Day 7 ~ Indonesia (Gender)

Off to the tropical dancing islands of Indonesia, let's go to the monkey and music-filled heart of Bali, Ubud, to enjoy some traditional gamelan ~

either we can find a group of friends hanging out and     interlocking melodies    down an alleyway, across a rice paddy, or a formal evening performance in the

Ubud Royal Palace.

Of the numerous instruments in a traditional gamelan, I think the GENDER (above) is my favorite. . .

For over 20 years I had dreamed of going to Bali, since I first met Saddiq, and later his wife Surapsari, who now take the exquisite art of Indonesian dance wherever they go.  All expectations, joyously met and beyond, with the experience of nightly dance performances while I was in Ubud, more unexpectedly I had the thrill of seeing a "self-playing" gamelan.  

The Gamelatron is "a marriage of Indonesian sonic & ritual tradition with modern robotics."  

Honored with a lift on the back of a motorcycle to rice paddies at the outskirts of Ubud, the founder/creator/composer of this wild art he calls 'the Tron,' Taylor Kuffner brought me into his latest musical installation ~ and of course, the first question once I regained breath (lost not only from the sheer beauty of the music and the almost sacred but spooky curiosity that it seemed to play itself, but also from the implications that this type of work could be used to preserve a whole lineage of music that might be close to disappearing with older generations) was if the gamelatron could possibly make it's way to the Ureuk World Music House in Chungju, Korea.  

The answer is YES!

And you can help it happen ~ as you note this 40-day Virtual World Tour of Music correlates with the World Music House kickstarter crowdfund.