Bali: More Music Connections

From the late ‘80s through the mid ‘90s I had a band (with Dave Smith and Mary Cohn) called The Sound Connection. We had fun, playing most often at weddings. In fact—though this is a contrarian view to voice among fellow musicians—I’ve always enjoyed playing weddings. Wedding music has a function. It serves a purpose: to bring people together in celebration. People of different ages, backgrounds and tastes all connect as they listen and dance. It’s a “sound connection.” Isn’t that really the point? Call me a cave man, but I think music is at its best when it’s more of a means than an end.

Being in Bali has presented unanticipated opportunities to connect with many wonderful people, both living and dead, through music (whose mystic purpose Edmund Gurney explored in the 1880s as “the power of sound”). In a previous post I reported how Jonathan and David and I rehearsed and jammed with Balinese musicians to create a joyful and memorable New Year’s celebration. Music was our chosen means of connecting.

During the last couple of weeks I’ve continued to make more music and musical connections in Bali by playing at a birthday party and, yes, a wedding. At this high-end wedding reception, before the reggae band I was playing with went on, I heard, and then met, the very talented young musician, Gus Teja, and his world music ensemble. This close encounter with a bamboo flute master (and gifted composer and arranger) was a moment to remember. But over the last week three other musical events occurred that stand out as even more meaningful for me. Read on to learn why!

Ida Bagus Oka, our guide and driver and friend, has engineered most of my Balinese “sound connections.” Ida loves to laugh when I call him my “agent.” A retired teacher like me, Ida is an exceptionally well-connected person in Ubud. Not only has he let me use the alto sax I helped him buy on my first visit to Bali; Ida has also introduced me, in a short span of time, to many local musicians. 

Several of these local musicians, like Gus Teja (mentioned above) and Agung Gepeng (mentioned below), were Ida’s students. For twenty years Ida taught math and science, music and badminton—and also stepped in to lead Hindu prayers, when a priest could not be found—at the primary school on Monkey Forest Road.

The Cool Tone Blues Band offered me a regular place to sit in: Thursday nights at the lovely and delicious Siam Sally restaurant. Agung (guitar) and Koko (vocals) both speak excellent English and are wonderfully soulful musicians. The other Cool Tone guys (who play bass, keyboards and percussion) are really good musicians too, and in demand to play metal and jazz with other local bands. 

The Cool Tones serve up a broad and faithful repertoire of blues and classic rock, played at an ear-catching low volume (thanks, in part, to their use of cajon instead of drumset). What’s more, they play with verve and precision, covering everybody from Howling Wolf and Freddy King to Eric Clapton, Stevie Wonder, and even a song like “What a Wonderful World.”

The more I worked with them, the more I was impressed by the Cool Tones’ range and depth. How improbable it is that these young men in Bali should devote their lives to the same music that shaped my life, a generation earlier, in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Nashville and North Carolina! Plus, they could not be more respectful, kind and appreciative. Remarkably, they see me as a kind of hero: someone who has actually inhabited the ideal world of their dreams. It was touching to play with them on Thursday, for the last time on this trip. We were all sad to part ways, but I will stay in touch with these guys, and I expect Jon and Dave will too.  

Another remarkable experience I had with music last week was visiting the School for the Blind in Denpasar, and attending a high school music class there. Ida used to teach at this school, Yayasan Pendidikan Dria Raba, and his brother teaches there now. The young musicians I shared an hour with (in a small but well-equipped, dimly-lit, air-conditioned and sound-insulated room) closely resemble the many middle and upper school bands I worked with during my decades at CFS.  

Largely student-led, this Bali-based band of the blind work out their own arrangements, finding parts for several electric guitars plus bass, drums, and keyboard. Two or three of the musicians also sing, well. We played a blues tune, a couple of Indonesian pop songs, and then—most amazing to my ears—a rocking cover of “Cotton Fields,” with Texarkana perfectly pronounced in Lead Belly’s English!

I carefully passed around, for the students to “see,” the beautiful Mark VI tenor that Jelle Oortman Gerlings is letting me use (with the precious horn still hanging protectively from my neck, Jelle!). I was moved as I watched wise, young fingers study the horn’s mechanism and engraving.

But the most moving musical experience of all my days in Bali happened just last night, when I played with The Soul Doctors. Wil Hammer, the husband of midwife Robin Lim, and Dennis Ferrell, a “nearly retired” psychologist originally from Texas, formed The Soul Doctors in 2008. Now the band is a regular fixture on the Bali music scene. They cover a lot of great material from Dylan and The Band, to Louis Prima, James Taylor, Mark Knopfler and The Beatles (among many others), but the heartbeat of their music is its originality.

Wil and Dennis write clever, well constructed tunes, and they perform them well, too, with studied arrangements. All proceeds from CD sales support the Bumi Sehat Foundation. Mamo on bass and Komang on guitar are gifted Indonesian musicians, and the band really pops with Robi Navicula (a certified Balinese rock star in his own right) and Oded (an Israeli who once used Roman Catholic relief money to rebuild a tsunami-damaged mosque in Ache!) on percussion. For me it was particularly satisfying to play with a group that has charts and rehearses, especially since the rehearsal spot—Wil and Robin’s family compound—is a five-minute walk from where Jan and I stay in Nyuh Kuning!

So I rehearsed several times during the past ten days with these talented, friendly and funny Soul Doctors: all for a one-hour set last night at Indus Restaurant. The event was designed to be a happy gathering, but there was an inescapable undercurrent of sadness too. Its purpose was to celebrate the life of Kerry Pendergrast, who sang with The Soul Doctors until just six weeks ago, when she suddenly, unexpectedly, died of a massive brain infarction.

I learned a great deal about Kerry at the celebration. Her Balinese husband, Pranato, played a handmade flute, passionately, in her honor. Then their two young-adult children both sang original songs, in very different styles, about their mom. Those performances were beautiful, but heart wrenching to hear. Kerry was not only a great musician, who passed on her love of music. I learned she was also an accomplished painter, a formidable poet, a free-spirited dancer, a feminist cabaret performer, a very funny lady, and a devoted wife and mother who helped found a daycare center. As Kerry’s family and friends remembered her, they also revealed how she brightened and inspired so many lives: by daring to be exactly herself!

And then I took the stage with The Soul Doctors—literally standing in Kerry’s place—trying (through a raging fever) to be like her: exactly myself. I never met Kerry, and that is my loss. But it’s much less a loss than the one that those who knew and loved her must bear. 

I’m grateful to Wil and Dennis for letting me play their songs—Kerry’s music—with them. It was an honor to celebrate her inspiring life by accenting the joyful, healing connections that music's blind faith, power, and love express. In the process, I hope I helped The Soul Doctors live up to their name!