Daily Colotomy

In Indonesia, the lowest and most impressive gongs have the only function of marking the metrical structure of a tune: this periodic frame is what javanese musicians call colotomy. The roots of this principle come from rituals and old processions music. Overtime, musicians add more instruments (as other metal percussions, rebab, flute, voices…) in order to aggregate on this simple music new melodies, heterophony, ornementations, songs… This is what we now know as gamelan music in Java and Bali.

But some street musicians can’t acquire these expensive instruments, and so replace them, for this colotomic function by any object which make a resonant sound: bowl, lamp base… are becoming gongs (« gongs » is originally the name of the musical function, and not of the instrument).

In this quartet, the alto flute, cello, guitar, and prepared piano are accompanied by such daily objects. They make a frame, a kind of ringing colotomic installation. Between their ringing, the musicians gradually enter and play. And this resonant (almost) unchanging melody of the objects with which they play is being developed, ornamented, submerged by the instruments until they gradually stop to play.