The flowering of gending Agbekor: a musical collaboration with I Dewa Putu Berata.

KAWITAN (INTRODUCTION)

AWAKENING" IS A WORD well-chosen to describe the point at which a set of Balinese instruments becomes a gamelan in the fullest sense, the point at which those instruments come to life as a consequence of interaction between their enabling presence and the human activity that takes place within and around them. In fall 2000, the stage was set for such an awakening at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles where I teach and direct world music ensembles. At my request, and with the authorization and encouragement of faculty colleagues, Dr. I Nyoman Wenten had contacted the esteemed Balinese instrument maker, I Made Rindi, in spring 1999. Twenty-five or so instruments were to be constructed that would comprise a five-tone gamelan angklung. (1) These instruments were completed during the summer, tuned in early fall, shipped in November, and received in the port of Los Angeles in late December of that year. They received an enthusiastic welcome upon their arrival at the university in January 2000, but, for the most part, stood silent through the next three seasons. During that interim, I made the happy acquaintance of Mr. I Dewa Putu Berata--a highly regarded composer, performer, and teacher from Bali--and invited him to undertake a semester-long artist's residency at LMU. With the coming of the fall, his artistry and skill as a teacher generated a palpable sense of commitment among student members of the ensemble. (2) Mr. Berata's knowledge of classical Javanese also allowed us to settle upon the name Kembang Atangi, translating literally as "Flower of Awakening," (3) for the new gamelan.

In addition to teaching a traditional composition from the gong genre of tabuh telu, (4) Mr. Berata created two works for five-tone gamelan angklung which were premiered during a fall concert at the university. Even before the concert, it had occurred to me that we might work together, in the light of a successful "awakening," to co-compose another piece. Since the ensemble had a three-year history of performing West African (primarily Ghanaian) music, I proposed a collaboration, the result of which could serve as a kind of signature piece, combining Balinese with Ghanaian musical ideas and idioms. A melody the ensemble had played previously using traditional Ghanaian flutes seemed well-suited for adaptation as a pokok or "skeleton melody" from which to start. A representation of this melody, associated with the Ewe dance-drumming genre, Agbekor, is given in staff notation in Example 1. (5)

After simplifying the melody that it might better serve as the basis of variations within a Balinese setting, I transcribed the result to numerical (or cipher) notation. (6) I also shifted initial "downbeats" to culminating or "end" beats in order to suggest a Balinese metric orientation (compare the metric orientation of Example 2 with Example 1). On the occasion of my sharing this adapted transcription with Mr. Berata for the first time, he immediately began to sing the melody with the vowel sounds that serve as Balinese solmization syllables or ndings. (7) Example 2 thus represents what we each brought to a first stage of collaboration.

This initial session was promising, but I harbored some skepticism. I had learned a great deal in a short period of time with "Pak" Berata. (8) We had worked together successfully in bringing the new gamelan to life, but aside from these salutary interactions, neither of us was truly aware of the other's creative background. I was particularly uncertain of whether an excursion outside current Balinese practices might hold any fascination for Mr. Berata. (9) As it turned out, he was at least as eager, if not more so, as I.

LOOKING BACK

I trace a disposition toward intercultural collaboration to associations during ethnomusicological fieldwork with composers and musicians in Native North America and West Africa. The compositions that have resulted include instruments and styles that are more or less directly tied to local repertoires and practices. Among less directly related, but nevertheless "derivative" compositions for solo piano, Three Musings of Kyekye (2000) draws upon studies in traditional Ghanaian xylophone and Toccata Walatowa (1992) upon fieldwork in the Southwest Pueblos of Native North America. In general, my compositional technique has tended away from chordal and contrapuntal procedures toward rhythmicized, "transactional" processes that are consonant, if not precisely identical, with Balinese as well as some repertoires of West and East African music. Another important impetus has been the friendship and example of Lou Harrison. (10) His characteristically terse epigram--"Don't put down the hybrids; that's all there are"--ha s more than once been a timely source of encouragement of efforts to see and hear other music cultures through the focus of my activity as a composer.