Arrington de Dionyso checks in from Indonesia:

Hello All-

I have been in Indonesia since September 15th, going between
Yogyakarta, Lombok Island, Bali, and Bandung performing a number of
concerts at World Music festivals, some clubs, and also a very
inspiring voice workshop for teenagers on Lombok.

I haven’t really had a ton of internet time, but I have been
documenting my adventures as best I can. The only problem is getting
to places with enough internet juice to upload all of these clips!
This clip had me waiting at a cafe for almost four hours today! So I
probably won’t be uploading very much until I get back home.

This is a recording session with a traditional Sasak musician named
Gomblo, who plays the pereret, similar somewhat to a shenai or
tarompet. He performed his solo repretoire of the cycle of classical
Hindu ceremonial pieces for our recording session. After this, we
recorded five or six short improvisations together. In these
improvisations, he didn’t deviate too much from the pieces he had just
recorded, so I tried to find a way to play within his pitch vocabulary
while still actually PLAYING my own instrument, i.e. trying not to be
too shy or “precious” with the opportunity we had before us.

We both laughed a lot while listening to the results, it was a very
enjoyable afternoon. We did some other pieces with a kendang drummer,
but those didn’t really turn out as well because of microphone
problems.

That same weekend, I was able to perform with a Sasak village Gamelan
group, which was very exciting and also quite a challenge because we
weren’t really allowed any time at all for rehearsal, so I was pretty
much forced to jump right in and make it work somehow. The recording
for that turned out fairly well, so- again, I’ll be posting everything
as soon as I am able!

I’m also doing a number of concerts with the amazing WUKIR, who has
invented his own instrument. Wukir is also a member of the Indonesian
version of Malaikat dan Singa, so in the coming weeks you will hearing
a lot about him and his music as well.

Thank you so much to everyone for all of your support and
encouragement, of course, I am having the time of my life, listening
and learning a lot but also finding a very receptive audience for my
music and art as well!

Arrington de Dionyso