Bali 1928, Volumes 1–5

Abstract

Reviewed by: Bali 1928, Volumes 1–5 Andy McGraw (bio) and Gusti Putu Sudarta Bali 1928, Volumes 1–5. World Arbiter Records, nos. 2011, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017, produced between 2010 and 2015. 5 discs: 335 minutes of recorded sound on 111 tracks; 4 hours of video (embedded in the discs and/or available on YouTube); 400 pages of notes, downloadable from the discs and online; and a blog at http://bali1928.net/. The Bali 1928 Project, directed by Edward Herbst, is a monumental repatriation effort involving the remastering and republication of many hours of music and film produced in Bali, Indonesia, between 1928 and 1938.1 It is the most important publication of media from Indonesia since the release by Smithsonian Folkways of the 18-volume Music in Indonesia series (1992–99) recorded and annotated by Philip Yampolsky. Herbst's research is informed by fieldwork in Bali beginning in 1972, and his dedication to this decade-long project is inspiring. In addition to multiple extended trips to Indonesia during this time, Herbst worked for eight years to obtain permissions from archives around the world to rerelease the recordings, most originally recorded and released by the long-defunct Odeon and Beka labels. The project includes five CDs comprising 111 tracks, liner notes equivalent to a four hundred–page monograph, reprints of images from Colin McPhee's archive, and more than four hours of film shot by McPhee and Miguel Covarrubias (Herbst 2010–15). Herbst and his many collaborators in Indonesia have presented their research in public events in Bali, Yogyakarta, and Jakarta and have given approximately three hundred copies of the media free to descendants of the recorded artists, local schools, museums, and arts clubs. The recordings represent a wide variety of Balinese genres of the era, including solo vocal music, dance and drama accompaniment, and instrumental music. It appears that the original sessions were a collaborative and intercultural encounter between local musicians and Western scholars and recording engineers. The Balinese musician Ida Boda (who appears in several recordings) helped curate the recordings released by Beka, while the German artist Walter Spies facilitated the Odeon recordings. The Bali 1928 Project is more thoroughly intercultural, emerging from the close and long-term collaboration between Herbst and many Balinese colleagues, principally the [End Page 164] scholar/performers I Madé Bandem, Ni Ketut Arini, I Ketut Kodi, I Wayan Dibia, Ni Ketut Suryatini, and I Madé Arnawa, among many others. In this spirit of dialogue this review essay was coauthored by Andy McGraw and the Balinese scholar/performer I Gusti Putu Sudarta, who also served as an occasional informant for the Bali 1928 Project. While the recordings included in this corpus cover a wide range of genres, it is unclear how representative they are of overall Balinese performance practice of the era. Members of the Brahman caste from the south of the island are strongly represented in the CDs, images, and films, reflecting their greater access to both Balinese traditional manuscripts (lontar, the source of many vocal texts) and Western interlocutors. This bias may skew our understanding of the corpus as a comprehensive image of the Balinese past. In an era in which liner notes have become increasingly scarce and difficult to track down, it is hoped that audiences do not overlook the important notes, embedded as PDF files on the CDs themselves and as digital download. Herbst's notes are enriched by interview excerpts with many contemporary Balinese authorities and elderly performers, some of whom appeared on the original recordings. The notes are most interesting when these authorities provide alternative or contradictory interpretations and explanations. Many of Herbst's elderly informants passed away during and shortly following the republication of the CDs, making this project all the more valuable and timely. The notes are somewhat uneven between the CDs, some tracks receiving extensive commentary and others far less. The text is a bit breathless at points and would have benefited from closer copyediting. There are some sudden shifts in organization—the reader encounters a basic introduction to gamelan only after a highly detailed discussion of the minutia of kebyar techniques—and Herbst occasionally assumes some detailed knowledge on the part of...