ETHN 100

As a pianist with years of indoctrination into the formats and ideas of European and American music, I found it odd to listen to a piece with such a limited range of notes. I believe 5 separate gongs are used, two to keep a rhythm and three in a varying pattern. If my compositions were limited to five notes, and improvisatory sections to three, I would probably end up with a terrible-sounding piece! Somehow, the performers vary the rhythms and patterns enough to keep things new and interesting, and to keep the audience listening.
The other thing I’m not used to is rhythm being in the same register as improvisation. In Western music, repetitive, tempo-keeping phrases are usually found in the lower register (left-hand piano, tuba, bass, etc.) or in the higher register if something low is meant to be heard. In this piece, the repetitive two-gong phrase is in the same register and at the same loudness as the other three gongs. This similarity allows the audience to hear all the ways in which the rhythms mesh and play off each other, something that might be absent if the players had a wider range of notes to work with.
It’s hard to keep track of the progression of the piece since everything sounds much more similar than I’m used to. I have a feeling that if I was playing this type of music I’d have no idea when to stop.