Langit Hitam / Thiⁿ o͘-o͘ / 天黑黑 - Matahari Ensemble (日央人兒世界樂團) ft. ISI Yogyakarta Jurusan Karawitan

We were carrying out a three-week local project, but at the request of the Dean of the Department of Karawitan at ISI Jogja, all of our team members were asked to attend at least one week of basic Javanese Gamelan classes. Although this wasn't my first time playing gamelan, the immense pressure of the project deadline was likely overwhelming. I ended up intuitively writing this piece on a whiteboard one morning during the second week, right before our practice with the university team. During later rehearsals, I worked with the teacher and other members to fine-tune the ensemble arrangement and instrument entrances. For this collaborative project, our vision was to interweave Javanese and Taiwanese folk tales, so we decided to experiment with fusing a well-known Taiwanese folk song into the music. Since the piece "Thian O O" (Dark Sky) is inherently built on a pentatonic scale, I chose the Slendro (a five-tone tuning system in Gamelan) as the primary accompaniment. (To this day, I still have no idea what possessed me that morning to write all of this in one go.) 我們於在地進行為期三週的計畫，但在ISI Jogja Karawitan學院的院長要求下，希望我們團員至少都能上一週的基本爪哇甘美朗課程。 雖然自己已經不是第一次接觸，但大概是計畫案執行時間壓力龐大，這首曲子是第二週早晨與學校的團隊練習前在白板用直覺寫出來的，之後練習中再與老師及其他團員討論不同樂器合奏的順序。 在整個合作計畫中，我們希望爪哇與臺灣的民間故事互相交錯，所以也使用了臺灣大眾熟知的鄉間民謠進行音樂融合嘗試。由於〈天黑黑〉這首曲子本身就是以5聲為基底，所以自己也選用甘美朗樂器中的Slendro（五音音律）作為主要伴奏。 （直到現在我還是不知道自己當天早上是被甚麼東西打到，一口氣寫出這些東西） ＊ Jawa Gamelan：ISI Yogyakarta Jurusan Karawitan Shakuhachi：陳承煦 Violin：黃筌琳 Vocal：Matahari Ensemble 日央人兒世界樂團 Music arrangement：蔡秉君