INDONESIA • SOLONESE GAMELAN

For more than a century, Western musicians and listeners have been fascinated by Central Javanese gamelan music and the beauty of its melodies, the richness of its intertwining sounds of gongs, metallophones, xylophones, drums, male and female voices, flute and spike fiddle. This 4-CD set recorded in the city of Solo (Surkarta) by the American ethnomusicologist Marc Benamou presents the great classical compositions gathered from the concert, ballet and shadow theater repertoires. A comprehensive 60 pages booklet introduces the listener to this extraordinary musical world and to the Javanese aesthetic theory of rasa (feelings, moods inherited from ancient India.