Biblioteca de la Guitarra y Cuerda Pulsada

Many studies on music hybridity in the developing world have focused on collectivities and subcultures. This article concentrates on the hybrid music of one individual, I Wayan Balawan, and his cosmopolitan, middle-class fans and scenes in Bali, Indonesia. Balawan has lived a unique life, and has enjoyed a social and material capital that has allowed him to pursue his ambition. But, it has been his virtuosity as a guitarist, his mastery of genres and his manipulation of technology that have propelled his career. Balawan, who set out to ‘modernise tradition’, combines gamelan elements with jazz and metal elements to fuse a dynamic synthesis that reflects twenty-first-century realities in Bali, and attracts a socially mobile, young and middle-aged audience seeking experiences both local and translocal.

David Harnish (2013): The Hybrid Music and Cosmopolitan Scene of Balinese
Guitarist I Wayan Balawan, Ethnomusicology Forum, DOI:10.1080/17411912.2013.783753
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2013.783753
 

The Hybrid Music and Cosmopolitan Scene of Balinese Guitarist I Wayan Balawan