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Gamelan Bike Bike: From bicycles to gamelan
A group of Vancouver musicians have fashioned gamelan from old bicycles, and are now working with Indonesian musicians to raise the profile of gamelan music.
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Cross-cultural innovation: Appealing melodies and rhythms are produced under the masterful hands of talented musicians. (Courtesy of Yohei Shimomae /-)
I
n 1962, a young Frank Zappa appearing on Steve Allen’s late-night talk show demonstrated to his bemused host how to play music by hammering on the tubes and scraping the spokes of an old bicycle.
The resulting “music” was a horrendous cacophony counterpointed by Zappa’s straight-faced Dadaist commentary – an excellent piece of performance art.
A half-century later, the bicycle is once again taking center stage in a performance – only this time producing appealing melodies and sophisticated rhythms under the masterful hands of talented musicians.
In this version of Zappa’s “musical” bicycle, steel tubes were scavenged from old bicycle frames, cut to length, and mounted on a wooden frame to fashion a gender, a metallophone that is the primary instrument of an Indonesian gamelan orchestra.
With the addition of a large bronze gong and a few other components, the bicycle parts have become Gamelan Bike Bike (GBB) – a collective of Canadian and Indonesian musicians based in Vancouver, Canada.
The collective was founded by George Rahi, a musician working, as many young artists do, at a day job, in this case a bicycle repair shop.
He was looking to explore his interest in experimental music, but his limited budget compelled him to be exceptionally creative not only in the music, but in fashioning the instruments themselves.
