THE floors of New York City’s music halls attain various states of cleanliness. Few ensembles are in a better position to observe them up close than the Balinese ensemble Gamelan Dharma Swara.
Photo: Members of Gamelan Dharma Swara, which is based at the Indonesian consulate on the Upper East Side and releases its first album, a two-disc set, next Sunday.
In an October performance at the West Village club Fat Cat its musicians sat cross legged behind an array of glittering bronze percussion instruments on the black basement floor, a linoleum surface one suspects began as some other color. Pool-playing patrons sat next to more sober listeners on beer-stained sofas. Fat Cat might seem far from Bali in spirit, but the music’s spectacular brightness attracted a rogue dog, something you might encounter in any temple courtyard.
Home for Dharma Swara is not Indonesia itself, but rather its consulate on the Upper East Side. That converted town house has a basketball court’s worth of hardwood on which to rehearse. Membership in the group is open to anyone. The set of instruments — gongs, xylophones, drums and flutes — accommodates about 20 players. Some are Balinese, but most are not.
The ensemble serves both to promote Balinese music and dance and, in a practical sense, to support diplomatic events. The performers are roving diplomats themselves. In addition to sundry clubs and concert halls, they have performed on the carpets of the United Nations, in the lobbies of museums, at college auditoriums and in the gardens of private patrons.
A flurry of dates last year helped raise money for a summer tour of Bali. And in a brief appearance on a recent episode of the CBS drama “The Good Wife,” Dharma Swara was the unwitting target of a snarky character who declared that its music was the worst she’d ever heard. (The music used to accompany the scene wasn’t Dharma Swara at all, but was taken from a different source.)
Next Sunday the group will celebrate the release of its first album, a double CD set titled “Gamelan Dharma Swara,” with a concert at Le Poisson Rouge in Greenwich Village. An offering dance, a traditional form of temple worship performed with a nimble trio of women, will honor the audience in a shower of flower petals. The program will also feature Pan Wandres’s Kebyar Legong (1914), a 30-minute tour de force with such explosive shifts of mood and tempo that few groups try to perform it — even in Bali.
Complete on http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/12/arts/music/12gamelan.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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