Folk /
Indonesian City Sound Panbers Psychedelic Rock and Funk 1971-1974
Long-awaited compilation of hard-rocking, psychedelic songs from Indonesia's premiere rock outfit Panbers (Pandjaitan Bersaudara) culled from their most fertile years with Mesra Dimita Records.
Kafilah Nights: Malay-Arabic Variations From 1960s Indonesia
In the early 1960s, two of the best talents in the Indonesian music scene, songwriter and band leader Adi Karso, known for his hits "Papaya Cha-Cha-Cha" and "Balonku" and Gambus musician Munif Bahasuan teamed up to form Orkes Melayu (Malay Orchestra) Kelana Ria. Between 1961 and 1964, Kelana Ria recorded 48 songs that were spread over four records, Kafilah, Yam El Shamah, Ya Mahmud, and Ya Hamidah, which become the primary sources for this compilation. These four albums changed the trajectory of…
Timeline
2023 marks the twenty-eighth year of Suarasama; it is also the first year for this reissue of their 2013 masterpiece, Timeline. Irwansyah Harahap and Rithaony Hutajulu, Ethnomusicology lecturers at University of Sumatera Utara, founded Suarasama in 1995 after graduating from the University of Washington Ethnomusicology program. Their music, as expressed on both Timeline and Fajar Di Atas Awan (first issued in 1998, reissued by Drag City in 2008) is hypnotic and joyful; progressing ancient North …
The Sacred Entertainment, Réak Ceremonial Horse Trance Music (LP
Kasenian réak is a genre of performative art from the Priangan area of west Java, organized during hajatans (life-cycle celebrations) and nowadays primarily held during weddings and circumcisions. The style, known as a seni lungsuran, is part of the greater family of Javanese horse dances, originally known in their most famous forms of jathilan and kuda lumping. Javanese horse dances, which could be as old as animistic Java, may already have been practiced before the eight century, travelling th…
Bali 1928, Vol. V: Vocal Music In Dances Drama
Vol. V of the Bali 1928 recordings contains various emergent theatrical dance and dance-opera forms with translations of the dramas' texts. We hear the first recordings of women participating in dance dramas, making this disc a major cultural repatriation of primary Balinese art forms that had been lost for nearly a century. An extensive essay is included as a PDF (accessed by computer) with links to 1930s silent films and a photo library are hosted online by World Arbiter. Some of these …
Bali 1928, Vol. II Tembang Kuna: Songs from an Earlier Time
Vol. II in a five-disc series of 1928 Balinese recordings features Balinese vocal music, the first release of these recordings since they were first pressed to 78 rpm discs in 1929, the only commercially released recordings of music made in Bali before World War II. Originally recorded by a team from the German labels Odeon and Beka on a 1928-29 expedition to Bali and intended for a Balinese public that lacked any discs of its own music, many of these records have been reduced to single r…