Siklus by Dewa Alit & Gamelan Salukat

In the natural life of Balinese traditional community, people use the traditional calendars as guide for daily activities, such as when to cultivate your field or plant seeds, when to cut your coconut tree, when to harvest honey, when to have weddings or funerals. A calendar repeats in cycle and so do the life activities, cycle that produces lively energy.

I converted the concept of cycle, or siklus, in the Balinese calendar into the sequence of different colors of sounds, along with the dynamics of the beauty of nature, panorama view of the mountains, forests and rivers on the island.

The repetition of different aspects of nature reflects in the values of calendar itself, and you will see it throughout the structure of this composition.

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This piece was originally commissioned by Adam Jasper and his team from ETH Zürich as the sound installation for their exhibition “Rights of Future Generations” at Sharjah Architecture Triennial 2019. ETH’s exhibition featured their study on the Balinese irrigation system (subak) and the traditional calendar.

Born in 1973 to a family of artists in Pengosekan village, Dewa Alit has been immersed in Balinese gamelan from early childhood and is generally acknowledged as the leading composer of his generation in Bali.

Seeking a wider path for expressing his approach to new music in gamelan, Alit founded his group Gamelan Salukat in 2007, performing on a new set of instruments of his own tuning & design.

dewaalitsalukat.com