一聽音樂網

From time to time, the WDR recording team travels to far-away countries to undertake a comprehensive documentation of musical styles which are threatened with extinction. These have included the highly lauded World Network recordings of the music of Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and Tuva. Recently, the WDR team spent several months on Bali, and brought back some previously little known rarities from this beautiful island whose cultural heritage is vast and varied. The recordings include the hypnotic sounds of processional music, midnight concerts of cicadas and frogs, almost forgotten flute and jaws-harp music, the evocative vocals of the "Wayang Kulit" shadow theatre, and the famous ketchak (huge vocal ensembles who sing themselves into a trance). These are recordings of virtuoso ensembles capable of a truly incredible wealth of nuances on every instrument and in every vocal style. We hear flirt- dances, inimitable scat-song, bamboo flutes, and recordings from the fertility temple of Pejang. This CD delves deep into the endless cosmos of Balinese music, which most Europeans have hitherto associated only with gong and gamelan.