Tinkle on a Breeze

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 piped from bamboo flutes won his Occidental ear. His Balinese memoirs, published this week (4 House in Bali, John Day, Asia Press; $4), tinkle with a swirling eddy of music for. religious rites, shadow plays and joyful cremations.

Dingdong Chimes. At twilight on his first day in Bali, a flock of pigeons circled over McPhee, trailing behind them a shining rain of silver music. Tiny bells were tied to the pigeons' feet and bamboo whistles were attached to their tails.

McPhee soon discovered that he was in one of the world's most musical lands. At that time, predominantly agrarian Bali (about half as large as Connecticut) had approximately 8,000 gamelans (native orchestras). More than 10% of the island's male citizens were musicians. Every night the little villages rang with the crash of cymbals and the brassy clang of gongs. (The five tones of the Balinese musical scale are represented by the syllables ding, dong, deng, doong and dang.)

Musicians at the large jegogan and anklung instruments bonged heavily and slowly like lazy ducks, while the players of the smaller gangsa and g'nder scurried along like nervous humming birds. The music, in 4/4 jazzy rhythms, was melodious but completely lacking in harmony. To Colin McPhee it sounded "clear and transparent, like chimes floating away on the breeze."

Unlike the Western composer, a Balinese thinks of his music as purely functional, and never considers expressing an emotion. Only occasionally is there a suggestion of Western influence, as in the case of Durus, Colin McPhee's native 17-year-old houseboy. Durus composed and sang a song in the perfect ancient Javanese meter. His words:

Were I rich I would take you to the Bali Hotel

Where the beds are covered with fine silk

We would lie down

And when we had made love we would leave

In a fine Chevrolet

Blowing our horn loudly along the way.

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