The Balinese musicians listened with polite boredom to a Bach fugue. They caught the rhythms of Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong records at once, but the singing confused them. To American Musicologist Colin McPhee, the Balinese orchestra leader blurted: "Your music is like someone crying! Up and down, up and down, for no reason at all ... like a bird with a broken wing."
During the five years that he lived in the village of Sayan, plump, apple-cheeked Colin McPhee, 45, never succeeded in getting Balinese to like American music. But the ancient Oriental melodies which they beat from bronze gongs and...
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