WCU ensemble will perform gamelan music concert

The Low Tech Ensemble will perform Javanese gamelan music at Western Carolina University on Nov. 3.

The Ensemble plays music from the Central Javanese tradition and by contemporary composers. A gamelan is an orchestra of tuned percussion instruments that consists mainly of gongs, zithers and xylophones. The concert will feature several traditional pieces as well as a performance of an arrangement by Will Peebles, director of the WCU School of Music.

Joy Shea, also a WCU music faculty member, instructs the ensemble. A resident of Jakarta,Indonesia, for 12 years, Shea has studied and played gamelan with some of the foremost instructors in the United States, according to an announcement from Western Carolina University’s website.

The performance begins at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 3, in the Coulter Building recital hall on the campus of Western Carolina University. Admission to the concert is free and open to the public.

Not sure if you like gamelan music? Here’s a medley of songs by Gamelan gong kebyar from bali:

For more information about the concert, contact the WCU School of Music at 828-227-7242. To learn more about the Low Tech Ensemble, contact Shea at jshea@wcu.edu.

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About Jeff Fobes
As a long-time proponent of media for social change, my early activities included coordinating the creation of a small community FM radio station to serve a poor section of St. Louis, Mo. In the 1980s I served as the editor of the "futurist" newsletter of the U.S. Association for the Club of Rome, a professional/academic group with a global focus and a mandate to act locally. During that time, I was impressed by a journalism experiment in Mississippi, in which a newspaper reporter spent a year in a small town covering how global activities impacted local events (e.g., literacy programs in Asia drove up the price of pulpwood; soybean demand in China impacted local soybean prices). Taking a cue from the Mississippi journalism experiment, I offered to help the local Green Party in western North Carolina start its own newspaper, which published under the name Green Line. Eventually the local party turned Green Line over to me, giving Asheville-area readers an independent, locally focused news source that was driven by global concerns. Over the years the monthly grew, until it morphed into the weekly Mountain Xpress in 1994. I've been its publisher since the beginning. Mountain Xpress' mission is to promote grassroots democracy (of any political persuasion) by serving the area's most active, thoughtful readers. Consider Xpress as an experiment to see if such a media operation can promote a healthy, democratic and wise community. In addition to print, today's rapidly evolving Web technosphere offers a grand opportunity to see how an interactive global information network impacts a local community when the network includes a locally focused media outlet whose aim is promote thoughtful citizen activism. Follow me @fobes

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