Cover for Dance Set, Disk 1
Cover for Music Set, Disk 1
Balinese and Javanese Research Archive (BAJRA)
Special DVD collection of music and dance
All inquiries about availability and cost should be addressed to inquiries@bajra.org
|
|
Cover for Dance Set, Disk 1 |
Cover for Music Set, Disk 1 |
The Balinese & Javanese Research Archive (BAJRA) is making available two sets of DVDs on Balinese music and dance. The contents of these sets have been specially selected from our collection of 1,500 hours of recordings. These recordings constitute a singular record of Balinese performing arts and should be of particular interest to universities with courses in Comparative Music, Dance and Performing Arts and Area Studies, but also Tourism Studies, Postcolonial studies and Media and Cultural Studies.
The mission of BAJRA is to disseminate Indonesian cultural production by selecting particularly important bodies of material and by adding value through expert analysis and commentary to make them accessible to scholars, and to teachers and students. The music and dance materials are designed specifically for easy use in classrooms and for project work, because they include not only transcriptions, but also translations into English, of the original commentary and dialogue (please see Note On Translations, below). These collections are of singular value because they also include analysis of the various dance and music pieces, as well as commentary on the performances in question by leading Balinese authorities.
All inquiries should be addressed to inquiries@bajra.org
Criteria of Selection for the Collections
Several criteria were involved in choosing the materials in order to ensure the collections were of the greatest possible educational value. The highly restricted repertoire of dance and music that is performed for the tourist market and for export is not representative of the extraordinary variety of Balinese performing arts. This new set of DVDs includes a selection of these well known pieces for comparative purposes , but also to show how Indonesians have taken to presenting their culture through the mass media, whether to tourists or to themselves. The latter include introductions and demonstrations to particular works or gamelan by senior academics from the Indonesian Institute of Arts, Denpasar. Evidently the collections aim to represent the breadth of genres, styles and regional variation, which are key features of Balinese performing arts. So both collections include pieces with which Balinese themselves may well not be familiar or only know by name, because they are rarely performed.
Other criteria in selection include ensuring a broad coverage of regional variation as well as examples of performances by internationally recognized gamelan or dance groups like STSI (The Indonesian Academy of Performing Arts) RRI (Indonesian State Radio). For coverage of shadow theatre, wayang, we had to balance musical genre – gendèr wayang versus the larger orchestra for Wayang Ramayana – with variety of genres and content. So also we included excerpts from Wayang Tantri out of interest. Another consideration has been balancing more traditional materials, for which there is documentation in recent academic writing on Balinese music and dance, with new work ranging from pop songs to winning pieces at the annual Bali Arts Festival. Of particular interest is the way Indonesians have taken to documenting their own performance culture in quasi-ethnographic fashion (with, e.g., voice-over explanatory narration) – for example in recordings of Sang Hyang Dedari and Sang Hyang Bojog. Recently Indonesians have recognized the value of talking to the great old musicians and dancers and recording them perform or teach in a series of exceptional scholarly value in the series Mengenal Seniman.
While the collections are designed to provide a broad range of useful materials on Balinese performing arts for scholars and teachers, we have been careful to recognize the way that music and dance have become key elements in Balinese popular and mass culture; and in how Balinese represent themselves to themselves, and to other Indonesians and tourists more broadly. Such themes emerge not only in the style of presentation, but also the inflection of the commentary. As a result, the materials are also of interest to scholars and students of tourism, post-colonial studies, and most obviously media and cultural studies.
Translations and Expert Commentaries
In order to maximize the value of the collections for researchers and teachers, the collections come with transcriptions and translations of commentary and dialogue into English by Ni Madé Pujawati and Dr Mark Hobart.
What gives the collections unique value is the analysis of each of the recordings by leading authorities. The commentary on the dances is by Bali’s most eminent dancer and choreographer, Professor Wayan Dibia, the Professor of Dance and Choreography, and also former rector, of STSI/ISI Denpasar. The commentary on the musical compositions is by I Nengah Susila, the noted composer and musician with Gamelan Cendana, and also composer in residence with the LSO Gamelan in London.
In addition, we shall provide a short bibliography of works in English to provide a full contextualization of the materials in the collection.
NOTE ON TRANSLATIONS: We are currently working on translations of the transcripts, which will be appearing online shortly.
Composition of the Collection
The music collection consists of 8 DVDs comprising a total of about 10½ hours, together with an additional DVD of complimentary recordings.
The dance collection consists of 10 DVDs comprising a total of about 12¾ hours, together with an additional DVD of complimentary recordings.
The collections are in NTSC format and are playable on over 95% of DVD players currently available on the market.
Please address all inquiries to inquiries@bajra.org
Dr Mark Hobart
London
10th. August 2007