miss cayce

Titik titik kenai ujan

This is one of my must-have favourite CDs. It's an instrumental CD called the "Masters of the Sarawakian Sape", featuring Tusau Padan, who is an Orang Ulu (people from upriver) from Borneo. The sape is a traditional wooden lute instrument and it plays such beautiful music. This song, in particular, is about rain in the rainforest. If you could only buy one thing from Borneo, I wholeheartedly recommend this CD. I also love the famous artwork on the CD cover, which is created by the musical artist himself. The artwork is called "Kayu Aru" (Tree of Life) and the fruit-bearing tree is home to wildlife such as clouded leopards, orang-utans, gibbons and including a Hornbill on top of the tree. I'm so proud to support all local music artistes, especially those in traditional music.

I have another local CD that features the sape, yet the artiste plays it like he would play an electrical guitar. The results, needless to say (um), probably need more experimentation. Every year, there's a Rainforest World Music Festival in my town that features musical workshops, concerts, jam sessions, enthomusicology lectures and dance workshops by musicians from around the world. I missed last year because I was in the field, so I'm really hoping to attend this year's in July. Last year, they had this instrumental Celtic band called Shooglenifty, a Mongolian band, etc. The festival also featured a couple of First Nations musicians from British Columbia. I was sad to hear that I had missed them but my friend bought a couple of CDs, which made me happy.

If you're interested in a postcard of the fore mentioned artwork, drop me a line. I'm on the committee of the local nature society that sells these postcards and I'm always looking for mo' money for the society (we do good work by promoting conservation/environment awareness among the local community!!). This postcard, in turn, is produced the local art society that promotes native arts. We could exchange postcards, if you want.

posted by Cayce @ 2:15 PM