I'm back live-blogging now, with the Boy asleep at my feet, stirring slowly as he anticipates his next feed. We're listening to this record that I can't have played in decades, yet it sounds incredibly familiar. Either the tracks here also appear on one of my other gamelan albums (though not this one) or it's just that my ear is so feebly tuned to the qualities of gamelan music that they all sound the same to me.
I can't swear that my memory is accurate but I think I bought this around the same time, and from the same shop, as this Chinese album I got 23 summers ago. It certainly looks as though it may have come via the same French distributor. One thing I definitely do remember is my own father's comments on seeing the cover: he found the 'Bumbung' in the title most entertaining. There's a point when you're growing up when you're quite flattered that adults stoop to engage in your level of schoolboy humour. And there's another point, about twelve years later where you're horrified to realise that they're not stooping to schoolboy level just because they want to build empathy with you, but because they quite like it there. I was at a large gathering at my uncle's house one time when I was eight or nine, and an engraved brass plate was handed round the room. Everyone who read its enscription burst into laughter, like the Surrey drawing room equivalent of a mexican wave. Eventually it reached me, and I read, "These nipples must be greased regularly." My natural reading of it would have generated a titter had I been surrounded by my schoolmates, but being surrounded by adults I assumed they were responding to some other reading, and I passed it on saying, "I don't get it." "Ha, ha, you wouldn't!" came the reply. My father offered to explain later. Imagine my triple cringe when, first, I had to listen to him talking about "women's bosoms", second, I had to look surprised as though this was all new to me, and, third, I had to conceal my confusion about the circumstances that would lead to adults finding this so much more hilarious than I did.
Side 2, and the Boy is feeding with Lucy. This side is just one 19-minute piece that brings together most of the elements I like most in gamelan music; the circular developments punctuated by occasional dramatic 'interventions' and accompanied by meandering flute melodies.
I think this was the first time I ever saw gamelan music on record or in the shops, though I'd been hunting it down for a year or more by this time. I can't rememeber how it first came to my attention; whether it was through the references made by Glass and Reich. Certainly a few months before I bought this record I had attended an audience with Robert Fripp (at the Rough Trade shop on Talbot Road) where he was asked what music he listened to for pleasure. Unsurprisingly it wasn't Jethro Tull and Asia but classical and gamelan music.
| Wikipedia entry for this music |
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