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We didn't
have much to do the next day, so we decided to take a walk down to
Campuan, a village just on the edge of Ubud, to visit the
Neka art museum.
We made it as far
as the Ubud Palace where we came across the gamelan
practising. This was a gamelan gong, rehearsing in
a bale just outside the palace. We watched
as the reyong crew rehearsed.
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It was
quite similar to our own gamelan rehearsals at home.
The leader and drummer ran through sections of a piece
while the players tried to get their parts right. Some
of the players seemed quite uncertain of their parts,
and were trying to learn quite long sections.
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You can see the large
reyong with its many pots at left. The
drummers are in the center. At the back you can
see the poles of the gong stands. It was quite
shady inside the bale compared with the
bright sunshine outside, which made photography
difficult.
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This old guy
must have been playing gong all his life.
He was surrounded by large gongs, and also
played the small kempur gong with
the handle of the gong mallet. A little
boy was looking over his shoulder - his
grandson? Maybe this was the new generation
learning the gong patterns.
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It was hard to tear ourselves
away, but eventually we did, and carried on walking
down to the Campuan bridge and up some steps to
"hilltop Campuan". This seems to be a place favored
by long-term visitors. Beautiful rice fields all
around, and nice places to stay. But we didn't
stop for long - we were on a mission to find the
Neka art museum. The signpost said it was "+/- 1km".
Well it turned out to be more "+" than "-"! A long
walk along the main road.
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It was
a lovely museum though, with different pavilions
devoted to various artists and styles - traditional
Balinese painting, I Gusti Lempad, Ari Smit, the Europeans,
etc. This is a painting by the legendary I Gusti Lempad -
quite a renaissance man, skilled in art, architecture,
and other forms of the arts, who continued to be
creatively productive until his death in 1978 at
the age of 116. Click on the image for a better look.
We managed to get a ride back to Ubud from the museum
for our own gamelan practice at Linda's. We worked
on our new piece with Sedana all afternoon. It felt
like being in paradise.
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Photos: Astrid, Martin and Julia Randall
All content copyright (c) 2001, Astrid, Martin and Julia Randall
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