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Music CDs from the Islands of Roti and Lombok: Reviews

Folk Roots Review by Colin Bass
(Reprinted from Folk Roots magazine, UK: ©Folk Roots Magazine. All rights reserved.)

Be Not Afraid To Strike The Gong: The Music of Lombok (IAS6)
Troubled Grass & Crying Bamboo: The Music of Roti (IAS5)

A pair of excellent CDs recorded by Christopher Basile, documenting music from two Indonesian islands with very distinctive musical styles. The Lombok set features three ensembles representing the three main social groups on the island. Lombok is Bali's easterly neighbour and has a significant minority of ethnic Balinese, descendents of migrants who settled there in the 18th and 19th centuries. The Warga Sintu Gunung ensemble show how Balinese and indigenous Sasak musical traditions have integrated, adding Sasak instruments such as the pereret - an eight-holed oboe - to a line-up of gongs, metallophones, double-headed drums and bamboo flute. The Sekarsari ensemble are drawn from the Muslim community who have integrated older Sasak culture into their brand of Islam. They present music to accompany a wayang Sasak shadow puppet performance. Gongs and bronze instruments and shadow puppets are associated with the pre-Islamic Sasak culture and are disapproved of by the orthodox Muslims. Their music is represented by the Bina Karya rebana percussion group with a dazzling display of dextrous drumming that every percussionist should have in their collection. A corps of hand and stick-played drums beat out intricate interlocking rhythms accompanied by rattling cymbals and two large drums adding punctuation with deep 'gong'-like tones.

Further east, the small island of Roti is home to the sasandu, a bamboo tube-zither similar to Madagascar's valiha, encased in a round resonator beautifully fashioned from a palm leaf. We hear it in several settings. Check out track 2 for the wonderfully informal party atmosphere as Mr. A.A. Malelak plays and sings a hypnotic, bluesy groove while family and friends beat out an amazingly funky rhythm on what sounds like anything that comes to hand. Centrepiece is the epic, self composed ballad from Daniel Huan, Baku Natia (Enough Already). The excellent sleeve-notes tell us that the idiosyncratic and personal nature of the song, with its in-jokes, puns and parodies, would be dismissed by most Rotinese as not possessing the necessary poetic characteristics of a proper Rotinese song. Yes, the that's-not-a-proper song debate is universal. Unfettered by such scruples we can enjoy Mr. Huan's unusual voice and the surreal images of this text as translated into English on the sleeve. Also featured are gong and drum ensembles and a 'Rotinese Soundscape,' a selection of atmospheres from a day in the life of Roti.

Both CDs have been expertly recorded and mastered, bringing the music to life in your living room! Highly recommended.

- Colin Bass, in Folk Roots No.181 (vol. 20 No. 1) p.53.