MOG

ye-ye! I'm tongue-tied and you're speechless. Among the many other things we have in common is that you and I are both carbon-based.

Amazing what was released from Indonesia. You mentioned that you recorded this onto a reel to reel thirty-five years ago. The album had to be much older. Perhaps late fifties or early sixties?

Probably. I'll let you know if I find out. Gamelan music is probably still going strong down there because it's so famous, and serves as a complex alternative to the Sinatra-ized, Beatles-ized, Michael Jacksonized hegemonic homogeneity from the West.

This is just exquisite, in the true sense of that word - not precious, but filled with a fragile sort of beauty. I would hack off a limb to hear gamelan played live. I did, but way too many years ago. Do gamelan orchestras ever play on the West Coast?

I bet they must tour here and there; I'm ashamed not to notice such things. The group you heard must have changed your life.

Simply awesome.

this is the most beautiful thing Ive heard in a very long time, the kind of song I cannot only play once because.. well, because it is too good. That seems to be Vol. 7: Indonesia (Edited by Jaap Kunst), there are 18 vols. http://www.culturalequity.org/alanlomax/works/discography.html Thanks a lot for sharing this, man.

wassonii, I'm glad you like it. soulrocket, why am I not surprised you figured out where to find it? Thank _you_.

I am reluctant to place-drop again, because it makes me seem like such an asshole - honest, I can't help it if I used to be a travel writer in a previous life and have a wife who's also in travel. Yes, it was pure luck, for which I am deeply grateful.

However, the fact remains that the last time (which would make it the second time) I heard gamelan live, it was in Indonesia. Every summer the Ramayana is performed as a ballet in the open air on the grounds of Prambanan, a 9th-century Hindu temple just outside Yogyakarta. The combination of the sinuous, otherworldly music - somewhat simple for gamelan, but no less beautiful for that fact - the sense of spectacle (swordfighting, a 15-foot-long dragon, an on-stage bonfire that brings us to intermission), and the blazingly lit temple as backdrop, all made it one of the most extraordinary nights I've ever known. My daughter was with me, seven then, and the experience is etched in her brain as well. We still talk about it often....

Maybe there are films of such local performances; now I've got have one.

Why shouldn't one be allowed and even encouraged to describe travels such as yours?

you just drop these albums out here so you make me look for them out of curiosity in google & you save the trip :-P Seriously, thanks to you, man. Always bringinmg the best. I love your travel stories, ivy.

I know I'm allowed to do it. I just feel sometimes as if l'm giving off the impression that it's being done to one-up other people. Although that's not the case ( I don't think), it can come off a little show-offy....

ivylander, in any conversation one tries to offer something new, which on some level _has_ to be a one-up. Like that of many Moggers, your mastery of self-effacement and the difficult art of self-deprecatory charm prevents you from coming off a little show-offy. I find it sometimes difficult even on the phone.

I just realized that in my last comment (directly above), the last sentence was my unwitting attempt to prevent the earlier sentences from coming off a little show-offy. What do you know.

It really is a snare, isn't it?

Wowser! Alien.