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Roti CD |
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About the Recordings and Local Culture//World Ecology
The original idea for this page was to explore in essay form how and why the recordings Troubled Grass and Crying Bamboo: The Music of Roti and Be Not Afraid to Strike the Gong: The Music of Lombok came to be, and to place this discussion in the context of the relationship between local culture and world ecology.
The term "local culture//world ecology" in the heading is an attempt to evoke a range of ideas in a few words. In Roti, song texts and other forms of poetry are based on a type of linguistic parallelism whereby two terms (such as people//earth or moon//sun) are juxtaposed with one another to create a "stereoscopic" image which possesses a resonance that both encompasses and surpasses the original two terms, and which can express something beyond words. The listener, therefore, is not presented with a finished concept by the poet, but is instead invited to participate in a relationship and a creative process, to enter into and resonate along with a poetic resonance. The pairing "local culture//world ecology" is a formulation in this style meant to suggest the complex, interdependent relationship between the local and the global, and between culture and ecology.
It seemed like a pretty good essay idea, but after more than two months this page was still "under construction." For some reason I was having trouble with proceeding. Then, after receiving an email from an ethnomusicology student, I realised the obvious, that one of the things I like best about the internet in comparison with print media is that it flows so readily in both directions: I never really wanted to write an essay, what I wanted to do was initiate a dialogue.
So, please send your ideas, suggestions, comments, criticism and questions for posting on this page. I may edit out bits of our correspondence for the sake of brevity or to protect your privacy. If you want to be in contact but do not want your message posted here that is ok too, just say so.
Here is the first email. The writer asks about the Lombok CD but most of the reply is also applicable to the Roti CD. When necessary I will insert comments about the Roti recordings in brackets.
Hi Chris,
I am a student at Victoria University in Wellington studying ethnomusicology. I am interested to know how and why the Lombok recording was made. What was the motivation behind doing the recordings? Is the Indonesian Arts Society concerned with preserving "traditional" musical form? Was the music performed especially for the recording? Is the recording's purpose to increase the appreciation of "traditional" Lombok Music in the face of encroaching pop music? It would be really great if you could answer some of my questions.
Thank you,
Joshua
Hi Joshua,
How were the Lombok recordings made? The field recordings on the Lombok CD were self-financed and I did them in 1992. I was working as a research assistant in the Dept of Music at Monash University. I had studied music in Bali and Java and wanted to expand my experience to include Nusa Tenggara (since then I have also done fieldwork and recordings in Sumbawa, West Timor and Roti, and made shorter visits to Sumba and Flores). I carried recording equipment in a backpack (DAT recorder and a pair of mics, powered by a 12 volt battery) and got around on a motorcycle. Ibu Sri Yaningsih was at the time in DepDikBud (Dept of Education and Culture; she is now retired) in Mataram and she helped me with introductions to musicians and everything else. Without her help my work in Lombok would have been much, much more difficult, perhaps impossible.
[The Roti CD was compiled from field recordings made in 1992, '93 and '95, a total of about 60 hours of tape (which besides music includes many hours of stories, poetry and environmental recordings). Bpks Abraham Gampar and Djoni Theedens of the Dept of Education and Culture in Kupang, West Timor helped me in Roti through their invaluable assistance, support and enthusiasm.]
The hour of performances on the Lombok CD were taken from about 20 hours of tapes. I recorded rehearsals, public performances and did special recording sessions. On the CD I ended up using mostly tapes from the special recording sessions for two reasons: because these recordings did not include the motorbike, traffic, generator, people bumping into the mic stand, etc sounds which featured on the other recodings (I like natural ambience on music recordings like animal sounds, kid and baby sounds, wind, rain, cooking fires and so on but I find machine sounds and 'glitches' annoying; its a personal aesthetic choice) and because these were the recordings that the performers chose. I listened to the original tapes with the performers and they picked the recording sessions/performances that they thought sounded best, and it was from these takes that the recordings on the CD were taken.
Similarly, the musicians determined the package design (they wanted lots of pictures and suggested using textile motifs) and dictated what commentary they felt was necessary for each track. The brief notes which accompany each track in the CD booklet are pretty much limited to a direct translation of what the various group members replied to the question "What do CD listeners need to know about this piece to better appreciate it?" This seemed sufficient to me because I reasoned that lengthy elaboration and musicological information is probably best published in books, articles and websites rather than in a (necessarily) slim CD booklet - another personal aesthetic choice, I suppose.
[Because it features songs, the main difference with the Roti CD booklet is that it has more text translations than the Lombok booklet. The translations were done with the performers (my Rotinese is not as good as my Indonesian so we translated the Rotinese song texts into Indonesian together, and I worked out the English translations from there) and all the translations were discussed with my main Rotinese language teacher Bpk Esau Pono.]
The musicians were paid for the performances at the time I recorded them, and I gave them more money as an 'advance' on the projected CD when I returned to Lombok [and Roti] to discuss the plan to release 'Be Not Afraid to Strike the Gong' [and 'Troubled Grass and Crying Bamboo'] in 1997. The agreement was that whatever profit was made on the CD sales after the Indonesia Arts Society (IAS) recouped their publishing expenses would be split 50/50 between IAS and the performers. My own expenses in producing the CD (two field trips to Lombok [and three field trips to Roti], tapes, performer payments, photography) are not figured into this equation as I count that as part of the price of my education.
I decided to do the CDs with IAS after discussions with a number of other CD publishers because IAS was the only organization that would agree to split the profits with the performers in Indonesia. I figured that it is important for the performers to maintain an ongoing financial stake in the publication of their work. The standard deal everywhere else for 'traditional music' field recordings (as far as I was able to learn) is to pay the record-producer alone a nominal one-off fee, and for the company to then take possession of the recordings in perpetutity with no further remuneration no matter what. I was afraid, therefore, that in the (unlikely) event that the CDs sold well or generated significant income in some way or another the musicians would thereby be deprived of whatever royalties could accrue.
There were 500 copies of the Lombok CD [and 500 copies of the Roti CD] printed by the IAS of which 151 were sold and 40 were given away [160 copies of the Roti CD were sold by IAS, and 40 given away]. The Lombok and Roti albums were the first and only foray by IAS into CD publishing (their other publications are books) and the IAS is now defunct. I bought the remaining stock of CDs (309 Lombok CDs and 300 Roti CDs) from the IAS in May 2002, and the CDs are now available only through my website. After recouping their costs, the IAS reimbursed me $500 from sales of the Lombok CD (and $500 from the Roti CDs) which I have set aside for the performers. I hope to return to Indonesia soon and meet with the performers (and give them the money) then. Hopefully, if I can sell the rest of the CDs, there will be more money available for them before too long.
As we haven't met, perhaps I should tell you that I lead a pretty simple life, materially speaking, with my wife and two small kids - anyone who knows me knows that I am not a money-oriented guy. But the reason that I have purposely include all the 'money info' above to answer your broad questions is because I believe that in this 21st century world of *grotesque* material inequity it is important that ethnomusicologists and other relatively priviledged persons who build relationships with so-called "third-world" people have to be especially thoughtful about money-related stuff, have to be honourable, and should be as generous as possible. And that is what I am trying to do (thank you, and now I will step down from my soapbox : ).
Why were the recordings made? Several reasons come to mind: Because I think that sound recordings are the best means of transcribing and preserving performances (and sound film or video is better) for people who cannot experience them in person (because they are removed by geography and/or time). Because I hope that by recording these performance art traditions and expressing my enthusiasm for them I can in some small way encourage respect for them locally (in Lombok or Roti) and nationally in Indonesia (this is an important issue for multicultural Indonesia, as anywhere). Because I hope that by making the recordings available to people everywhere they can in some small way enhance the lives of those exposed to them, not only by increasing their knowledge but by opening them up to other possibilities, other lifestyles and aesthetic choices, and because I hope this can help to foster global understanding/empathy and respect for diversity. Also, on the wholly personal level, because I love making recordings and always have (I got my first reel-to-reel tape deck when I was 7 yrs old) and because as a musician I love meeting and working with other musicians anywhere. I enjoy it.
Regarding your other questions: I don't know that I'm that crazy about "preserving traditional music forms." All music styles have a life cycle - they develop, flower and eventually dry up. But I do like best those music styles which have deep roots, which give a sense of connectedness to a tradition and to a place. What I don't like is music that is shallow, capitalistically-inspired, or mannerist. So I'm not taken with Indonesian pop that seems derived from or is the product of Western hegemony/marketing, but I like, for example, the Jakarta pop-singer Iwan Fals a lot, because of his connectedness to local ideals, ideas and traditions (even though its obvious he's influenced by Dylan and the rest). The recordings on the Lombok and Roti CDs do not represent 'traditions as they have always been and will be' - that sort of thing doesn't really exist there (as, one could argue, it does here, with the infinitely repeated, inviolable written scores of a million, for example, Beethoven performances). The Lombok and Roti performances are contemporary interpretations and arrangements of their respective traditions as it exists at a point in time, closer in spirit, I would say, to living, modern jazz than to what usually is imagined when one refers to a "traditional music form."
Regards,
Chris
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| Preparing to record Paulus Bulu and friends performing bamba chanted poetry in Dengka, Roti (photo by Renike Pello Basile) |