The ninth of twenty volumes in the
Smithsonian Folkways
series dedicated to the music of Indonesia is virtually a sequel to volume eight; both deal with the unusual vocal traditions on the island of Flores, east of Bali. Associated with the funerals and agricultural festivities of the Ngada and the Manggarai, most of the music heard on
Vol. 9
might strike some western listeners as uncommonly dissonant. This entire question is an outgrowth of conventional western preconceptions of melody and harmony. For a simple solution to this perceived problem, remember
Ornette Coleman
when he sat in with the
Master Musicians of Jajouka
, Morocco in January 1973. Surrounded by men blowing into the North African ghaita or double reed shawm,
Coleman
remembered saying to himself: "at last -- here there are no wrong notes." Faced with more than an hour of rarely heard Indonesian
choral
music, listeners are advised to surrender
-style to an entirely non-western world of sound. And be grateful that
Philip Yampolsky
spent about ten years recording, researching, and documenting this music, preserving it for all to experience at will. ~ arwulf arwulf