Product Information
Product Description
Amazon.com Jaipongan emerged during the 1970s and was as much a pop craze as a traditional style. In it, a kittenish female singer-dancer, whose lyrics might deal with love, planting, prosperity, or the lack thereof, fronts a scaled-down combo of instruments typically heard during a gamelan (a large-scale court entertainment based on hypnotic cycles of drumming and chimes), such as gongs, metal xylophones, and percussion, plus a two-stringed fiddle called a rebab. Male backup musicians respond to the singer's comments with sympathetic or satiric ejaculations and melodic underscoring. Jaipongan was invented by Dr. Gugum Gumbira Tirasondjala, a producer-composer who moved with the times when Western influences were subject to government disapproval. His ensemble is heard here accompanying the delicately lovely voice of Idjah Hadidjah. The album also includes examples of kliningan, which calls for a woman vocalist, but adheres more closely to the gamelan structure and doesn't call for dancing. --Christina Roden
