| Abstract |
This is the story of a musician who lived for five years on the island of Bali studying its music. His friends were scholars and dancers, priests and village chiefs, actors, musicians and princes. With music as the main theme of the book, he has woven a lively account of his life from day to day in an island of mysterious and friendly people. From a musician's point of view Bali was indeed an incredible paradise, where music and dancing were not only loved by all, but played a most important part in the life of the people. Day and night the air was vibrant with the golden, metallic sounds of the gamelan - the Balinese orchestra of gongs, bronze-keyed instruments and drums - as it played for temple rites or village feast. The roots of this music could be traced to the ancient courts of Java, to still more ancient India and China. In Bali just before the war, it had blossomed miraculously into something new. This is not a travel book. It is not an ethnographic record. It is something rarer. For those to whom sound makes sense this articulate and sensitive account of a unique adventure should offer an exciting experience, a graceful and welcome counterpoint to the contemporary emphases of a war-torn world. The author has the unusual gift of being able to translate his musical experience into words and yet in some way leave the music still hanging in the air, to echo in the reader's ears. Entering another society through the seeing eye and the hearing ear of one who has had the patience to explore it for us is always rewarding, doubly rewarding when the society is Bali, caught just on the poignant edge of its vanishing civilization. |
