TRANSCRIPT: MAY 27, 2020 MID-WEEK MUSICAL INTERLUDES #4 Hi, my name is Melissa Givens, Assistant Professor of Music at Pomona College in Claremont, California, and I'd like to welcome you to “Mid-Week Musical Interludes,” our podcast series featuring an array of glorious new and not-so-new works as recently performed by faculty, guests and students of Pomona College. For more information on the music from our podcasts please visit us at pomona.edu/musicpodcast, and music podcast is all one word. For this episode we present two selections from our ethnomusicology area. First up is Assistant Professor of Music Gibb Schreffler singing and playing a period accordion on a song popular on Pacific Ocean whaling ships in the mid-nineteenth century, “Roolin down to Old Mowhee.” Then we journey to Bali with the Pomona College Gamelan Ensemble, Giri Kusuma and friends from Cal Arts for a traditional Balinese Gamelan piece, “Bapang Selisir.” We hope you enjoy this week’s sampling of global sounds. [Rooling down to Old Mowhee with Gibb Schreffler voice and accordion] Once more we’re waft by the northern gales and bounding over the main And now the hills of the Tropic Isles we soon shall see again Five sluggish months have waxed and waned since from the shore sailed we And now we are bound from the Artic ground, rolling down to old Mowhee Rolling down to old Mowhee, rolling down to old Mowhee With our old baggy sails running ‘fore the Artic gales Rolling down to old Mowhee Through many a blow of frost and snow and bitter squalls of hail Our spars were bent and our canvas rent as we braved the northern gales And the horrid isles of ice-cut tiles that deck the Arctic Sea Are many and many leagues astern as we steer for old Mowhee Rolling down to old Mowhee, rolling down to old Mowhee With our old baggy sails running ‘fore the Artic gales Rolling down to old Mowhee Through many a gale of snow and hail our good ship bore away And in the midst of the moonbeams kissed we slept in St. Lawrence Bay And many a day we have whiled away in the wild Kamchatka Sea But as we’ve toiled we’ve laughed and sung of the gals of old Mowhee Rolling down to old Mowhee, rolling down to old Mowhee With our old baggy sails running ‘fore the Artic gales Rolling down to old Mowhee An ample share of toil and care we whalemen undergo But when it’s over what care we how the bitter blast did blow We are homeward bound, that joyful sound, and yet it may not be But we’ll think on that as we laugh and chat with the gals of old Mowhee Rolling down to old Mowhee, rolling down to old Mowhee With our old baggy sails running ‘fore the Artic gales Rolling down to old Mowhee ____________________________________________________ ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THE PODCAST: This podcast opens with “Rooling down to Old Mowhee” recorded in October 2017, Gibb Schreffler, voice and according. It is followed by the Pomona College Balinese Gamelan Ensemble, Giri Kusuma, and are joined by members of Burat Wangi Cal Arts’ Gamelan Ensemble, both under the musical direction of Nyomen Wenton, recorded in December 2019. Both performances were recoded in Mabel Shaw Bridges Hall of Music located on the campus of Pomona College, 150 E. Fourth St., Claremont, CA. Read about Gibb Schreffler at www.pomona.edu/directory/people Read about Giri Kusuma and Nyomen Wenton at www.pomona.edu NOTE FROM THE PROGRAMS: “Rooling down to Old Mowhee” [origin unknown] from the sea journal of Wm. Abbe By the 1850s, pushing ever further in pursuit of the highly sought substances obtained from the bodies of cetaceans, the routes of New England whaling vessels had expanded beyond the Bering Strait into “the Arctic Grounds.” There the whalemen hunted bowhead whales seasonally, before returning to the warm waters of their Pacific bases, Mowee (Maui) and Wahoo (O‘ahu). On one such voyage in the barque Atkins Adams was Harvard alumnus William Abbe, who went to sea “for his health” (as was said in those days). In the back pages of Abbe’s sea journal, dated December 25, 1859 and written while hundreds of miles off the coast of Chile, is a transcription of the words to this song, perhaps as it was sung by a shipmate that Christmas Day. –GS “Bapang Selisir” Traditional Balinese Gamelan piece derived from the early style of gamelan pengabuhan.“Bapang” refers to the meter and rhythmic foundation for the piece, while “Selisir” refers to the type of pentatonic scale used by the ensemble. The set of instruments heard in this performance is called a gamelan gong kebyar. Pomona College commissioned these instruments in 1995, under former professor Katherine Hagedorn’s leadership, for the College’s Balinese gamelan ensemble – Giri Kusuma. The word gamelan means “percussion orchestra” and refers to any one of the many kinds of bronze, iron or bamboo ensembles found in Southeast Asia. Gong refers to the large, suspended bronze gong that articulates the beginnings (or, depending on how one hears it, the ends) of the musical cycles and is considered the heart of the ensemble. Kebyar is the name both of this particular kind of Balinese gamelan and also the style of music that it normally plays—the dynamic, fiery style that appeared in the early part of the twentieth century and swiftly gained popularity over traditional, more stately musical forms. Various changes were made in the orchestra at that time, increasing the range of the instruments and permitting more virtuosic playing techniques. Rhythmically inventive and technically demanding, kebyar is notable for its dense contrapuntal textures, interlocking figuration and melody, and frequent changes in dynamics and tempo.