Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.20.1612082116480.17904@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.wvu.edu>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: Javanese Gender
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2016 21:19:57 -0500 (EST)
Javanese Gender http://www.alansondheim.org/atl310.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/gender1.mp3 http://www.alansondheim.org/gender1.mp4 "If not connected with the seal of the fully established, the imagined may be many, but they are dead bodies." - from the Autocommentary to the 'Fourth Council,' Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen, in The Buddho from Dolpo, Cyrus Stearns, Snow Lion, 2010 "A gender is a type of metallophone used in Balinese and Javanese gamelan music. It consists of 10 to 14 tuned metal bars suspended over a tuned resonator of bamboo or metal, which are tapped with a mallet made of wooden disks (Bali) or a padded wooden disk (Java). Each key is a note of a different pitch, often extending a little more than two octaves. There are five notes per octave, so in the seven-note plog scale, some pitches are left out according to the pathet. Most gamelans include three gendr, one for slndro, one for pelog pathet nem and lima, and one for pelog pathet barang." (Wikipedia) I improvise on a Javanese gender in Atlanta, recorded by Neil Fried. Video, still by Azure Carter. I am playing the gender with fingers and fingernails, not the traditional mallets. But the traditional music is intense, beautiful, my nails touch only surfaces. But the surfaces are beautiful in their own way. An uncanny sound, my sound. "I am playing for the resonances of the world, hovering at the edge of cataclysm," I say. "I await only the seething of collateral deaths," I continue. "The rocks will persevere," I insist. "This music is already lost to me, lost by me, lost away from me," I shout. "Away from me, this music," I shout. "This music," I said, "this music." +++ ... +++ thanks to Neil Fried, Azure Carter, Atlanta
