Step outside your mind
Pharoah S. Wail | Inner Space | 10/06/2004
(4 out of 5 stars)
"I asked for (and received) this for Christmas of 2003 and have visited it many times since then. From the liner-notes...
"The Malaysian rainforest is a vibrant environment, rich with sound from forest floor to canopy, river's edge to mountain crest. Temiar dreamsongs emerge from their engagement with the spirits of their resonant landscape, about 2500 square miles of lowland and highland rainforest in peninsular Malaysia. Here their small communities of 20 - 150 people have traditionally been scattered."
These recordings are firmly in the vein of what I call "deep-earth music". That's not a style or a genre, but just my way of encompassing the musics of the peoples who are still able to cling to traditional ways, ideas, and ancient modes of expression. This is strictly the artistic and ritualistic expression of an ancient people who are singularly their own communal entity. I mention this because I don't want the title of this disc to scare anyone off. This is not any New Agey fluff with digital thunderstorms in the background as synthesizer wankery pads along.
The Temiar believe that during everyday waking moments you are in a bounded state. During trances and dreams you are unbounded and truly free, and that is when the songs come.
As for the music itself, it generally consists of a rhythmic drone-choir of females backing a male (usually) or female lead singer. The lead singer being the person to whom the song was given by spirits encountered during the unbounded state. The choir plays bamboo tube stampers, usually in a slow, hypnotic pattern that varies from song to song. The recordings are mostly from the early 1980s, though a few are from '91.
There are a whole host of symbols and reasonings behind all of the aspects of this music to the Temiar, which I will let you find out for yourself. For someone like me, an outsider, this is just great music that hits me in my own spiritual ways. The drone-choir of females will lull you outside of your own mind. The bamboo tubed rhythms are fantastic. Just these simple, repetitive rhythms that seem to do exactly what gave them to the Temiar to begin with... unbind your mind. This music is deep-forest hypnosis. The recordings are not often as "right there" as other field-recordings you may have. Take for instance the Abayudaya disc I recently reviewed. That disc is so amazingly recorded you feel like you're right there in that little temple with them. It's the perfect context for that music. On this disc though, there are times where the feeling is more like you are you, an outsider, who got lost in the rainforest at night but you heard this music in the distance and decided to follow it. Nervous, scared, or just shy, you don't fully approach the people, but you hang just far enough from the village to go unnoticed and listen to the music a little closer. That's how this disc makes me feel. It's like stumbling across something that is not for you... that you cannot fully understand or enter... but it brings you home and draws you in. It's all at once a musical glimpse into the human past and present... and hopefully the future.
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Track Listings (21) - Disc #1