Gamelan X Comes to HSU

Bay Area world music ensemble Gamelan X brings its high energy world music to Humboldt State University on Saturday, March 8.

HSU Music Department Director of Percussion Studies Eugene Novotney calls them “an outstanding group that mixes world music from Asia, Africa and the Middle East into exciting interlocking rhythms, haunting melodies and a deep and funky groove. Gamelan X is the perfect show for a Humboldt audience.”

According to the group’s web site (http://gamelanx.com/) Gamelan X draws musical inspiration from Indonesian, Balkan, African, Indian and American traditions. Instruments used include dozens of small and large gongs (central to the gamelan tradition of Indonesia), plus wind and string instruments, synthesizers, drums and percussion. Their shows include group choreography and crowd interaction to take audiences “on a journey through a wide range of exotic musical spaces.”

Gamelan X comes to HSU at the tail-end of a Northwest and Northern CA tour, trailing clouds of a glorious press. Todd LaVoie in the SF Bay Guardian describes their music as “trance-inducing rhythms pinballing between Balinese gongs…This formidable primitive-futurist improvisational collective of epic proportions bashes out Indonesian marching music made for dance clubs yet to be conceived.”

“Gamelan X is a precision-guided tour de force of rhythm, sounds, theater and performance art,” said Evan Levy, Director of Art in Freedom Park in Atlanta, Georgia. “Think Cirque du Soleil meets Sun Ra, and you won’t want to miss them.”

“Gamelan X literally stopped the show,” said the director of the 2005 Arts Expo Gala in San Francisco. “Our guests were mesmerized by the pageantry, energy and authentic ritual. It was like nothing they’d seen before.”

“The Gamelan X show is the first step in an effort to bring the music of Asia, and specifically Indonesia, to the Humboldt stage,” Novotney said. “I would love to start a Gamelan program here at HSU some day.” Novotney used about half the prize money from his 2006 CSU Wang Award to purchase gamelan instruments from Indonesia.

Gamelan X performs on Saturday, March 8 at 8 PM. in the Fulkerson Recital Hall on the HSU campus in Arcata. Tickets $8 general, $3 student/senior from HSU ticket office (826-3928) or at the door. HSU students free with ID. This concert is co-sponsored by the HSU Department of Music, the HSU Diversity Program Funding Committee, the HSU Percussion Ensemble and Gamelan Sekar Sequoia.

Media: Arcata Eye, North Coast Journal, Eureka Times-Standard Northern Lights, HSU Online, Humboldt Beacon.