[PREV - BALINESE_MUSIC] [TOP]
May 01, 2006
Additions: June 14, 2006
I would guess most of you are
somewhat familiar with the Balinese
"Kecak" or "Fire Dance" and the
"Monkey Chant" that goes with it. "Kchak! Ke-chak!
Chak-ke-Chak-ke- There's a
This is one of the many Chak-ke-Chak-ke..." prominent
things that I came scene in
across when I was the film
doing the college "Baraka"
radio thing seriously that features
in the mid-90s... the Kecak.
Pursuing an And come to
intensive self- think of it
taught I played
curriculum in the soundtrack
(weird) music (though often to that
appreciation. mixing it all movie on the
with something air quite
At some point all else) a bit --
of us who were long before
treading these I was familiar
paths had a MIXING with the
stunning dance,
revelation: and long
before I
This fire dance is saw the
not of ancient origin. (But really, I gather movie --
the chant itself is
It was created in much older than the Walking
modern times with dance.) backwards,
the assistance as always.
of some Westerner,
some white guy. One version of the
story that I heard:
Oh my god, this was a "monk"
isn't that stationed in Bali.
dissapointing?
Because you know, someone
This means doing scholarly work in a
that the Monkey distant land *must* be a monk.
Chant is not
*authentic*. But the Westerner
who worked on the
(racially "Kecak" was not a
pure?) "monk" of some
sort, but rather
PRIME_DIRECTIVE an expatriate
german artist and
musician named
"Walter Spies".
PITA_MAHA
One reason we turn He did not develop the
toward "ethnic" Kecak his own, he's
music is on a usually credited as the
quest for the alien. co-creator, collaborating
with Limbak, a Balinese
How terrible to fellow who performed the
discover it's not Kecak frequently in the
truly alien, but 1930s.
contaminated by
our own hands. If "Walter Spies" had
worked with the
(Gaze at your hands. Brooklyn Boys Choir,
Feel the revulsion.) he might have achieved
something interesting
but it certainly
wouldn't have been
the "Kecak".
STRANGE_TRIANGLE
So in what sense
can you say that
the Kecak is not
authentically
Balinese?
Balinese gamelan music
itself has undergone many
transformations over
the years... around
(No, not the turn of the century,
this a new style, "kebyar"
century, became all the rage.
*that*
century.) Is it less "authentic"
because it was still
considered new and
exciting in the 1930s?
The version of the
Kecak that Limbak's
ensemble performed Photographs of them
was much different in action are on
than the modern display at the Nekka
performances. Museum in Campuhan.
The modern Kecak
uses a much larger
ensemble; it has
a more theatrical
quality, with more
flame effects and
costumes; it has
more of a scripted
narrative, with
much less of the
improvisational
acting that
Limback used in
interludes...
It couldn't be that
the performance I
saw in Ubud is not
the *real thing*
could it?
It couldn't Everywhere you
perhaps, be a thing go, you find ghosts (A show running
which is *merely for of another time. longer than Cats,
tourists*, could it? and we question
Where is the it's authenticity?)
true flame?
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