Solo life

So, panic over, hopefully; that is, the mild medical panic we had yesterday morning. Mags was feeling a bit off colour overnight, and woke in the morning about five with a raging headache andslight  fever which wouldn't shift. A trip to the emergency department of the local hospital produced a diagnosis of 'common cold', plus a slightly dubious prescription of paracetamol (fair enough, but we'd tried that already), amoxicilin (antibiotic; hmm, maybe) and... prednisolone? A steroiod? As an 'anti-inflammatory'? I was desperately trying to get some alternative medical advice, but it was 0300 in the UK and I couldn't figure out how to get the phone number for the NHS 24 hour hotline as the normal directory enquiries short numbers don't seem to work when you are abroad, and I couldn't leave Mags to go and check online. Then my Indonesian phone ran out of credit...

Eventually we were able to get in touch with some doctor friends in the UK, and also tried adding some ibuprofen and co-codamol into the mix; finally by about 1600 the headache finally abated. So, two tips for travellers, bring emergency medical advice phone numbers with you, and if you want paracetamal/codeine tablets bring them with you as well, 'cos you don't seem to be able to get them over the counter here. Oh, and costs for medical treatment here were very low, to see the emergency doctor was 20,000 IDR (£1.22), the three medicines 50,000 (£3).

Food. On the one hand, you are never more than about five metres away from someone selling food in Solo. All up and down the street you see establishments varying in size from a room with a dozen chairs in it down to two guys with a charcoal brazier, a couple of buckets, and a carpet. Some of the smallest places seem to survive just by cooking one dish, the guys with the charcoal brazier will have chicken on skewers, sate sauce and rice, and nothing else. Slightly larger places the regular deal is they portion you out some rice, and then there are a selection of dishes which, being foreign and all that, you point to.

Before I came here I had read a few reports that the food here was, umm, monotonous? Maybe you just have to know how to order; I do have to say that after a while I'm feeling kind of the same thing. For sure, the best food is to be had at the smaller establishments, paying a bit more for one of the bigger air-conditioned restaurants doesn't seem to add much in the way of variety or quality. Last night on the way home I was tempted into the McDonalds... There are some very nice dishes here, I always get the one with the spicy papaya leaves. Oh, and another huge hit with me is the tea, which is a kind of sweet jasmine-ey flavoured tea served black and generally with sugar, but equally good without. Excellent cold.

Around the corner from Cakra Homestay is the wonderfully named Urgent, a 24/7 store selling drinks, snacks and basic everyday stuff, with about half the space devoted to a bunch of internet booths. The place has got a kind of young feel, the staff all look about nineteen and are perfectly happy to have a go at English. The customers are also young Indonesians, or Westerners like myself. You feel quite trendy in there, drinking a can of iced Nescafe Moccha while the Indonesian pop music blares out. Connection seems pretty much fast and reliable, but no wifi, so you have to use their Windows XP boxes. Very inexpensive in our money, I don't even know how much it is, might be about 4000 IDR per hour, which would be, er, 24 pence!

The other place which looked great at first was blonjokue; aircon, pretty much Western style coffee cakes and snacks menu, plus free wifi for life once they give you the password. Unfortunately, this is often so slow as to be unusable, I think they must be on a dialup or something, plus https doesn't seem to work. The menu must seem absurdly expensive to local people 9000 IDR for a coffee whereas the usual price would be about 2000 IDR. (I must be going native, because 9000 already sounds to me like a crazy price to pay for coffee; 55 pence!?)

And that's another thing; poverty. Gradually I realise more and more that many of these happy, kind and generous people really have very little in the way of material goods or money in comparison to someone like myself. There are a lot of becak drivers here; basically a big Dutch style bicycle with a side-by-side seat for two passengers at the front. For a typical five-minute journey, you might haggle them down to about 7000 IDR from an asking price of 10,000; we're dealing in sums under a pound here.

Gradually I've been realising; these guys sleep in their becaks. Basically, I reckon all they have in the world pretty much is the clothes they stand up in and the bike; and I'm not entirely certain that all of them even own their own bikes.

Two wayangs

Two contrasting wayang on two nights. On Thursday we were in Boyolali to see Pak Jungkung Darmaya do 'Banjaran Karno'. The occasion was some sort of civic anniversary, with the screen and band set up under a medium large pendhopo, surrounded by what seemed to be a street festival in progress. We were ushered in and welcomed by our host for the evening, very formally dressed in tight high necked coat with shiny buttons, sarong and keris. Might have been something in the nature of the local mayor? We were encouraged to sit right at the front of the stage, but after a moment or two some sort of delicate protocol was negotiated, and we were moved just a little to one side. Of course, the spot we had taken was for the really important people; I'm guessing here, but I reckon local bigwigs and politicians, some guy who gave a speech who looked like he might have been a minor tv personality.

Huge-looking screen to my eyes, with puppets arrayed to either side. A big bright green double gamelan, six pesindhen, many of the instruments amplified. More or less on the dot of eight, an hour before the wayang, they kicked in - really kicked in - with a gangsaran. Big, big, strong sound with the amplification, plus guys throwing big heavy demung mallets down from over head-height. For the next thirty minutes or so they played continuously, very engaging and powerful. The most amazing moment was when in the middle of another gangsaran the whole band suddenly jumped around ninety degrees and went bang straight from slendro into pelog without missing a note; quite a gag. Also, a big addition to the sound of the band was the bass drum and cymbal with a second drummer, who consistently throughout the night played all the big hits simultaneously with the dhalang's foot and the main drummer. Big.

This was showy, populist gamelan. When we got the limbukan, kind of as expected all the action in the play stopped completely for about an hour to make way for a three-man comedy troupe, who mugged gamely, borrowing instruments from the drummer to horse around with. Some of it was even funny without understanding any of the several languages in use. For the climax of that section they played a Sundanese style piece (one of the comics seemed to be Sundanese) with the drummer absolutely rocking out...

We didn't make it all through the evening, in fact we didn't even make it to the goro-goro. I felt slightly uncomfortable, slightly on display; they had a couple of TV cameras giving live relays to other parts of the space, and we were frequently on camera trying to look as if we knew what was going on.

Wayang number two, a bit of a contrast. Mangkunegaran palace, Pak Bambang Suworno doing 'Wahyu Makutarama'. This was in a sort of side wing of the palace, entering through an obscure side gate. The only people who seemed to be there were musicians, their wives or cronies; the dhalang apparently teaches at ISI, and many of the players were students of varying ages. It had been described to us as 'latihan', a rehearsal, but there was no starting and stopping or discussion, they seemed to just perform the wayang. I've been talking with Anthony here about comparisons with jazz, and again this was kind of the equivalent of a jazz crowd; all the people who were there were cognoscenti of some sort.

Including our wee group of foreigners; however in this case I felt much more at home, largely I think as we were in the company of a couple of very experienced and respected players in the form of Kitsie Emerson and Rachel Hand, and I think it was taken for granted that we were obviously gamelan nuts as well if we were even there. Much smaller scale, slendro instruments only, much smaller and more informal setup. In tone the thing seemed to be more classical, far less populist. This dhalang is noted for his extremely precise and detailed puppet work, and even to a novice like myself this came across. At one point I even broke what felt like some sort of taboo, and went to watch the thing from the shadow side. Really fantastic, the detail in the puppets themselves, plus the clarity and accuracy of some of the moves; from that side one was sometimes at a loss to figure out how the effect was created with just two hands.

Some sort of dance performance there tonight I gather, plus rumours of another wayang going on somewhere at the same time. Ladrang drumming to memorise, then going to look at instruments to buy on Monday. Long days, happy days!

Lessons

I've now had two lessons with Mas Darsono. He's a very nice guy, quiet, laughs a lot, has worked/studied in the States and has fluent English. More importantly in this context perhaps is that he is a fluent and experienced teacher. Anecdotaly, it can be tricky learning from some of the older generation of gamelan musicians, who may not have a good sense of what to teach a Western player, or how to break it down. So we chatted, I played him a couple of things I half-knew, and he was polite enough to say 'good - ok', although actually it was far south of ok, I think.

So he took me back to the basics, but also covering some new ground; lancaran drumming, starting in irama tanggung and transitioning to lancar, using a piece with which I was only vaguely familiar as a model, Tropongbang (Pl 5). I don't know whether this is the way he always works, or whether he took a judgement call on where I seemed to be coming from, but he started out by writing out the whole thing, drumming and balungan, rather than teaching me orally. This was a mild shock to the system; in Bali we got absolutely classic aural teaching, going over and over sometimes quite complex tunes, gradually trying to figure out the syncopations just by listening and following.

So, after a moment or two I got my head back around Javanese notation - rhythmically it is kind of written, not backwards exactly, the strong beat is at the end of the bar - I was succesfuly sight-reading the tricky syncopated rhythm for a gongan of lancaran in tanggung, but quite unable to do it without looking at the dots! Overnight I went and did the homework, memorised the whole thing including the balungan, and came back the next day able to concentrate on actually listening to the balungan (which Darsono played), and leading the transitions correctly. This morning I did a little slow motion practice to try to clean up my articulation at key points.

The plan next is for me to tackle ladrang, specifically Wilujeng; this makes a whole lot of sense as Mags is learning that piece on the gendèr, so in theory we might be able to play it together sometime.

In other news; there is some politics around the use of the gamelan room here at Cakra. The owner has been trying to impose an oddly illogical fee for using the gamelan during a lesson; but not for practice. Together with Anthony from the New York group, we are supposed to be having a meeting with the owner over this, and the feeling is that we are going to try to take some sort of a stand. Everyone here including the staff seems to think this is a ridiculous idea, especially as the Cakra is apparently very highly priced by local standards, and not really that amazing in terms of facilities. The argument is that we are effectively already paying a gamelan surcharge on our room rates...

(Hmm. Anyone know if it possible to type an ellipsis in Windows as a single character, rather than as three dots? How?)

Great experience this morning; dawn tour round the area of the kraton from an expat Australian guy called Randall, who gave us a complete cultural and historical rundown of Java from the beginning of written records up to the current election. Seriously! The guy was amazingly knowledgeable; most memorable point has to be the buffalo he showed us which is an official, titled member of the royal family, and who produces... holy poo?

Oh, and did I mention that tonight we're all going to a wayang in Boyolali? Bring. It.On!

Solo

After our week in Bali, we've now come to Solo (Surakarta) for three weeks. Solo and Yogyakarta fifty miles away are widely regarded, at least by the Central Javanese, as the twin cultural centres of the country if not the nation. Our arrival in Yogya was a bit of a culture shock after Bali; all of the heat, motorbikes, insects, fumes and unfamiliarity of Indonesia with none of the tourist-paradise feel.

The trip to Solo looked easy; the train station was right beside the exit to the airport, and the fare was only IDR 7000, that's about 50p. Which was fine until the train actually pulled up, four or five tiny yellow carriages about the same size as a Glasgow underground train, pretty much completely packed with people. We took one look and turned tourist, went for the taxi instead. According to the receptionist at our hotel, we should only have paid about IDR 150,000 for this instead of the IDR 200,000 agreed. On the other hand, there appeared to be some sort of official taxi police at Yogya airport who agreed the fare our driver was asking was fair.

Ended up giving him a bit extra for his efforts when we got to Solo anyway; the hotel was impossibly difficult to find! I had an address and even walking directions, but still our driver had to go round and round in circles asking several policemen and local people, and even phoning the hotel itself on my phone with no luck. Turns out there are three streets called 'Jalan Cakra'...

Cakra Homestay itself is an oasis of calm amidst the chaos of shops and traffic which surrounds it. A sort of compact two-story compound, with a pool and some other buildings in the centre; dark smoky wood, decaying wrought-iron work. The room is small, rather basic, rather full of insects. The cockroach I threw out last night was... huge. Really.

More importantly of course, is the gamelan resident in the hotel, which is what makes this place a magnet for foreign players and students. Last night we witnessed our first performance here. The gamelan itself is in a side room, with a double door and a few windows opening onto a corridor. Inside the room were the players; this was described to us as a 'community group', a group of local musicians who meet twice a week to play just for the enjoyment of it, 'not professionals'. The majority were older people, perhaps retired players? There were also a number of young to middle aged people in the group, and I was told that there were four 'teachers' there tonight, meaning I assume expert professional players.

They played from about 2000 to 1100. Most of the material was beyond me; I think they played about four gendhings over the course of the evening, one of them perhaps forty minutes long, extended multi-section compositions, sometimes very slow, often ending with quite loud and lively music. The players seemed to grow into it as the night went on; by the end of the evening our attention was fixed on a very elderly drummer who when seated at the drums literally seemed transformed again into a handsome young man.

Our stay here coincides with a visit by a group from Galloway who are buying their own set of instruments under the guidance of the well-known London musician Peter Smith. At the end Peter introduced us to one of the younger players, Darsono, 'one of the foremost gamelan players of his generation'. So rather scarily, we are going to have a go at getting lessons from him this afternoon!

Evan Ziporyn's new opera

By a fortunate combination of circumstances I was last night able to attend the dress rehearsal of Evan Ziporyn's new opera 'A House in Bali' here in Ubud. I'm not quite sure about the etiquette of critiquing a piece on the day of its premiere, so I'm not going to say that much about it, except that I think this is going to turn out to be a really wonderful thing. My artistic radar starts to ping whenever I see big, ambitious cross-cultural collaborations such as this one, bringing together New York post-minimalism, Western opera, and about four or five different forms of Balinese dance, drama and music into one great melting pot.

Except that this is not a melting pot piece at all, rather the opposite; this is a piece which puts cultural clash at it's heart, both in terms of subject matter and more crucially in terms of the music, where Ziporyn very conciously and brilliantly collides two virtuosic, rhythmic, hi-speed ensembles, a gong kebyar directed by Dewa Ketut Alit and the New York post-minimalists the Bang on a Can All-Stars. The pacing and overall shape of the opera seems very good, but without any synopsis and without having read the book the experience was a bit hard to figure out what was going on.

The piece premieres today and tomorrow here in Ubud, sold out but maybe stand by tickets available. The American premiere is in California in September; if it were to come to the UK I would go and see it again.

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.

Impressions of Bali, three days in

It's a complex mix, here; different worlds co-existing. On the surface, as a Westerner, is tourist Bali; walking around the centre of Bali and being politely accosted every few yards with a call of 'Taxi?', or 'Transport?', past shop after shop selling clothes, bamboo wind chimes, carved nick-nacks, fruit, paintings. Again, if you make eye contact it's 'Good morning, how are you?' and, again, being very politely shown something you might want to buy.

It's fine, but it's tiring. Walking down the main street in Ubud is tiring anyway. The pavement, where it exists at all, it is narrow and uneven, with frequent gaping holes which would drop you straight into the sewer below. It also tends to be blocked by parked cars, motorbikes, sleeping dogs and building works. Often you end up walking on the road, jostling for space with motorbikes and cars squeezing by with inches to spare.

Once you get tired of all this, again you are never more than a few yards away from a large and well-appointed restaurant catering mainly to tourists. The prices here are possiby vastly inflated by local standards, but affordable in Western terms; perhaps 30,000 IDR for a typical dish, which is only about £1.80 at the moment. There are many hotels, pensions and guesthouses; ours is very nice, with a delighful view over the paddy fields, a small swimming pool, and a basic but ok room with a fan. Our hotel does internet access for 15,000 IDR per hour, under a pound, I've also spotted a few places which seem to do it for free. (I saw one guy rather oddly and ostentatiously sitting on the pavement across the road from a café with a MacBook Pro, obviously snarfing their wifi for free...)

Everyone speaks basic English, at least enough to offer you a taxi, or sell you something. There is no problem with things like getting a sim card for a phone, or getting money from and ATM, or even booking an internal flight, which we did very painlessly just by walking into a tiny one-man office and enquiring.

Anytime you do want to buy something - a gift, a taxi ride, a hotel room - you have to barter. Well, I suppose you don't have to, you could just pay the price asked, but it is expected. I don't much like it. Today I plucked up courage to go into a shop and show some interest in a batik shirt. Surprisingly, perhaps, there was a written price label of 195,000 IDR, £12, which would probably have been a fair price for the garment in the UK. I tried it on and it genuinely didn't fit, so I turned it down. At which point, the guy dropped his voice very quietly, as one does when bartering, and offered me a 'discount' to 175,000 IDR.

And so it goes; I didn't take this one any further. I was sitting next to an Indonesian couple the other night at a performance, and I was able to overhear a barter for a tube of mosquito repellant between two Indonesians. It was all over in about two seconds, they just did it so quickly and naturally... maybe I'll get used to it.

Overhear. Yes, spending the time in the run up to our trip here memorising more or less the whole of 'Teach Yourself Indonesian' has been extremely worthwhile. To my relief I found that my pronunciation was good enough for people to follow, that my stock of phrases was quite useful, and that in simple everyday transactions I can more or less follow what is being said. Which brings me on to...

Indonesian Bali. We went down to breakfast quite early the other morning, slightly catching them on the hop, I think. The only person around was Made Lodeh; maybe in her early twenties, freindly smile and manner, but only just so much English. She was dressed in jeans, t-shirt and trainers. A little while later after getting our breakfast, she reappeared, but this time in traditional Balinese costume. It was only then I really noticed that most of the staff here dress this way whenever they are on duty. It had kind of snuck under my conciousness; the costume, along with a particular kind of diffident manner, it's all a subtle part of what makes tourist Bali so attractive.

But then there's jeans and t-shirt Bali, Indonesian Bali; you come back in the evening and spy the same hotel guys sitting around and watching idoru on YouTube. Or, wander through the downtown Peliatan and see the motorbike workshops, electrical shops, mobile phone shops and even what looked to me like a very non-tourist batik shop, maybe where you would go to buy your hotel costume.

Then, Balinese Bali. The other curious obstruction you meet when trying to negotiate Ubud main street is little square packets made of palm leaves or something, with a little bit of rice, or some incense or some coconut in them. Clumsy tourists stomp all over them (including me, once), but they are offerings, and they are made freshly every day in their thousands. Most mornings I spot a woman who seems to be doing the rounds of the local shrines and temples, kind of watering the offerings and refreshing the offerings which have been left there. When you do become aware of them, it's like you are reminded of a spiritual presence every few steps, of a kind of duty to some kind of order beyond the everyday.

I don't quite get it all; either what is going on here or my own responses to it. And, where do we locate the Balinese performing arts in this, particularly the music which we have come here to absorb? Are the tourist performances we have been to see 'authentic' or 'folkloric', 'the real thing' or 'artificial', or possibly all of that at the same time.

Speculations for another post, when I get a chance. Mags is not very well today, so we're kind of taking it easy, may or may not go out to a show tonight. Mid afternoon, pretty hot now, may go for a lie down or possibly another swim in the wee pool.