Distinguished Lecture Series: Henry Spiller
The Distinguished Lecture Series continues with a presentation by ethnomusicologist and UC Davis lecturer Henry Spiller.
In 2009, nine people suffocated at a death metal concert featuring local metal bands in Bandung, Indonesia. In response, some Bandung-based metal musicians began to reconsider their wholesale adoption of global "heavy metal" values and musical style. In a quest to inject local Sundanese values of community and cooperation into their musical practice, they hit upon the idea of reviving archaic rural bamboo musical instruments— karinding (mouth-resonated lamelophone) and celempung (idiochord tube zither)—as a means to reconnect to their Sundanese past.
This lecture examines how Bandung musicians create localized, alternative modernities by putting old bamboo instruments to new uses.