From Issue 1
Introducing Insitu Recordings Magazine
Jonathan Adams
We at Insitu Recordings are pleased to announce the first issue of our companion magazine!
When we first began talking about the Insitu Recordings project our intention was to create something that did not exist. We didn’t want to create a record label, in the usual sense, nor did we want to create a gang/band/group, or sanggar. We wanted to fill a void in the production of gamelan recordings and take advantage of recent technological developments that make such an effort easier today. We also saw potential in exploring new ways to engage with gamelan music through recordings. After we launched unexpected opportunities emerged too, including the prospect of facilitating the cross-pollination of gamelan with disparate musics, thus expanding its reach and audience within Indonesia and the rest of world, as well as helping people connect, collaborate, and inspire each other in novel ways. Many of these prospects have yet to bear fruit, but seeds have been sown and all signposts suggest wonderful things to come. This is what keeps us going.
It would be dishonest to take credit for the particular alignment of planets and stars that both encouraged us to take on this endeavor and made it possible at all. In retrospect I Putu Gede Sukaryana (Balot) and I recognize that we were only two bodies in a larger constellation that included many friends, acquaintances, and complete strangers. The music we set out to support and capture was brought to life by countless artists and teachers on Bali and abroad who have spent decades pushing aesthetic and cultural boundaries, thinking about what should come next, and sharing these experiences with students while encouraging them to explore new paths forward. We also have to acknowledge the new technologies that have made it easier for an independent group of this size to tackle a project of this scope on our own. Professional recording equipment is smaller, cheaper, and easier to operate than it used to be and the spread of the Internet has made it possible for us to collaborate efficiently and share the results despite being separated by great distances. All of these pieces seemed to fall into place in 2016 and we thought it would be irresponsible if we didn’t seize the opportunity to take advantage of the possibilities they pointed toward.
The main goals that guided much of our early discussions about the project included documenting the incredible music young people on Bali are creating today, which is often performed just a handful of times before it is forgotten and rarely, if ever, documented professionally. We were also determined to see this documentation available in both Indonesia and abroad. Furthermore, we wanted to support a growing network of artists that transcends customary spatial and conceptual borders and create a space where the aspiring can learn from the experienced. We didn’t want to focus exclusively on new music or new artists. We wanted to connect disparate realms because our own lives and interests crossed them too.
At that time a magazine was nowhere on the horizon, but it feels like a natural companion to the project now because it will help us reach these goals more effectively. Each issue will be a collection of essays and other media presented in a combination of English, Bahasa, and Balinese. This aspect of the magazine reflects the multi-lingual community we serve and supports those of us in it that want to get better at communicating with one another. In general, the offerings will give greater context to the wider world of gamelan music, exploring imagined centers as much as their peripheries, and be a medium through which established voices can be shared with younger people and/or those outside the rather inward-looking realm of Balinese gamelan. The magazine will also be a forum that allows us to better support artists that contribute to the Insitu Recordings project. Many contributors have interesting stories to tell and projects that are not represented in our catalog. The magazine will enable us to shed more light on their remarkable activities as well as aspects of the project that are difficult to illuminate elsewhere.
We know these are lofty goals and that we are marching toward a distant target, but we believe it’s worth it because along the way we’ll learn a great deal, meet many interesting people, and be supporting the creative practices we’ve grown to love that surround us.
Help Sustain Insitu Recordings
Bringing Insitu Recordings and the companion magazine to life has involved countless hours and many near sleepless nights creating music, learning new skills, processing materials, coordinating events, transporting a mobile recording studio, and enduring lengthy recording sessions in the sun and/or rain. We’ve learned a great deal and have benefited from all the hard work. However, if this experiment is going to be sustainable and long-term we need your help. Since we launched in September 2016 we have funded the project using a combination of personal funds and the modest income we earn from album sales. We don’t pay ourselves for work, and we do all of this in our spare time. Any income goes toward a lengthy list of label expenses: printing promotional materials, duplicating CDs and DVDs for artists, web-hosting, digital distribution, maintaining our aging equipment; and all of that only after we’ve paid artists their fair share. We owe tremendous thanks to all of the people who have contributed to the project thus far. They have been patient with us as we experiment with our structure and we are grateful for this, as many have yet to see sizeable monetary rewards. They have all received free professional documentation of their repertoire and been promoted on the web, some have even enjoyed radio play, but we aim to do much more than that.
Gamelan is a niche, and the recording industry is volatile. Recording cultures on Bali are also quite distinct from their North American analogues, which brings with it a host of new and different challenges for a project that aims to bridge them. Digital music sales are nearly non-existent in Indonesia. Slow Internet speeds make downloading a challenge, and online purchases remain inaccessible to most because few people have credit cards. The market for VCD, CD and cassettes has also nearly vanished. What is left of it survives only in bootlegs sold at local night markets while local labels record fewer and fewer works. The people who still buy music prefer CDs, but these are nearly impossible to distribute in North America because digital distribution coupled with the return of vinyl have rendered them unattractive. We’ve done our best to facilitate the needs of both communities, but honestly we’re still experimenting with how best to get this material heard in a way that is sustainable. One of our current experiments is a vinyl pressing of Suara Semara. If you like physical copies of music and want to see more of them, consider pre-ordering it. If you do we’ll send you a t-shirt too. We’ve paid the group half of all projected profits up front, and this means we have hundreds of copies to sell before we recoup the initial investment.
In a moment when gamelan music is as vibrant as ever, when the age that musicians begin composing gets younger each year, and at a time when the Internet has just flooded everyone’s ears with sounds from all corners of the globe, much of the resulting creativity is only documented with cell phone cameras and distributed on social media. Do we really trust Google, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook with distributing, curating, and archiving this music? What will happen when their rule comes to an end? Of course, the development of social media has facilitated the exchange of ideas and music in ways most of us never imagined, but it also means that efforts to create high-quality documentation of this particular moment have been undercut by an abundance of free, fragmented, and low-res documentation. We don’t want to add to that pile, and we trust our intuitions enough to declare that there is space and need for a project like this.
We hope those of you that share these values and want to see where this experiment leads will help us get there. At the moment there are two ways to do this. Our website has nearly 100 tracks released across 17 albums, including three free releases and five volumes in HD video. 1) You can purchase these recordings and we’ll invest 50% of your contribution in the project’s future, channeling the other 50% to the relevant artists, or you can make a one-time donation through PayPal.
If you like where this project is going and want to see it continue, please support it in the way that works best for you.
Jonathan Adams
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