MASTER CLASS Woodshed BY DAVID LOPATO KEN TANNENBAUM

David Lopato East-West Fusions: A Delicate Balance n the majority of “world music” fusions, tures and the ways in which they incorpo- Evans and Davis adhere rather strictly to the Western improvised musics (jazz, rock, rate improvisation. I’d like to take a quick pitch constraints of the mode while soloing (in blues, funk, Latin, etc.) tend to be fused look specifically at music involving the meld- the original version, at least), John Coltrane Iwith musics from Africa, most notably the ing of Western improvisation with Indonesian and Cannonball Adderley do not—and, as we African subcontinent. These fusions tend gamelan music, a potentially rich, relatively all know, that worked out just fine. In classical to mix dynamic African rhythms with har- untapped form of “world music” fusion, and I’ll Indian music, the composition and the impro- monies derived from European musics. The view it through the lens of my own music of that visation, microtones aside, exist entirely with- results tend to be texturally rich and rhyth- nature, a recording of which is being released in the pitch confines of araga , which is some- mically contrapuntal, and the forms tend to this September as Gendhing For A Spirit Rising what analogous to the Western “scale” concept, be short (sometimes as short as two bars), (Global Coolant). but typically involves strict rules for how the repetitive and groove-based. In a sense, these One of the main issues is melody. Is it dia- improv is created. In Indonesian gamelan, the musics swim in the same large pool, since the tonic, chromatic or modal? And what does pitch choices boil down to one of two pentaton- origins of so many of the Western styles men- “modal” mean? Jazz musicians tend to interpret ic tunings, pelog and slendro. You’re in one or tioned above can be traced back to sub-Saha- the concept very loosely. In jazz, the basis for the other, but never both at the same time. In ran Africa, anyway. modal improvisation is most often a seven-note fact, a gamelan (the Indonesian word for both But what about East-West fusions—for diatonic mode related to the major scale, for the orchestra and the music itself) has separate example, those involving Western improvised example the dorian mode, and it may be applied sets of instruments for the two tunings. (An music with the music of India or Indonesia? over different roots, such as in Miles Davis’ aside worth mentioning is the fact that tunings These tend to grapple with very different musi- “So What” where the “changes” are D dorian within those two systems may vary from village cal issues, both in terms of their formal struc- and E dorian. Even in that context, while Bill to village, which can be seriously disorienting b 88 DOWNBEAT SEPTEMBER 2017 for a Westerner.) For our purposes, we’ll map during the last two bars before the gong suwu- them onto (or squeeze them into, as it were) kan, where it is struck in each bar. Western chromatic 12-tone tuning, which is The instrumentation is also quite different precisely what I did in the second movement, and is modeled after Sundanese instrumen- entitled “This Life.” Since it will be much easier tation. The trap set is replaced by a set of to digest all this if you can hear what’s going on, Sundanese kendhang (a two-headed hand drum I’ve uploaded an MP3 file containing relevant similar in shape and construction to the Indian excerpts of the piece to my website: http://www. mridangam). In Jaipongan, a set typically con- davidlopato.com/thislife-excerpts.html. sists of one large drum parallel to the floor and My pelog scale in this case is B–C–E–F–G, at least two small ones that stand upright. The and the slendro is B –C–E –F–G. The fixed pitch of the large drum is varied for melodic melody of the head dancesb betweenb both scales phrasing by pressing the heel of the foot against and involves only those seven pitches. Example it while playing. The “rhythm section” now 1 on page 90 shows how that dance plays out. consists of a very different collection of instru- This is clearly a hybrid approach, one not ments complementing the hand drums: glock- found in gamelan. Nor do the two scales get enspiel, vibraphone, marimba, piano and the “mashed up” in the rest of the head. The frag- aforementioned gongs. In gamelan, metallo- ments of one scale are discreetly separated phones of various sizes and the Javanese equiv- from those of the other, even though the mel- alent of a marimba called gambang are import- ody flows from one to the other throughout. ant instruments that create both melody and During the piano solo, the improvisation starts texture. Since the tuning is Western, the glock, by alternating between one scale and the other, vibes and marimba all seemed logical (and, I phrase by phrase, and eventually veers off into think, effective) representations. Because the free chromatic improv, returning to the alter- gongs must conform to the Western tuning, nation of those two scales near the end of the they are sampled and played via keyboard. As solo. is typical of gamelan, there are multiple tem- The solo segues directly into the top of the pos in this section, arrived at through gradual head. At a cadence point early on (a sustained accelerandos, and the nature of the parts varies note on F below middle C, coinciding with a depending on the tempo. gong of the same pitch), the head transitions Back to the issue at hand, namely improvi- into a middle section and the rhythmic groove sation and how it relates to the scale content and shifts to straight eighths. This section is distinct- formal structure. In this “Sundanese” section, ly different from the opening one. The opening the scales are the same, but the mode of the section has a long, intricate, loping melody in scales is different. The pelog scale is expressed swing time with constantly shifting meters and as F–G–B–C–E and the slendro F–G–B –C–E . a free-form solo with irregular phrasing, albeit a The form to which all of the pitched instrumentb b 4/4 metric feel. The middle section is an entire- parts conform is an alternation of two bars of ly other ball of wax. It’s inspired by music from slendro, with two bars of pelog for the entire 16 the western part of Java (Sunda), more specifi- bars of the gong cycle, cadencing on the pelog cally a popular music form derived from clas- with a strike of the gong suwukan pitched at F sical Sundanese court music called Jaipongan. below middle C. (Google the names Dedeh Winingsih and Idjah In the particular modal configuration men- Hadidjah for examples of that music performed tioned above, this roughly translates in Western by two of the greatest singers you’ll ever hear.) parlance to two bars of F7sus alternating with This section, like most gamelan music, is two bars of F lydian, but here’s the critical point: “colotomic” in structure. In colotomic music, It’s not the same. The improv is a duet between repetitive cycles are nested within other ones. soprano saxophone and violin, with the vio- The lengths of all cycles, as well as the lengths of lin primarily in a responsorial role, which mir- phrases within those cycles, expressed in num- rors the role of the singer and the rebab (a two- ber of beats, are powers of two, i.e. eight, 16, 32, stringed spiked fiddle) in Jaipongan. If either 64, 128 on up to 256 beats long, with the basic player were to, say, inject the pitch A or D into structural unit, a gatra, being four beats long. their improvisation on either of those scales, a The ending of a cycle (or, to a Westerner, what normal inclination for any jazz musician who would feel like the beginning of one) is marked sees F lydian or F7sus in a jazz chart, it would by a gong. There are many sizes of gongs in seriously compromise the harmonic and gamelan, and the general concept is this: the big- melodic fabric of the music. ger the cadence, the larger the gong (although The performers on the recording, Marty the size doesn’t always correspond to pitch). In Ehrlich and Mark Feldman, did a wonderful job this piece, the cycle is 64 beats long (16 bars of of navigating that terrain, something very nat- 4/4) and there are two types of gong employed, ural for a classical Indian musician but quite a large gong (gong suwukan) and a smaller one unnatural for a jazz musician. Different disci- (kempul). The gong suwukan occurs every 64 plines are at work there. The score is notated in beats and the kempul every eight beats, except such a way as to provide the “pitch classes” upon

SEPTEMBER 2017 DOWNBEAT 89 Example 1

Example 2 BARBARA FREEDGOOD

Lopato spent a year in Java as a Fulbright scholar. which to be improvised (not indicative of range, ues back into the head, with the trap set sneak- In most composed Western tonal music, there just scale tones). They are written as stemless ing in during the last four bars to help transi- is the concept of the tonic, or “home base,” that note heads—see Example 2 on page 90. tion the music back into swing time. The full is established at the onset, then ventured away You may notice that all of the accompany- head is played to conclude the movement. from and returned to, as though a mission were ing parts are written out. (The kendhang and What we have here is an example of Western taken on, struggled through, accomplished gong suwukan are omitted here for spatial music that is heterophonic (the harmonic and then triumphantly drawn to a conclusion. considerations, but it should be noted that aspect in the opening section supplied not by Gamelan is much less goal-oriented. The explo- the kendhang part is entirely improvised.) the piano, but rather the bass, much in the way rations are perhaps more internal, more subtle. While the glock, vibes, piano and kempul it might in an Ornette Coleman tune, for exam- Both the circular form and the limited mono- do play strictly notated ostinato-based parts, ple), in swing time, co-mingling with Eastern phonic pitch constructs allow for much less the marimba part, although also notated in music that is, for all its rich texture, essential- “roaming” or “achieving.” In the large move- the score, would ideally be improvised. In ly monophonic, in straight-eighth time. Those ment of Gendhing For A Spirit Rising, I actual- Javanese music, gambang is one of the main aesthetically and structurally disparate musics ly infuse the cyclical form with a much larger improvising instruments. Players learn how to are brought together by a combination of com- dose of Western harmonic motion and it does improvise around a given melody much in the positional devices. The main one is the rigorous have the effect of creating, in addition to height- way that jazz musicians learn how to blow over use of particular scales derived from one cul- ened emotion, a journey away from and back changes. A Western musician who familiariz- ture and tweaked to fit into another’s tuning to a home base, even though the final cadence es himself or herself with Sundanese gambang system. The way those scales co-mingle is for- probably sounds completely unresolved to a improvisation would, then, improvise the eign to the culture of origin but less so to the Western ear. This was one of the attractions of entire part, with the exception of the transi- other culture. Then there is the introduction of writing that movement. I felt as though I was tion back into the head. This is not as daunting Western diatonic harmony into music that is expanding upon a tradition without violating as it may seem, provided the Western musician essentially modal, i.e. the harmonic nature of the core aesthetics of it. is an improviser to begin with. The kendhang the piano part in the middle section. There is Just as one philosophy is not necessarily part must, however, be played by someone a discreet sharing of musical values within the better than the other, neither is one musical who has studied that tradition more exten- piece. All of this is done with care, though, so approach. From my vantage point, the possi- sively, which raises obvious logistical issues for as to respect the aesthetic of a musical system bilities of such fusions are truly exciting. Much anyone venturing into this complicated world very different from our own. For me, this is an beautiful music is yet to be made through them. of East-West fusions. Often it is not feasible to important aspect of any pan-cultural under- DB hire the very people who are best qualified to taking, musical or otherwise. Pianist, composer and educator David Lopato has performed perform the music. For recordings in this dig- That notion of difference calls to mind a his own compositions throughout the world. His double album ital age, amazing things can be done remote- basic tenet of Eastern philosophy, namely the Gendhing For a Spirit Rising (to be released Sept. 8 on Global Coolant Records) is an East/West encounter that finds musical ly. For live performance, it’s another matter rejection of goal-oriented movement in favor of influences flowing back and forth between cultures. Lopato, a more contained, circular flow that anyone who whose studies included a year in Java as a Fulbright scholar, entirely, and one to be taken seriously when is featured on piano, marimba, vibraphone, glockenspiel, writing such music. has studied Eastern martial arts knows quite Sundanese kendhang, gongs and electronics. He has been a core faculty member of the Jazz and Contemporary Music After the section undergoes a tempo shift to well. In musical terms, this could be viewed Department of The New School in New York since 1991. Visit a faster, hotter pace, a second acceleration seg- through the differing approaches to harmony. him online at davidlopato.com.

90 DOWNBEAT SEPTEMBER 2017 Lopato spent a year in Java as a Fulbright scholar.

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