In the USA

In the continuing growing collection of music from Indonesia presented by Smithsonian Folkways, this volume is a standout. It focuses on a number of artists on the Malay Peninsula (where Singapore is located) and parts of Sumatra. The Islamic music called Zapin, performed with oud and voice, has a heavy Arabic influence, rich and formal in its delivery. Ronggeng offers a more raucous sound, using tuned drums and accompanied by fiddle and other small string and wind instruments. The album is rounded out with some short excerpts from two formal theatrical styles, Mak Yong and Mendu, that are revealing but frustratingly brief and incomplete. --Louis Gibson

In the USA

In the USA

In the USA

This classic of ethnomusicology was originally recorded in 1941 by the Fahnestock brothers, Bruce and Sheridan, on what was then state of the art aluminum discs. The music is amazing both for the quality of the sound and the beauty of the performing gamelans--the word means both the band and the music they play. The sound is rich and clear; individual notes hang shimmering in the air like rainforest hummingbirds. The enclosed booklet tells the story of the expedition that the Fahnestocks organized to capture these sounds, recorded just before the creeping invasion of Western influence. The journey included shipwrecks and lugging the unwieldy recording equipment through impenetrable jungles. It reads like a possible musical adventure for a future Indiana Jones flick. --j. poet

In the USA

In the USA

Full Title - Sampler Indonesia, South Pacific, Music from the Nonesuch Explorer series. A companion to the second and third installments of this project - 15 releases spanning January and February 2002 - the sampler is a lo-priced overview of tracks from the entire Indonesian and South Pacific group recordings, featuring an assortment of musical styles drawn from this exotic region of the globe. Eighteen page booklet with extensive liner notes & photos. Nonesuch. 2003.

In the USA

In the USA

In the USA

Containing at least one absolutely perfect track, this exceptionally beautiful and eccentric album features older and more recent music found outside Java's capital. "Stambul Bila," from the modern repertoire, sounds both geographically specific and nearly universal at once. A solo trumpet that immediately suggests Mexican mariachi introduces a 3-D fabric of tempos played by a rigorously loose stratification of xylophones, drums, and gongs. Chinese violins and a flute flutter above and below, commenting and cajoling the male and female singers, who alternate verses. "A funny thing about trains," sings Mama Ong cryptically, "they're so long but there's no horse. A funny thing about my sweetheart," she continues. "He walks past again and again." The faux-Latin trumpet continues its festive air until a Hawaiian steel guitar suddenly drifts in like a dream of Nigerian juju music, elevating this wild interisland Dixieland-gamelan experience into sublimity for more than nine minutes. The rest of the album is nearly as great. --Richard Gehr

In the USA

(6 discs)

In the USA

More incomparable music from the islands of Indonesia is presented in Volume 15 of the Smithsonian Folkways series recorded and compiled by Philip Yampolsky. This series has been exposing the world (and even Indonesia itself) to a myriad of cultural and musical surprises from the country with the globe's third largest population. South Sulawesi's interest in foreign instruments gives this recording its unique perspective. Arabic lutes, European violins, and zithers are all brought together to create rather raucous string-band music that seems to both reflect Indonesian culture and deflect tradition. The featured instruments include kacapi, a zither that might be comparable to a mountain dulcimer. It is strummed in an open fashion, with noted strings playing the melody over a drone. Gambus is a lutelike instrument with heavy, muted strings plucked by the performer. Other tracks use the violin in a distinctly Indonesian fashion. Most of the tracks feature small groups of two or three players, usually just instruments and voice with no percussion. As with all CDs in this series, detailed and highly readable notes on the history, culture, and music are included. --Louis Gibson

In the USA

As Smithsonian Folkways' Music of Indonesia illustrates vividly, the archipelago known as Indonesia contains a vast array of music. This album takes a somewhat less academic approach to the styles than the label's other collections. While there's gamelan from CBMW, and a classic song from Waldjinah/Gesang, there's also a great deal of pop styles, especially dangdut, which has become the national popular music, borrowing from both Arab pop and Indian film to create silky, mellifluous grooves as exemplified by Rhoma Irama, Sandii, and 3 Mustaphas 3 bassist Sabah Habas Mustapha. But burrow deeper in this collection and there's Grup Bamba Puang, whose guitar styling could have come from Appalachia, or the entrancing (if odd to Western ears) sound of Ibu Maimunah Mochtar and Group. While it's impossible to cram everything onto one disc, this does an excellent job of showing some musical facets of Indonesia. --Chris Nickson

In the USA