Music From The Southeast: Sumbawa, Sumba, Timor

Extensive notes and map complement these remarkable recordings. The parched "southeastern islands" running east from Lombok to Timor form one of the poorest regions in Indonesia, but artistically one of the richest, most traditional, and least explored. This album offers a sampling across the region, from Sumbawa to the western half of Timor. In Sumbawa, the genres and instruments are largely those familiar all over Muslim Indonesia. East of Sumbawa, things change: the Muslim genres give way to ensembles of interlocking gongs (quite different from the famous gamelon of Java and Bali), communal singing for circle dances, and local forms of string music. In this album we hear: a professional duo of singers with violin from Bima in eastern Sumbawa; gongs for funerals in Sumba and for dancing in Timor; dance choruses, some boisterous, some mysterious and elusive, from Timor; a lute from east Sumba that sounds like a bottleneck guitar; and down-home music from Timor, played on home-made guitars and violins.