Let me tell you...

Final presentation delivered at Thomas J. Watson Fellowship Conference (University of Puget Sound, August 2, 2015).

Let me tell you who I was one year ago.

I'm a classically trained violinist. I've spent hours every day for the last fifteen years practicing major and minor scales and etudes as well as playing in orchestras and chamber music groups, all with the goal to make Mozart sound delightful and Beethoven dramatic. Everything I perform has been carefully rehearsed for hours to ensure bow direction and articulation is synchronized across whatever ensemble I'm playing with. I have been the concertmaster of the MIT Symphony for all four years of college, and now a soloist with the orchestra, so there's an added pressure and thrill to lead the group and perform with precision.

I'm Type-A, and so at the same time, I'm balancing my music major with my other political science-oriented major in East Asian Studies. I'm taking too many classes, trying to do well enough in macroeconomics and number theory to get Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude while publishing papers on the rights of overseas Filipino Workers and linguistic variation as a result of social media censorship in China. I have worked overseas for a media organization, and my longterm goal is to become an Asia-based foreign correspondent for a major news outlet. To this end I obsessively make to-do lists, plot my daily schedule in ten minute increments, and chronically, neurotically, strategize how I'm going to do well enough in my classes to ensure I achieve my goals in college so I can succeed at life.

It was at this point that I was selected to be a Watson Fellow. My college advisor, a faculty composer at Wellesley, was one of the first Watson Fellows years ago, and later the director of the Foundation, and from my first year at Wellesley he regularly suggested I consider applying. He is one of my closest confidantes, and so I took his advice to heart, after discussing potential project ideas, proposed a project around manifestations of musical multiculturalism, the subject of my senior thesis. Still, I had no idea what my day-to-day life on a Watson would look like, and having lived abroad before myself and also spoken to Watson Fellows who warned of chronic miserable loneliness, it would be an understatement to say I wasn't keen on the prospect of showing up in Indonesia, violin in hand, riding on the hope that I would find some way to fill my time.

Let me tell you about one chapter of my life on the Watson. Let me tell you about...Pak Sanglah.

He's a fifty year old man who is a literal guru, one of the few masters of Balinese rebab, an instrument made from a coconut that, with its loose tension strings and fluctuating pitch, sounds a little like a cat in pain--that is, if you can hear it over the throng of gongs, drums, flutes, and metallaphones that also make up the gamelan musical ensemble. Sanglah is the happiest person I've ever met, and likely ever will. We meet every day in his studio, which is open to the family temple and the chickens that run around it. It's also overrun with tokke lizards that live in the thatched roof and occasionally fall on the floor with a big splat. I stay there for at least three hours a day, but usually more like five, during which time he plays a slow, repetitive, tuneless melody that really doesn't sound so different from yesterday's. Nothing is written down, and I try to mimic his fingers until the patterns saturate my mind long enough to stick. We will play this forty-five second melody nonstop for thirty, forty-five minutes, before we take a short break. He is a man of constant smiles, gratuitous high-fives, and catchphrases. On the back of each of his two hundred business cards he has handwritten the words: "Success is good. Happy is better. If you want be happy, be happy now." Early on in our relationship he discovered I liked the fruit juice he made from the trees in his garden. He exclaimed, "Student likes juice, and teacher likes juice?! We are so blessed."

He believed so strongly in me, and gave me so much of his time and energy, and as I progressed in my lessons the intervals came more naturally and I started recognizing the signaling of melodic patterns, getting better at anticipating how a melody would develop based on its rhythms and internal phrases. At the same time, I am meeting other local and foreign musicians, who, as soon as they discover I am a violinist, invite me to jam, collaborate, perform with them. It is terrifying at first, because there is no structure, no notes written down, but I get in the habit of saying yes to everything, no matter how far-fetched it seems. Recording session for Kailash Kokopelli, Native American flute playing Swedish sound healer? Of course! Music festival with Hawaiian shamaness who is a self-proclaimed channel for Gaia the Divine Mother? Why not! Improvisation on Frank Sinatra's "Fly Me to the Moon" with a bunch of self-taught Balinese jazz musicians? Terrifying, but I'll try anything once. I make friends with a bunch of local Indonesian musicians, and we start playing nightly concerts all over the island--bars, cafes, art collectives, festivals...They have tremendous faith in themselves and the universe, and constantly tell me to stop worrying, that there's no rush. After a certain point, I stop being so worried about messing up the music, about sticking to some predetermined plan--and instead of feeling inhibited I start to be creative and have fun. I even start to write and improvise and perform my own music, using the musical traditions I have been learning up to that point--a totally foreign concept for this classically trained violinist, I'll remind you. People see me on the street and know me as "the violinist." It feels like instead of competition there is encouragement among this artistic community, and for the first time ever I have permission to get completely out of my comfort zone. 

I don't have time now to tell you about sleeping on the street during the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests, about going on tour with internationally-acclaimed cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, cockfighting on Silent Day in Bali, learning Turkish classical and Roma and Black Sea music in Istanbul.

Instead, let me tell you about who I am now and what I've taken from this year.

The most obvious thing I've taken from this year was accomplishing my project. I set forth with the self-assigned, albeit abstract, mission to witness and learn about many ways multiculturalism can manifest itself in local musical traditions. In this last year, I've had the opportunity to play with hundreds of musicians and speak with hundreds more, perform many dozens of concerts in formal and informal venues alike, and been exposed and come to love and play musical instruments and styles I didn't even know existed a year ago. In that same vein, my definition of what makes music, and what makes a musician, has radically evolved from the definition I started with as a western classical musician a year ago.

At the same time, the pace of life I set for myself has been completely transformed as well. In the places I've lived in this last year I found so many people that make more time for one another, and give so much of themselves. If you meet someone for afternoon tea in Turkey, you'd best not make evening plans because you're probably going to be invited for dinner, and possibly breakfast the next day, too. I was constantly amazed by the generosity and patience my teachers, friends, and random strangers showed me in this year, and that's something I want to continue to emulate going forward.

Similarly, my Watson Fellowship project gave me permission to reach out to people for help and advice. It became easier and easier to meet new people and put myself in situations that risked embarrassment because I knew the potential reward of a meaningful relationship, or at least a story for my blog, would be worth it. I made incredible friends and had mind-blowing musical opportunities as a direct result of casting a wide net, taking a chance, and trying to reciprocate offers of help whenever I could. I could tell you a thousand stories about the unlikely circumstances that led to me befriending an onion farmer on a volcano or traveling to Anatolian caves with the Willie Nelson of Turkey, but I'll save those for another time, and plan to keep having more. 

The one thing I thought I would take from this year that still has yet to come is clarity about the future, where I go from here. I kind of thought that after a year of percolation, the answer about "where's this all going" would pop out right on time. Actually, after a year of meeting so many people from all over the world who approach life and music in vastly different ways, it seems I have less of an idea about what I'm doing with my life and skills than I did before. On the flip side, I'm more aware of the world of possibilities that are out there, and more assured that if I continue to be open to that world of possibilities I'll find a way to thrive in it.

What I do know for sure is that I am profoundly grateful for this opportunity, which has been truly and significantly transformational. Thank you, thank you, so much.

Dear friends and deer conversation

At a dazzling Turkish National Television recording session for an upcoming Ramadan music program

For the last few weeks I have been lucky to have the chance to hop around Europe while continuing to immerse myself in the music scene in Istanbul. You may remember my friend Nick, who is a violist with the fantastic string quartet Brooklyn Rider as well as Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble, who I have been consulting about my Watson Project starting months before my departure. He invited me last fall to join the Silk Road Ensemble's Asia tour, an experience which was an incredible highlight and huge influence on the development of my project. We had the chance to meet up again a few weeks ago when he invited me to come to Vienna and see the final concert of the Knights Orchestra, a New York-based ensemble that is notable for the freshness and vibrancy of its relatively young players and repertoire. Istanbul is such a international hub that it's easy to hop over to most destinations in the area, and so when Nick invited me to come spend some time seeing his concert and exploring Vienna for the first time, I just told him to send me the dates. 

Even if I hadn't known Nick, the concert, which was held in the legendary Musikverein, was well-worth the trip. The hall itself is acoustically superb, as the sounds from the stage have warm resonance while remaining very clear to the players and audience (many of the players in the Knights commented that they were taken aback to hear for the first time musical interactions in their pieces between instruments that they had been completely unaware of in previous rehearsals and performances. Also, the hall's interior decoration is gorgeous, so there is a lot at which one can marvel. More importantly, the Knights' concert was really spectacular, and included works by Berio, Adams, Shostakovich, Milhaud, and Ligeti, as well as some Chinese folk songs arranged for a string quintet. The Adams work (The Chairman Dances) was incredible in its precision, and it was an added delight to hear how the players interpreted the Chinese folk songs (some of which I recognized from my erhu days)— they utilized a lot of the techniques of Chinese music tastefully, which is not a small feat. The concert also featured internationally renowned soprano Dawn Upshaw (when Nick introduced us before the concert, I had to refrain from saying to her, "You're THE Dawn Upshaw?!" She sang folk songs in around ten languages (including Armenian, Sardinian, and Azerbaijani) that Berio had adapted for his wife and included lots of vocal techniques unusual in Western classical (think high pitched trilling, yelping, and yodeling). It was certainly not the typical fare I imagine the Musikverein or Viennese audiences see very much, and I think the crowd was refreshed to see such music played with incredible skill, coordination, and creativity. 

The Musikverein before the concert

After the concert, Nick and I spent a few days exploring the city—neither one of us had visited before, and I personally was excited to witness the "City of Music" firsthand and do sporadic Sound of Music reenactments. As it turns out, nowadays Vienna doesn't quite live up to the images I had in my mind of musicians spilling onto the streets and a culturally engaged public. ("That's Berlin," my college advisor Marty Brody retorted when I mentioned this.) To be fair, we did encounter a young opera company on the street rehearsing for a series of pop-up performances around the city of Puccini's opera "La Boheme" (set: pastel pink milk crates tied together). The majesty of the monumental architecture—domes, cathedrals, and promenades—is truly a sight to behold, In general, though, I was struck as much, if not more, by the telling absence of people on the street, in shops, and on public transportation. We would walk around these elegant neighborhoods and encounter maybe a handful of people. It didn't feel unsafe, but rather eerie, rather like the sort of feeling post-rapture or plague, where you can sense that a community once existed in a place but has since evaporated (leaving a few lucky or unlucky stragglers). Nonetheless, I had a really nice time in Vienna—we visited some nice cafes and restaurants, saw some interesting exhibits (Haus der Musik, the Arnold Schoenberg Center, and the Museum of Art Fakes) in addition to enough incredible architecture to last a lifetime. We unfortunately didn't have enough time to lay a wreath at Beethoven's grave as planned, but one can only do so much, you know?

With Nick before his concert at the Musikverein in Vienna

Vienna wasn't my only European hop in the last few weeks. My college advisor and resident life coach Martin Brody was traveling around Europe representing the college on official business and invited me to join him afterwards in Italy for a few days before he returned to the States. As I have mentioned before, Professor Brody (or Marty, as I begrudgingly try to remember to address him at his insistence) has been an incredible mentor and confidante for me since my first year of college, and also is the reason I applied for the Watson Fellowship at all—he continues to see great potential in me far beyond what I initially believe is possible, and has unfailingly supported me through thick and thin. I have also never been to Italy, and so making the quick flight over from Istanbul was a complete no-brainer. I arrived in Milan a day before we were to meet up, and got to spend the day with Cristina, my neighbor of one month in Bali who is from Italy and currently lives in Milan. We had had such a wonderful time adventuring together in Bali, and I had hoped we would see each other again before long—I just didn't expect it would be so soon! We shot the breeze and compared post-Bali departure depression stories while tromping around some of the sights of Milan. In true Italian fashion we went for dinner to an all-you-can-eat sushi joint—it seemed fitting somehow. It was a quick reunion and we parted ways the following morning, promising to stay in touch and meet again somewhere before long.

With Marty Brody, perching on a bridge in the heart of Florence

And then I met up with Marty, and, chatting as if no time had passed at all, we embarked on our journey to Florence and Rome. We have stayed in close and regular contact throughout this year, but it was so wonderful to be able to reconnect in person (and while zipping through the Tuscan countryside, I might add)! As a composer and the former director of the American Academy in Rome, Marty has a number of friends in both cities who we set off to meet in our short few days in Italy. We were on a tight schedule—taking a train to the next city in the morning, having afternoon drinks with one friend and dinner with a few others all in the same day—but we found a surprisingly abundant amount of time to explore the incredible historical sights, talk about our lives and next steps, and try a lot of gelato. 

(Pause for massive photo interlude)

The Duomo in Milan

This is the moment where it becomes extremely apparent that, while I appreciated the majesty of the buildings I observed in Florence and Rome, I would be no help whatsoever in an Italian architecture-themed trivia night. I will try to save face by not describing the pictures at all...lest my captions devolve into, "Another really old and culturally significant cathedral."

Ancient houses and jewelry market on Florentine bridge

Sunset in Florence

Mosaics on the outside of the cathedral built on the sight where St. Peter was thought to be buried (actually not true)

Some ancient graffiti

Oh hey, Rome!

Roman Forum ruins. Julius Caesar was stabbed in the top left corner.

Ruins of the Roman Forum. See the Colosseum in the distance?

6:30 am at the Vatican Basilica!

Michelangelo's La Pieta, which I forgot was in the Vatican and was amazed to suddenly encounter

Casual lean, Vatican City/priest edition

In lieu of telling you that the hype about sightseeing in Italy is substantiated and that 6 am on a Thursday is a marvelous time to visit Vatican City, here's a tangent about these discussions of my life and the future: As this year has progressed and I have delved deeper into what it means to learn, play, and create music in different settings and cultures around the world, I have begun to reevaluate the role music plays in my own life. Music has been a fundamental part of my life since I was six, but having not pursued music solely up to this point I always assumed it was the “other“ thing I did, secondary to my seemingly more academic and professional pursuits. Up to the time I was applying for college, I had only seen few avenues for professional musicians; namely, become one of the few touring classical soloists, become an orchestral musician, or teach. I had seen enough examples of each category to know the very real hardships of the professional musician’s lifestyle, and also knew that at that moment I had other interests besides music I wanted to explore. Although I applied to and was accepted to music conservatories, I elected to go to a liberal arts college where I would be able to study Japanese and Chinese as well as music theory. And as it were, although I wrote (and published!) my fair share of research papers, interned abroad for a government agency and major media organization, and of course continued to study foreign languages, I simultaneously poured the same effort into my music. I spent at least six hours a week on the bus commuting to MIT where I was serving as the symphony’s concertmaster, spent many hours a day practicing solo, chamber music, and orchestral repertoire, and performed as a soloist with the symphony as well as with the Harvard gamelan ensemble as part of my senior thesis—in my music major. In other words, looking back I clearly was doing more than just dabbling in music—but to what end? 

My Watson Fellowship has given me permission to embrace the mindset of primarily pursuing music. Meeting professional musicians, not only of the Western classical persuasion, but from around the world playing and creating music in various and numerous styles. I have met both self-taught and conservatory-educated musicians and composers who draw on their own musical experiences and environments to foster unique voices that resonate with a range of audiences. There have been traditionalists who seek to preserve the old ways and encourage the youth to hold onto the past; there have also been ensembles that take inspiration from the past but break common conventions to dare listeners to think critically about their own experiences, expectations, and societies. Meeting all of these people has made it obvious that the path to a life full of music-making is not singular, and is constantly being repaved. 

What has also affected me significantly this year is the feedback I have received as a result of presenting myself as a professional musician. While I haven’t studied in a music conservatory, I have nonetheless developed a high capacity and skill level as a violinist through nearly sixteen years of serious and dedicated study. While I can still feel the room for my own technical improvement, this year has made me realize that being able to play the Beethoven Violin Concerto flawlessly is not necessarily the only benchmark for one’s ability to be a sensitive musician and effective communicator with an audience. I think of some of my best music-making this year—playing a solo from a Cantonese opera with a Chinese orchestra in Hong Kong, performing Edelweiss in a public square in Hangzhou, improvising with world musicians using pentatonic and modal scale systems in music festivals, bars, and cafes in Bali. For me these performances stand out not for their perfection, but rather for their success in connecting with their audiences. It was the audience members who came up to me afterward and told me how much they loved my sound, the musicians who invited me to collaborate after hearing me perform, the people who recognized me first and foremost as “the violinist“ and were surprised to hear that I have a life and interests outside of music, who affirmed for me that in their eyes, I was already a compelling musician. I had presented myself as a professional musician and the people around me accepted me as such and believed I was capable. I have told myself for years that I would and could never be more than an amateur, recreational violinist; this perhaps sounds like a trivial point, but this year entering an environment where I have been on more equal footing with master musicians who in turn have regarded me as accomplished and professional has been incredibly empowering. 

This surely will not be the last time I bring up this point, but I thought that a full year of traveling with the intention of delving into the world of music-making would bring me clarity about what my own future and career has in store. In fact, if anything my future seems more impenetrable because of my exposure to a vast range of lifestyles and philosophies about making one's way in the world. At the same time, while I grapple with the uncertainty everyday, I think that I have more faith that if I continue to follow my passions and interests while remaining open to life's sudden and unexpected modulations that will inevitably come, things will evolve naturally and work out, even if that means settling into a new tonal center—that has been a recurring theme in this year for sure. (Refraining from the music theory puns now!) In other words, the path is winding and forbidding, but the light in the distance seems brighter than ever.

Things that (still) seem important for my future: 

• I want to travel
• I want to write
• I want to constantly be learning
• I want to facilitate cross-cultural communication
• I want to contribute to the global community
• I want to make music (!)

In the spirit of living in the present, however...

Things have picked up in some nice ways since I returned to Istanbul. I alluded to some of this briefly last time I wrote, but I am slowly making some progress on expanding my musical network (and with it, my opportunities to study and play). I have become really good friends with Egesu, a guitarist and student at one of the music conservatories in Istanbul who took me a freestyle improvisation session a few weeks ago. It was very open-ended and a lot of fun, and there I had the chance to meet many established musicians, including his improvisation teacher, Sumru Ağıryürüyen, a renowned singer whose kindness and powerful stage presence makes up for how difficult her last name is for me to pronounce. Egesu and I have taken to attending tons of musical and cultural events, sometimes two concerts a night—everything from Dutch rock to Sumru's latest concert, freestyle improvisation inspired by 900-year-old Buddhist poetry by Ki'ki, who lived in what is now the Xinjiang region of China. We've attended all of Sumru's concerts as of late, leading us to dub ourselves her number one fans (keep in mind that this music can be quite esoteric, so we make up for sparse audiences with our enthusiasm). It has been a lot of fun to hang out with Egesu—beyond going to underground concerts featuring female Turkish pop stars, I have had so much fun (and learned a lot) talking with him about music, politics, and philosophy. Beyond that, it's a treat to have met someone with whom I can have what's known in Turkish as "deer conversation"; that is, a spoken exchange that devolves from silliness into sheer and utter nonsense. A few nights ago, we were at a canceled screening of Birdman and ended up writing our own screenplay about a man who seeks to herd cats using overtone and throat singing, exposes a cat herding fraudster, and narrowly avoids getting "spaghettified" (real quantum physics term—check it out) after a halay dance circle creates a black hole. After a certain point we abandoned the English language entirely and resorted to high pitched whistles, guttural screams, and peacock calls. (Made sense at the time.) I feel lucky to have met Egesu, not just because it was lonely showing up in Istanbul after leaving my many dear friends in Indonesia, but also just because it's so nice to have met someone who wants to go (and invites me) to the same crazy concerts as I do, who also has a healthy skepticism of and good sense of humor about authority, and with whom it seems I will never run out of topics to argue, joke, complain, and sing about. 

Here's the band from last night's concert:

Besides that, I have been working regularly with Necati Çelik, an oud player and member of the Istanbul State Turkish Music Ensemble. He is a very grandfatherly sort who holds daily open office hours of sorts for his students. At any one time one will encounter a handful of students sitting and playing music together (an music-learning technique called meşk) while he smokes a pipe and chimes in with constructive criticism from time to time. He has been very generous and patient in teaching me about the different makams (modes) and their melodic behavior, correcting my microtonal intonation and making suggestions about ornamentation. It is a challenge to play with him, as he will present me with a new piece, which I will simultaneously sight-read, transpose, and attempt to play with the correct makam tuning and staying in the (usually complex) rhythmic meter while plays along. He does give me a hard time sometimes, criticizing the placement of my microtones ("Why are you still making the same mistakes?") or  questioning my dedication ("Why haven't you learned Turkish yet?"). Nonetheless he is generally very good-natured; yesterday I successfully played a piece four consecutive times in different tuning systems, and he went so far as to mention that it seemed I was actually making some progress. In the meantime, I am still having my English-free violin lessons with Baki "the Violinist" Kemancı, who also seems to think I am making some progress—I have gotten better at inserting the proper slides and ornaments into the melodies, and so he started getting really funky with the embellishments, throwing in some rapid descending arpeggios and chromatic scales to spice up what was at its base a very plain melody. He was reaching electric guitar-solo level showiness, and it was amazing how much of a blast we were having, especially given the fact that we can't communicate using language. 

Okay, I'm going to wrap it up here for now—I have to go accurately place some more microtones! More to come, as always (and I'm in the final stretch of my fellowship—a little over three weeks before I go home! Those are some bittersweet emotions I will confront...another time).

Improvised homecoming

I made the most of my assumed final days in Bali, adventuring on back roads, some last downward-facing dogs in yoga class, getting together with the dear friends I had made, and having a really lovely and sentimental lesson with my rebab teacher. Our relationship had gotten much better since my last post, in which I complained about him taking way too many pictures of me—after I told him I didn’t want him to take pictures and was very cold and distant towards him in lessons, I think he got the message. The picture-taking was certainly not from a place of maliciousness or creepiness on his part (although the feeling was uncomfortable nonetheless).

In any case, we had reached a much better point, and on top of that I was finding that despite my initial antipathy for, or even resentment towards, the music I was learning, it was truly growing on me. In the first few weeks of studying rebab, I had found it difficult and tedious to loop the repetitive melodies for hours on end. I was also frustrated trying to wrap my mind around the tuning systems, which to my ear sounded chronically out of tune. Still, as I progressed in my lessons the intervals came more naturally and I started recognizing the signaling of melodic patterns, getting better at anticipating how a melody would develop based on its rhythms and internal phrases (here's a sampling of what we do in lessons, but for about three hours).

Still, when the beginning of February came, it seemed like it was time to leave Bali. While I was getting a real grasp on rebab and starting to hear Balinese music in new ways, my visa was set to expire at the end of the month and I was eager to get a change of perspective before then in Banyuwangi, at the eastern tip of the island of Java. While I had made some lovely friends in Bali, they were not Balinese, but rather travelers passing through or expats. Leaving for Banyuwangi thus felt like an exciting chance to get a different and potentially more 'connected' experience musically and culturally. 

[interlude for a lifetime's supply of rice field photos]

That's me on the bike, everyone!

Volcanoes in the distance

Balinese temple complex

Banyuwangi sits opposite Bali across a small strait—the ferry ride takes only an hour, but in the words of Evan Ziporyn, it’s amazing what a huge cultural difference a small body of water can make. Bali is predominantly Hindu, while like most of Indonesia, Banyuwangi is predominantly Muslim—both are obvious by the proliferation of temples and mosques, respectively. In Banyuwangi religion is particularly prominent in everyday life, from the veils worn by many of the women to calls to prayer blasting at full volume from what sounded like scratchy megaphones regularly throughout the day. The town is working on boosting its tourism inflows, but it feels hotter, dustier, and poorer than Bali.

[another brief photo interlude]

Bus ride with a view

These rapscallions were diving in the water by the ferries for money  

Even from afar Banyuwangi seems a mystical place

Bye-bye Bali

Java on the left, Bali on the right

The music in Banyuwangi, as expected, is totally fascinating—on my second evening there, I attended a kuntulan ensemble rehearsal consisting of many drummers, gamelan elements, triangles, synth keyboard (obviously not a traditional element), and female singer. The drumming patterns are incredibly complex, and the synth keyboard’s melody used the pentatonic pelog scale intervals I had been learning in Bali. Traditional music ensembles in Banyuwangi are unique for their use of violin, or biola. One such ensemble is the gandrung music ensemble—gandrung, one of the genres of traditional music in Banyuwangi, is derived from a tradition called seblang, in which (as I understand it) a female singer dances with many men while singing in a sort of trance for an entire night (about midnight to 6 am or so). 

Nighttime kuntulan rehearsal

I met a woman who makes Banyuwangi dance costumes for children's dolls out of trash

I took lessons on the biola, aka violin tuned nearly a fifth lower than normal, played at mid chest level, and pivoted using the left wrist (rather than changing the level of the bow). The music is notated using a numbered scale degree system (as in China); this is especially convenient because the notation doesn’t change regardless of what set of gamelan instruments the player is tuning to. I was amazed to hear my teacher play a piece using the scale degrees in a diatonic major scale, and then play the same piece using pelog tuning. I had also heard that Banyuwangi music draws on Balinese, Portuguese, and Malay influences. Indeed, it was fascinating to hear the cyclical repetitions based on a gong that permeated the songs, yet a strong emphasis on beats 1 and 3 within melodic phrases that doesn’t appear in Balinese music. Biola players also do a lot of improvisation, ‘fiddling’ in a much more active way than the rebab does in Balinese music. In general, the melodies sound more “melodic” and tuneful than they did in Bali; when I played them for some non-Banyuwangi musician friends in Indonesia, they commented they sounded like they were from China. Although the left hand pivoting technique was a bit tricky, the melodies were much easier to pick up and retain than those in Bali, and the improvisational patterns were pretty straightforward as well, oscillating in dips around a core note using the notes in the pentatonic scales.

My hosts in Banyuwangi, the niece from a local family of dancers and her husband, were overwhelmingly hospitable. They made hosting me their top priority, and shuttled me around to meet cultural bureaucrats and potential music teachers and to attend music ensemble rehearsals. The level of concern they showed as hosts was truly unprecedented, and actually took me by surprise; after registering me with the police, who told him “don’t let this beautiful girl go places by herself,” the husband of the family took that advice to heart and accompanied me everywhere short of the bathroom. His wife, concerned I couldn’t stomach outside food, insisted I could only eat food her mother prepared for me. Going outside for a walk or to get basic items was not a possibility, and every outing was arranged for me and chaperoned. Although I asked about finding different outlets for getting out of the house and making some friends on my own (for instance, leading a language exchange at a local college) it was a dead end; my days were a music lesson in the morning, and then, at the insistence of the family, “taking a rest” that lasted the rest of the day. I tried to make an effort to talk with the family and help with making meals, but they wouldn’t let me engage. I understood this was their way of regarding an esteemed guest and in their minds was for my benefit. I also acknowledged that in Banyuwangi, where English levels are significantly lower than they are in Bali, and the culture is in some ways more mysterious and closed (especially to female foreigners), I needed the foundation of a host family; however, I felt like remaining in that environment of mandatory dependency would make it impossible for me to develop my own relationships, make my own mistakes, and find the spontaneous opportunities that have been the highlights of my Watson year.

Sitting in my room in Banyuwangi for about ten hours a day, I got a little stir-crazy and pined for the independence I had in Bali. I spent two days crying about missing my hyper-positive rebab teacher, actually—while it was possibly a bit of Stockholm syndrome since it was physically hard, a lot of mental work, and a bit bizarre to deal with his quirks, I realized that I really loved learning from him and was really getting to enjoy the music (and life lessons—did you know that the grass and the carrot are our teachers?) he taught me. I chronically read the old texts he had sent me—here's an excerpt:

Audrey good morning. How are you? I am super good. Thank you for your letter to me. I am very glad share with you music and life. I would like to tell you more, but I have problem in my English. I hope you understand. Remember. Long life learning. Learning is never ending. Every thing is teacher. Lets learn from every thing. I really hope see you again. I hope you healthy and happy always. If you happy and smileing, the world be happy. Ha Ha Ha (hope always, health always, happy always). Have a nice day. Thank you/suksma.

My rebab teacher and me

While the music and culture in Banyuwangi seemed absolutely fascinating, I felt paralyzed by the hospitality of my incredibly kind and generous host family, who was, after all, just looking out for my best interests. After much pondering (as it was all there was to do in my daily, all-day “resting time”) I made the decision to return to Bali for my last few weeks before my visa ran out. I worried that I was just clinging onto what felt comfortable and quitting when things got hard—but in fact there just seemed to be no chance to forge my own relationships and connect with the culture given my short time, lack of Indonesian language skills, and general outsider/VIP guest status. I decided it was best to come back to Bali for the last few weeks, reunite with my rebab teacher, go to as many Hindu ceremonies (to hear Balinese gamelan) as possible, continue learning Indian devotional mantras from my friend, explore and ideally meet some interesting people before moving on.

After I told my host family I was returning to Bali as tactfully as I could and survived the non-air conditioned, hurtling, smoke-filled bus back to Bali, meeting interesting people happened much sooner than I expected. (My rebab teacher also called me: "Welcome home! I missed seeing you for lunch or dinner. Come back, we will share your experience, my experience.") My friend and fellow Wellesley alum Carly invited me to join her to watch an open mic night the day after I returned. By chance I met, and ended up jamming with, a group of really awesome young Indonesian musicians—some of whom I had heard about but not had a chance to meet before. Without thinking, I found myself improvising using the scale systems I had been learning for six months—and surprisingly, not stressed out but actually enjoying the music (even though I had no idea what was coming). One of the musicians, a percussionist and aspiring ethnomusicologist from Java, marveled that I, a Western musician, was improvising using the scales from gamelan tunings with ease. “Let’s play together again soon!” he said. “How about tomorrow?”

So the next day, we went to Agustian’s studio. I already was acquainted with Agustian, amazing artist/sculptor/sewer/dancer/musician, because he plays with the Indian musician whose meditation classes I had been performing in. Agustian had been inviting me to his studio for weeks, but I had not visited before I left for Banyuwangi. I finally understood what the big deal waswhen I entered the space—it’s a beautiful, airy place that serves as gallery, collaborative workshop, and hangout spot for him and his friends. The first week I was back I spent hours every day there meeting new musicians and jamming out with them. A totally foreign concept for this classically trained violinist—following your instinct/curiosity in the moment? And yet, with this group (and in Bali generally), it feels like instead of competition there is encouragement among the artistic community. It’s an extremely supportive and collaborative environment, aided by the fact that members of the community here are only ever a few degrees of separation apart.

Anyways, on one such afternoon of stringing together improvisations based on pentatonic scales accompanied by eager banging of djembes and tooting of Sumatran flutes, I met Rizal, a Javanese singer/songwriter who just came to Bali after months of touring in Australia. He writes really beautiful music, and is a particularly memorable performer because he plays instruments he made himself, most notably a bamboo didgeridoo/guitar combination. That day, I was toting my erhu, and so he, Agustian (on handmade flute), and I had a blast playing together. Even though I am a bit out of practice on my Chinese fiddling, Rizal still seemed impressed: “We should make more music together!”

We got together a few days later to continue our music-making—hours later, we were still talking away about music and sharing some of our favorite artists. Between hearing about his social activist days cutting class to lead protests around Indonesia and his approach to making music now that he is first and foremost a traveling musician, it has been absolutely inspiring to be around Rizal. He is someone with the ability to both envision and execute—he dreams big and assumes there are ways to achieve those dreams, from inventing his own instruments to arriving penniless in Australia with only his instruments and the belief that he could survive on his music-making abilities.

Rizal was telling me about his booked schedule of upcoming concerts in Bali when he asked, “Why don’t you make a visa run to Singapore and come play them with me? And then we can record an album together!” The effortlessness with which he tossed out the question belied the outlandishness of its requisite spontaneity—that morning I had had a promising discussion with a master musician in Istanbul about working with him, and was set to purchase tickets to Turkey departing when my visa expired in ten days. Rizal’s invitation was alarmingly casual in its extension, but it became increasingly clear that this wasn’t a flippant offer—he was entirely serious, extending his invitation thusly because it seemed like a real, exciting prospect.

The idea rolled around in my mind for the nights to come. I had loved playing music in this new and unplanned way, while calling on everything I had picked up from the hundreds of musicians I have heard and met in the last sixth months. At the same time, it is scary to feel out of my element—the music I have grown up playing is written down, practiced for hours and years, and delivered to the audience in a deliberate and premeditated way. And playing live shows and recording an album? Featuring ‘pop’ music (by my musical standards)? Terrifying. I also felt the pressure to not succumb to traveler’s inertia—I theoretically have four more countries to go to in the next five months, and that’s barely enough time to scratch the surface of any music culture.

Still, even though Rizal’s suggestion had seemed an impossibility at its utterance, it continued to incubate in my mind. Wasn’t this—learning from and collaborating with musicians who are drawing upon their own musical cultures as well as ‘outside’ influences, plus getting out of my comfort zone while utilizing my experiences and channeling my passion–exactly the goal of my Watson project? And logistically speaking, my plans are still entirely flexible, Istanbul is not going anywhere, and popping over to Singapore and back for a new visa is extremely feasible.

So as of now, I have a roundtrip ticket to Singapore, a tour of Bali's live music venues lined up, and some extremely exciting musical prospects on the horizon which I will write about soon. In the meantime, my first concert with Rizal and the newly incarnated "Ubud String Collective" is tomorrow night—video and a full report to come!

[And now, some final photos from my recent Bali nights—]

I was driving on the Ubud main road at midnight when I heard gamelan--
lo and behold there was a huge dance performance (not geared towards tourists) going on!

Ceremony at Balinese temple

Middle schoolers gamelan and dance performance