Reviews for Music in Central Java: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture

The average rating for Music in Central Java: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-04-04 00:00:00 Joao Marcos This is yet another in the Oxford UP Global Music Series. It centers around a subject near and dear to me - Javanese gamelan. I took two classes in gamelan at Wesleyan and loved every minute of them both. Playing in the gamelan was a terrific experience and I miss it. (Also, my teacher at Wesleyan, Sumarsam, is mentioned and pictured in this book.) Music in Central Java was surprisingly comprehensive for its length, covering gamelan instruments and music in detail and even providing a full synopsis and discussion of a wayang kulit performance. This book was also very intensive in terms of listening exercises: there were a lot of them, many of which involved very detailed and careful listening in order to discern both larger structures and small details of the music. In addition, Brinner included a lot of notation and diagrams to go with the listening exercises. I enjoyed this book tremendously. It elaborated and explained a lot of what I'd learned from playing in the gamelan, while also providing fresh perspectives on the subject matter.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-02-04 00:00:00 Willena Robey Another in the Global Music series, also about gamelan music, this time in Central Java. The music on the CD was very different than on the Bali CD, even though the descriptions in the text sounded more similar; the gamelan (orchestra) is about the same, and there are genres in common, especially the wayang (shadow puppet shows.) Maybe part of the difference was that the selections here were almost all vocal, and the ones on the Bali CD were mostly instrumental only. My only criticism would be that the selections were mostly shorter.