates with pressurized
vibratos and propelled reed bites each time he outputs a phrase.
In sympathy, Betherling’s accelerated strumming and Nilssen-Love’s
constant thumping, fluidly pulse and push with the same intensity.
Besides the trio’s sliding and shredding instrumentally up and down the
scale, here and elsewhere Sakata vocalizes guttural syllables that wouldn’t
be out of place on a Japanese horror film soundtrack. Eventually, gurgles
and mumbles that involve the guts and throat more than the mouth and
lips give way to small instrument whumps and cymbal lacerations from
the drummer culminating in triple intensity. While the saxophonist’s
frenetic Aylerian screams and pressurized stutters mix with Nilssen-
Love’s constant pounding on the title track, he also shows off restrained
chalumeau-register clarinet storytelling on Tsuioku, partnered by cymbal
slides. Despite his concluding shrilling output and a return to guttural
mumbling, Jikan is another indication of why the reedist has maintained
his creativity over the decades.
Another first-generation Japanese improviser
who has maintained a similar musical
ingenuity is Yokohama-born percussionist Sabu
Toyozumi, two years Sakata’s senior. Having
worked over the years in different-sized assemblages
with local and foreign Free Music
players, Sol Abstraction (Sol Disk SD 1901
soldisk.com) is a stripped-down live date from
the Philippines where he goes head-to-head with American alto saxophonist
Rick Countryman on nine tracks. A committed free jazzer, the
saxophonist’s collection of multiphonics, irregularly pitched vibrations,
tension- building and sopranissimo screams are met with expressive
touches, resonating conga-like hand slaps brought into play alongside claps
and swing affiliations. Although only the extended Integrity of Creation
includes what could be termed an albeit brief drum solo of claps, clatter,
press rolls and rattles, Toyozumi’s constant rumbles and patterns keep up
with Countryman who crams as many notes as he can into every bar, pulls
his split tones as far as possible without breakage and triple tongues into
the stratosphere before ending with crying flutter tonguing. The drummer’s
skill using the erhu or spike fiddle is also displayed on a couple of
related tracks as he cannily manages to mirror the saxophonist’s circular
textural screams and squeaky overblowing with two-stringed slices, even
as place-marking drum beats remain. The two also manage to append a
relaxed shuffle groove to the feverish sallies that make up Broken Art Part I
and Part II, but the best expression of Toyozumi’s – and by extension
Countryman’s – versatility occurs on the three parts of Ballad of Mototeru
Takagi. A threnody for a deceased saxophonist colleague, the suite moves
from tongue-slapping, reed-shaking theme development to repeated
diaphragm-intense cries from the saxophonist, as the drummer’s narrative
90 | November 2019 thewholenote.com