Balawan and Batuan Ethnic Fusion

Last night I went to see Balawan with his group Batuan Ethnic Fusion at Café Bunuté. I'd previously stumbled upon him when surfing YouTube for 'Indonesian Music', as you do; this crazy talented young superfast Bali guitarist with the double-necked double-handed hammer style, often in duet with a couple of guys playing kotekan riffs on a small saron-type instrument.

The gig itself was free; obviously as it was a café they were expecting to make money from food and drinks. They looked a bit askance at me, one guy on his own who was obviously intending to nurse one cup of coffee all night, and shoved me at a table at the back, but that's ok, kind of expected.

For the first couple of numbers there was very little in the way of 'ethinic fusion'; what we got instead was a jazz trio of guitar bass and drums. The first number was the blues 'Stolen Moments', in a kind of rock/jazz style, with quite an original arrangment of the tune. Balawan's facility with the two-handed hammer style is quite astonishing, flying around bebop and post-bop licks without ever touching the pick. The next number again was done in quite an original way, it wasn't until Balawan started singing that I was able to pin the tune as 'Nature Boy'.

Yes, singing; and quite a nice light, high voice he has too, which he used on this number in a passage of George Benson-style unison scatting along with his solo. Again, original thinking on the next arrangement, which was a clever blend of a Coltrane minor blues (the name of which escapes me) played on a horn sound with (presumably) a midi pickup on the guitar, combined with 'It's Allright With Me', which again Balawan sang.

Finally we got the ethnic fusion; out came the three 'traditional' musicians, one playing mainly ceng-ceng, while the other two mostly played kotekan on a small (diatonically tuned?) two-octave saron-thing. This was obviously original material, kind of prog-jazz plus crazy high speed melodies on the saron-thing. (As a gamelan nerd I was interested to note that the very fastest material was executed as a straight on-off imbal, rather than syncopated interlocking part.)

I was getting seriously worried about the bad-taste quotient when Balawan kicked off the next song with... a sitar sound. But, once again, he's got a real knack for putting things together in a way which catches you out, this turned out to be a version of 'Summertime'. And, when he got around to soloing, it was evident that he studied or at least listened closely to sitar music, because he was actually playing sitar-type licks; which makes it ok, I guess.

There was more; jazz standards, more original jazz-o-tekan pieces, including a number which went from kecak to an extended duet between Balawan on sampled wadon sounds duetting with an actual wadon drummer. Towards the end, the gig went a bit more crowd-pleasing, with Bob Marley numbers, 'Route 66', 'St Thomas'. I left around about the time they were playing 'Quando Quando Quando'.

Overall, several different ways of looking at this. The guy is obviously so naturally talented, and has obviously also studied and internalised a vast range of musics; there is nothing he cannot play, there is nothing he cannot hear. He also seems to have a refreshing lack of sense of taste or appropriateness, which allows him to put things next to one another in quite unexpected ways. He has no limits, he just does as he pleases, and it's always a great thing when a creative musician feels able to do that.

On the other hand, there is that kind of fundamental problem with the guitar, the way it puts too much power in the hands of one person - in this case both hands, with a fistfull of notes in both. With a gig like this you have to be prepared to endure a large amount of, to use a technical term, widdling. I kind of liked it.