Gamelan Son of Lion | Bending the Gending |Self Release | USA

Playing interlocking parts on tuned gongs and iron, xylophone-like metalophones, Javanese and Balinese gamelan orchestras are capable of hypnotic weavings and percussive explosions that have inspired Western composers from Debussy to Cage and beyond. By the end of the twentieth century, the borrowing of Indonesian musical tradition was pretty much a tradition itself, with the great Lou Harrison as its godfather.

Like Harrison, New York composer Barbara Benary built her own Javanese gamelan; these instruments form the physical nucleus of Gamelan Son of Lion, the well-known repertory ensemble and performance collective Benary co-founded in 1976 with composers Daniel Goode and Philip Corner. The title of their CD, Bending the Gending, refers to the playful, freethinking approach the group applies to composing and playing gending, or gamelan musical pieces.

The title of the first cut, "Cool It Wayang" is an inversion of the Indonesian wayang kulit or shadow play (and maybe a pun on the extremely common Balinese given name of Wayan). The composition itself similarly sets tradition on its head. The first thirty seconds or so sound like they could be tradional accompaniment to an all-night Balinese shadow puppet performance, but quickly a syncopated rhythm, a trombone and the airy and appealing voice of Lisa Karrer make it clear that this ain't your Uncle Wayan's puppet show. The piece has a groove that reminds me of some of Laurie Anderson's more upbeat moments.

Track two, "Eine Kleine Gamelan Music," shifts gears into a minimal-mechanistic pastiche that sounds like a collaboration between Philip Glass and Warner Brothers cartoon composer Carl Stalling.

More gear shifting follows, as Bending the Gending contorts gamelan music into an astounding array of stylistic poses. There's prog-funk ("Pitu Ping Pitu"), an abstract piece based on the bank card PINs of the performers ("PINs"), a whimsically spooky theme Danny Elfman would admire ("Halloween") and a surprisingly moving elegy for a deceased cat (Benary's "Lelambatan Meows"). In fact, if the CD has any shortcoming at all, it's that its eleven composers are too stylistically diverse for a single CD--amazing and ironic given that many listeners can't tell two traditional gamelan pieces apart. This is a really exciting group of composers and performers who master traditions but refuse to be mastered by them.