This is part 1 of a performance of Gamelan Ensemble Irama, a group from Amsterdam that I played in in the nineties. It's a performance in the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam, Autumn 1994. At the time Irama played in several formations several forms of Balinese gamelan. Also playing in this video are the two founders of Irama, Henrice Vonck (dressed in red, on ceng-ceng) and Sinta Wullur (dressed in green, on reyong) and at the time I was also a member of the ensemble. Here we play the 'marching band'-like procession music of Bali, which is called 'baleganjur'. In its traditional form it's played with cymbals and big and small gongs at processions during important occassions. In the eighties baleganjur suddenly became more popular and in particular youngsters began to experiment with the musical format and the instruments and soon all over Bali many baleganjur competitions were organised where groups presented thier latest compositions. As far as I know baleganjur is still very popular in this contest context.
In this video Irama plays a competition piece from the village of Krambitan, North-West Bali, composed at the time by a few nineteen year old boys. Irama-drummer and orchestra leader Henri Nagelberg learned the piece while doing research on Bali in the early nineties.
Baleganjur is great energetic music, with great interlocking repetitive patterns. The melody is mainly produced by four reyong-pots, played by two players here. On Bali the four reyong-pots are usually played by four players, each player on one pot. By dividing the notes over four players they manage to play at incredible speed rates. Irama also played several times in this more traditional line-up and at those occassions I've been playing one of the four reyong pots, interlocking with three other reyong-pot players, which is absolutely sensational. Playing ceng-ceng is also great but I'd prefer reyong :)
I'm hardly visible in this video, but you can surely hear me keeping the pace all the time. With my (invisible) right hand I produce the constant 'metronome' sound on the kajar and with my left hand I play half the kajar-tempo on the kempli. Evrything is organised along 8 beat gong frases. All instrument groups, gongs, pots, drums, reyong-pots, ceng-ceng cymbals, play interlocking patterns. The organising principles of baleganjur (and other Balinese gamelan music) offer endless possibilities to weave together beautiful patterns and compositions. Balinese gamelan like this has been a well of inspiration for many western minimal composers.
The footage I use here comes from an old vhs-video, that contained two video-recordings of our performance. The picture quality -from 15 years ago- is quite bad, but I think the music is interesting enough to present on Youtube. I've combined the two available video-recordings, alternating between the two wherever it was possible and/or musically interesting. Not so easy, cause the original filming wasn't 'score'-directed, the two filmers at the time (among them my brother Vincent, who did the video with the lighter 'white wall'-background) didn't know the piece and filmed on an intuitive basis. Still, in combining their footage I've tried to make the best of their shots.
This video shows part 1 of the performance. Elsewhere on my channel you'll find part 2.
Hope you'll like it!
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hello all,
great bleganjurrrrr....where is IRAMA now ???
Henrice Vonck ...
let's play again...
greetings from belgium
agusbelgique 2 years ago