Gamelan is the traditional ensemble music of the Javanese, Sundanese, and Balinese peoples of Indonesia, made up predominantly of percussive instruments. The most common instruments used are metallophones and a set of hand-drums called kendang, which keep the beat. The kemanak, a banana-shaped idiophone, and the gangsa, another metallophone, are also commonly used gamelan instruments on Bali. Other notable instruments include xylophones, bamboo flutes, a bowed string instrument called a rebab, and a zither-like instrument called a siter, used in Javanese gamelan. Additionally, vocalists may be featured, being referred to as sindhen for females or gerong for males.
Pelog is one of the essential tuning systems used in gamelan instruments that has a heptatonic scale. The other, older, scale commonly used is called slendro. Pelog has seven notes, but many gamelan ensembles only have keys for five of the pitches. Even in ensembles that have all seven notes, many pieces only use a subset of five notes, sometimes the additional 4th tone is also used in a piece like western accidentals.
Kecak, alternate spellings: kechak and ketjak), known in Indonesian as tari kecak, is a form of Balinese Hindu dance and music drama that was developed in the 1930s. Since its creation, it has been performed primarily by men, with the first women's kecak group having started in 2006. The dance is based on the story of the Ramayana and is traditionally performed in temples and villages across Bali, Indonesia.
Ned Lagin is an American artist, photographer, scientist, composer, and keyboardist.
Michael Tenzer is a composer, performer, and music educator and scholar.
Infected Mushroom is an Israeli musical duo formed in Haifa in 1996 by producers Erez Eisen and Amit Duvdevani. They produce and perform psytrance, electronica, dream trance and psychedelic music. They are one of the best-selling groups in Israeli music history in terms of both domestic and international sales.
Philip Lionel Corner is an American composer, trombonist, alphornist, vocalist, pianist, music theorist, music educator, and visual artist.
Daniel Goode is an American composer and clarinetist.
Mantle Hood was an American ethnomusicologist. Among other areas, he specialized in studying gamelan music from Indonesia. Hood pioneered, in the 1950s and 1960s, a new approach to the study of music, and the creation of the first American university program devoted to ethnomusicology, at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He was known for a suggestion, somewhat novel at the time, that his students learn to play the music they were studying.
Stephen Kent is a professional didgeridoo performer, percussionist, composer and recording artist. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Gamelan Sekar Jaya is a Balinese gamelan ensemble located in the San Francisco Bay Area. It has been called "the finest Balinese gamelan ensemble outside of Indonesia" by Indonesia's Tempo Magazine. It performs the music and dance of Bali in many different genres of Balinese gamelan, mainly gamelan gong kebyar, gamelan angklung, gender wayang, and gamelan jegog. Past performances have also featured ensembles playing in other styles as well, including gamelan joged bumbung, gamelan semar pegulingan, kecak, gender batel, gamelan gambuh, genggong, and beleganjur. GSJ has also performed contemporary pieces featuring instruments from the Western tradition.
Dika Newlin was a composer, pianist, professor, musicologist, and punk rock singer. She received a Ph.D. from Columbia University at the age of 22. She was one of the last living students of Arnold Schoenberg and was a Schoenberg scholar and a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond from 1978 to 2004. She performed as an Elvis impersonator and played punk rock while in her seventies in Richmond, Virginia.
Trance Mission is a world fusion ensemble co-founded in San Francisco by American clarinetist and composer Beth Custer and British-born didgeridoo player Stephen Kent in 1992, with Canadian musician Kenneth Newby and American percussionist John Loose. Their music incorporates elements of jazz, fourth world and ethnoambient music styles. In the 1990s, the group recorded four albums on the ambient label City of Tribes.
Aleksandra Dulic is a Serbian Canadian painter, animator, media artist and scholar. Aleksandra is an associate professor in Creative Studies at the University of British Columbia (UBC), serving as Director of the Centre for Culture and Technology at (UBC). She is Visiting Professor at the University of Arts in Belgrade. In 1998 Aleksandra received BFA from University of Arts in Belgrade, MFA from the School for the Contemporary Arts in 2000 and Ph.D. from the School of Interactive Art and Technology in 2006 from Simon Fraser University, in British Columbia, Canada.
Michael Vincent is a music journalist, media executive, and composer, who splits his time between Toronto, Ontario and Moncton, New Brunswick.
Systems art is art influenced by cybernetics and systems theory, reflecting on natural systems, social systems, and the social signs of the art world itself.
Gandrung is a traditional dance from Indonesia. Gandrung has many variations and is popular in Bali, Lombok, and Eastern Java among the Balinese, Sasak, and Javanese. The most popular variation is gandrung from the Banyuwangi region in the eastern peninsula of Java; thus, the city is often referred to as Kota Gandrung, or "the city of gandrung". Originally a ritual dance dedicated to the goddess of rice and fertility, Dewi Sri, it is currently performed as a social dance of courtship and love in communal and social events, or as a tourist attraction. Gandrung Sewu Festival is held at Banyuwangi annually.
Trance Mission is the debut album of Trance Mission, released in 1993 through City of Tribes Records.
Head Light is the third album by Trance Mission, released on October 21, 1996 through City of Tribes Records.
Condong is a Balinese dance which is often performed as a preface to legong and accompanied by the semar pangulingan style of gamelan. The term also refers to a stock character, a quintessential representation of the maidservant, found in the condong dance as well as the legong, gambuh, and arja dances.
