Exploring for Nonesuch

by Robert Brown

 

Contents

Exploring for Nonesuch (1)

Recording at Paku Alaman (2)

The Mangkunegaran (3)

Kraton Yogyakarta (4)

Bali recordings (5)

Seleh Notes Volume 10 Number 3 June 2003

© Robert Brown

As someone involved with the early stages of the Nonesuch Explorer Series, under its presiding deity Tracey Sterne, I would like to write a few words about that era and try to give some sense of what the field recording experience was like in the early years.

I created the term ‘world music’ in 1962, at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, to acknowledge an emphasis in the new graduate programme on learning music through performance study with a world viewpoint.

I was in touch by the early 1960s with some leading artists from other areas of the world, and a fairly large number of them were in residence at Wesleyan.

The resources of the World Music Programme became an important source of possibilities for the Explorer Series. In turn, once Tracey began to utilise the Wesleyan artists for original performance recordings, Nonesuch began a worldwide distribution of the phrase ‘world music’ through its sleeve notes.

I have read many claims to the term ‘world music’ over the years but this was its actual origin, and the Explorer Series should get credit for bringing it to a worldwide public.

 

When I expressed concern one day about the gap in available recordings of the gamelan traditions of Java and Bali, Tracey encouraged me to make some field recordings and lent me a small two-track stereo Uher for use in Indonesia.

The Uher served me well up until an incident in east Bali following the eruption of Mount Agung, when a driver panicked and tried to ford a river swollen by heavy mountain rains.

The bridge had already been destroyed in the eruption. We were treated to the strange experience of being seated in a sedan filled with muddy water, as the vehicle was slowly swept downstream towards the sea.

Futile attempts to push the car in the dark in waist-deep water were abandoned and we gave up the idea of discussing the possible recording of the gamelan salunding in Tenganan village at that particular time.

Forty villagers apparently pulled the car out of the river after we had reached land ourselves and the next day it was to be seen in Ubud with all four doors open, drying out on the grass.

The Uher had been on the floor of the car and ended up filled with mud. Some of my later recordings, therefore, were made on a more expensive Stellamaster, but I still have fond memories of Tracey’s little Uher.

 

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