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June 18, 2006
Quotes from: A_HOUSE_IN_BALI
"Balinese music is based on
five tones. In the sacred
writings of the priests these Raven once asked Sika how
tones have cosmological many tones there were in
significance, for they are Balinese music. He
linked with the gods of the thought for a moment and
five directions, north, east, counted on his fingers
south, west and centre, where before saying "five".
in the middle of the lotous
sits Batara Siva, Creator, WAYAN_SIKA
Destroyer, Lord God of All.
His mystic colour is white;
his sacred syllable _hing_;
and the tone for this syllable
is _ding_.
"The gods of the other directions
have their own colours -- red, "He came a week later
yellow, blue, black; their saying, Here is the book.
syllables and tones-- _dong_,
_de'ng_, _doong_, _dang_... "It was a bundle of dried palm
leaves, trimmed and neatly
"But he didn't think, said Nyoman tied together. It was old and
when I asked him, that the boys brittle, and crumbled as I
and men of the clubs thought of opened it. Inside, three or
this as they played. four lines of Balinese script
strecthed across each strip of
"Music is for pleasure, he said. leaf.
It pleases both gods and men."
"That is the _pokok_, the
-- p. 43 stalk, the trunk of the
music, he said.
"It was nothing more than the
meagre tones of the chant in
the bass, the barest of
outlines. Nothing to
indicate the rhythm, nothing
to indicate the melody or the
elaborate interweaving of
sounds. A scratch here and
there marked the accent of a
gong and that was all.
"It was only a reminder, said
Nyoman. The rest, he explained,
existed in the mind of the
teacher."
--- p. 43
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