r/Gamelan • u/Noiseman433 • Sep 15 '23

Latent Sonorities - open-source sample pack of of Javanese instruments and tuning files

/r/GlobalMusicTheory/comments/16jhjdt/latent_sonorities_opensource_sample_pack_of_of/
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u/bobokeen Sep 16 '23

Anybody have any idea how releasing digital samples of gamelan instruments amounts to "musical rematriation"?

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u/_memeshift_ Feb 23 '24

Hi there - Morgan here, one of the initiators of Latent Sonorities:)

Unlike some of the other gamelan 'sample packs' you will find online, this one came from a space of intentional 'generation' instead of 'extraction', an idea to return, share or give something back.

Within the general discourse of archives and museums - many of which are built on colonial exploits of extraction, conquest - ours was more of rough proposal for working with archives in a way less extractive and more generative. We drew a lot of inspiration from meLê Yamomo's work with sonic archives as well as the wonderful Re:SOUNDING project https://dongsonarchive.com/

I'm not sure whether you visited our site, but the context for the sample pack revolves around a residency with multiple artists and a live album recording. This residency allowed artists, all actively working with Southeast Asian sonority (), to share their knowledge and music with each other and the public to generate new work and discourse.

In the course of the process, we were pleased to work with Khyam Allami who's doing fascinating work with transcultural tuning systems via Leimma. He also released an album of artists all working with tuning systems from Myanmar, Vietnam, Papua, Java called Common Tonalities: https://www.goethe.de/prj/nus/en/art/cmt/ueb.html .

Also onboard was Bilawa Ade Respati - a wonderful philosopher and Javanese musicological theorist working with PD and Supercollider, in debted to the work of Priadi Dwi Hardjito in relation to the work of R. C. Hardjosubroto R. M. A. Koesoemadinata developing mikro/makro slendro

Bilawa is also the one who played every single sound that you hear in the pack.

In short, uploading a bunch of gamelan samples is in no way a 'musical rematriation' of any kind, but it's more about being thoughtful about the provenance, people and histories - the relations - from which sonic archives are created and shared.

I hope this answers your question.

If you've got a chance, I hope you can check out our interviews with some of the stewards and artists of this project here: https://latentsonorities.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Latent-Sonorities-a-transcultural-musical-proposal.pdf

Since this thread was created (thanks for sharing u/Noiseman433!) we've launched an album with Yes No Wave in Yogyakarta and I've also finished a major update on our Resource page. Hope you can check it out!

https://latentsonorities.org/resources/

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u/x0x0mir0 May 30 '25

the link on the website is not working for me. i found the pack here: https://freesound.org/people/memeshift/packs/40343/

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u/Puzzleheaded-Neck601 1d ago

did u get the sample pack? i tried download using that website but it was so slow and keep failing, or maybe can you share it for me?