Out of all the cities I visited on my Europe trip, Paris was the only one that I had visited before (other than London, but I barely spent any time there at all). I was heading there specifically because of a gamelan that I’d found when searching up groups to go and visit – gamelan […]
“Are you filming a vlog?” Asks Ryan, also known as Ray to his friends (and after sharing a meal, I was now on Ray-terms with Ray). “No,” I responded, “why do you ask?” Ray proceeded to tell me that he thought Banda Aceh had a lot to offer for tourists, but that there’s not much […]
Before I had travelled to Bali, I played in an Balinese gamelan (traditional ensemble) in Canberra. Friends there often expressed a sense of regret or sadness about the current state of Bali. “It used to be a beautiful, natural island,” they would say, “but now it has become overrun with resorts and tourists”. They would […]
Hi everyone, I’ve been very sick this week unfortunately so only a very short blog post from me. Unfortunately I came down with some kind of illness on Monday and so I spent most of this week resting up. I was even worse yesterday but once again I seem on the mend (though I recall […]
You’re probably wondering what it is I’m doing in Indonesia (or maybe you just thought I was having a great holiday). The truth is that I am doing fieldwork here. To most people, you probably have a vision of some Indiana Jones-esque archeology expedition when I say that, but real fieldwork is nothing like that […]
I’ve been in Bali for about ten days now. It is actually my first time being in the country of Indonesia – before being involved with gamelan (the traditional music commonly found in Java and Bali), I had no experience with Indonesia at all. I’ve slowly been playing catch-up as a result, now being about […]
You’re probably familiar with the concept of bi-lingualism, which is where someoneone is fluent in 2 languages (for example, English and Indonesian, or Chinese and Japanese). But did you also know there’s a similar concept in music, called bi-musicality? This is where one person is fluent within 2 musical systems. You may have heard the […]