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Pemangku

from Jarak Jauh by Nick Brooke

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"Pemangku" is Javanese for seat or lap. The "Pemangku bumi" (roughly, “the seat of the world”) is the court ruler of Central Java. "pemangku irama", or the cradle of time, is made up of five gong-like instruments--kenong, kethuk, kempyang, kempul, and gong--that form the rhythmic frame of the gamelan. Over this frame, the other elaborating instruments and singers inlay their florid counterpoint. Far from stable, the cradle of time rocks between tempi, sometimes gradually, sometimes at the signal of a drumstroke. As the cradle of time slows down, the elaborating instruments crowd into the empty spaces--making music with an odd sense of speeding up as it slows down.

In Pemangku, I use the Central Javanese tune Puspawarna. Its structure--its cradle--is always there, sometimes only barely emerging from the kitchen sink of sound thrown in with it. A gamelan is not always a fixed set of instruments; I add sounds, among others, associated with a two year-stay in Yogyakarta. I take inspiration from Javanese composers who frequented toy shops and auto mechanics to find soundmakers to create their own personal "gamelan". Puspawarna, which means "the color of flowers", is the signature tune for the Mangkunegaran court in Surakarta; my computer "gamelan" is based on the tuning of a court gamelan there. This piece is dedicated to the memory of Puspawati, the dancer who first choreographed it.

credits

from Jarak Jauh, released November 1, 2017
Created partly through Dan Trueman’s Cyclotron app.
Sample From Nonesuch, Java: Court Gamelan, 1971 Puro Paku Alaman

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Nick Brooke Bennington, Vermont

Nick Brooke mixes musical sampling, lipsynching, and theater into a genre all its own. In his works, vocalists and actors are trained to mimic sampled collages of sound effects, pop songs, and musical ephemera, blurring the line between recording and live performance. His works have been performed at the Lincoln Center Festival, HERE, and Mass MoCA. ... more

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