2011 ... Tabla, Voice & Harmonium

Bamboo Clapophone performance - 1.6mins This beautifully mellow sounding instrument is played by gently clapping in front of the open-ended bamboo tubes.  In Australia & elsewhere in the 'west' this instrument is usually known as a thongophone ... due to it being played in a rather less dignified manner by slapping the open-ended tubes with rubber thongs (flip flops).

Krishna devotional song - 4.75mins

Another Ngada traditional acappela - 4.7mins Led by Pak Nardus & his son Nikolas to the left & Armin to the right ... & supported by a chorus of family & friends.   Recorded at night during a 3 day ceremony for Kampung Beiboso near Bajawa hill town in Flores. The ceremony, involving the sacrifice of 128 pigs & 6 buffalo (cut up & cooked on the spot!), is unlikely to be repeated for 50 to 100 years as they are so expensive. Apart from the locals ...several thousand people from surrounding villages attended the ceremony.   The traditional acappela singing was performed privately in some kampung houses.

Bamboo Xylophone performance - 1.8mins Almost a thousand years ago the 'Temple of Literature' was Vietnams first University.   Recently restored it's a showcase of Vietnams cultural history & a homage to it's early graduates. In one of it's pavilions ... traditional folk instrument performances are presented daily.

Folk music performance - 5.8mins Featuring Mr Pandungon (?) on Violin playing The story of the harvest day.   The twice daily concerts are at the ancient 'Hoi An Performance House of Traditional Arts'.   It's in the entrance hall to to the 'Hoi An Artcraft Manufactural Workshop'' ... so there's a lot of noisy traffic back & forth through the concert space.

Rajasthani desert folk tune - 5.5mins For most of the year you can find Kishna and / or his brother Neru around Gangaur Ghat in Udaipur playing Rajasthani folk tunes from the desert on their rawan-hatta's. These instruments normally have one main horsehair string and a longer steel string with up to a dozen or more steel sympathetic strings under the bowed ones.   The bow uses horsehair and has a cluster of small bells at the tip. The strings are attached to a bamboo stem one and a half to three feet long which in turn is attached to a half shell of coconut with a goat-skin resonator.   Due to the shortage of horse-tails in Udaipur ... they now use a long-lasting thicker nylon main string and violin nylon strings for the bow.   The horsehair strings wore out very quickly and the few horse owners in Udaipur started complaining! Photo: Kishna performing at Gangaur Ghat on Lake Pichola, Udaipur

Rajasthani desert folktune - 3.3mins For most of the year you can find Neru and/or his brother Kishna on or near Gangaur Ghat in Udaipur playing Rajasthani folktunes from the desert on their ravan-hattas.   These instruments normally have one main horsehair string and a longer steel string with up to a dozen or more steel sympathetic strings under the bowed ones.    The bow uses horsehair and has a cluster of small bells at the tip.   The strings are attached to a bamboo stem one and a half to three feet long which in turn is attached to a half shell of coconut with a goat-skin resonator.   Due to the shortage of horse tails in Udaipur ... they now use a long-lasting thicker nylon main string and violin nylon strings on the bow.   The horsehair strings wore out very quickly and the few horse owners in Udaipur started complaining!    Photo: where's Neru?

From Udaipur in Rajasthan - 10.5mins Shariq has created a new hybrid musical instrument that fuses the best qualities of both the slide-guitar and the traditional Indian sarod.   Until he hits on a great name for this new instrument ... Shariq calls it a meditation guitar. There are 2 self published CD's of this meditation guitar available through Shariqs website.  This track is from one of them.  It's a relaxing evening raga called Raga Jhinjhoti and is based on Teental rhythm.          Meditation Guitar:  Shariq Parvez Tablas:  Raju Photo credit:  Shariq Parvez

An evening with Sitok - 87mins Leading Indonesian poet Sitok Srengenge presents his poems in bahasa Indonesia ... alternating with Harry Aveling, a prolific translator of Indonesian poetry and prose, providing english readings.   One of the published poems later in the evening was read by Geoff Fox ... a long time friend of Sitok.   This one is not for the faint hearted ... however Sitok explains the context. Before Sitok and Harry ... Javant Biarugia, who did an Asialink Writer in Residence to Indonesia around the time of President Suharto's downfall, gives a reading from one of his plays about a Dutch Indo woman's reminiscences of living through the Japanese occupation in the early 40's.   From 25 minutes in ... to the end of the evening it's all Sitok and Harry [& Jeff]. For some idea of the artistic and political forces which Sitok participated in / lived through during his formative student years ... you could read a 1998 article from Inside Indonesia titled "Cleansing the earth" Bar Open is a great performance venue & bar in Fitzroy Melbourne Australia.    The event was organised by the now defunct Indonesia Interest Group under the umbrella of AsiaLink. Photo credit:  Komunitas Salihara via Flikr

Contemporary OZ music live from the Boite World Music Cafe - 9mins This is the only performance not fully improvised from a night of improvised music titled 'silouettes scampering' at the famous Boite World Music Cafe in Fitzroy Melbourne Australia. This moving piece was improvised around a composed section by vocalist/violinist Jess Ipkendanz ...  based on a fragment from a poem by Rilke. Their improvisations are stunning. To quote Jess:   "So the next little number is with me & Mel ... and we've decided to start this improvisation with something written.   This is a piece that I wrote just the other day and it's inspired by the story of Orpheus and Eurydice.   It's a mourning song for the death of Eurydice and the words that I've taken are just a fragment of the beautiful poem that I was very lucky to have read.   If you haven't yet read it ... go read it because it's absolutely stunning.   It's by Rilke.   So I've just taken a little fragment of that poem and set it to music.    And from there ... we will go forward." Jess Ipkendanz : voice & violin Melanie Robinson : Cello Photo credit: http://www.myspace.com/mrsisterfeaturingmelrobinson/photos/