Some years ago, I reviewed Colin McPhee's marvellous book, A House In Bali, about life and gamelan music (traditional Balinese music -- mainly percussive and driven by metallophones or gongs) in Bali during the 1930s. Published in 1947, the book details how a young man, after hearing some rare gamelan music on old records, journeys to Bali in 1929 to seek the music that will change his life. It is an enchanting book, well worth reading.
McPhee was instrumental in bringing gamelan music to international audiences, with his compositions (transcribed for piano) and recordings. But the man who physically brought Balinese music and its magical dancers to Western audiences was Englishman John Coast, who moved to the village of Peliatan on Bali in 1950. His interest in Balinese dance and a tour of Europe and the USA with a Balinese ensemble of dancers and musicians, are the main subjects of his fascinating book, Dancing Out Of Bali, first published in 1953.
Dancing Out Of Bali. Photo: John Clewley
The book was reissued by Periplus in 2004, with an introduction by the world famous naturalist Sir David Attenborough, who made field recordings of Balinese music with Coast for the BBC in the 1950s; in 2018, Attenborough released some of these recordings on double CD.
Coast had a colourful life. After volunteering to join the British Army, he was posted to Singapore just prior to the invasion by Japanese forces, and ended up working on the infamous Death Railway in Kanchanburi as a prisoner of war. It was in the prison camps that he first came across Balinese and Indonesian dancers, when he arranged concerts where the inmates would perform for each other. He also learned to speak Malay, which would prove very useful later on in his life. In 1949, he published Railroad Of Death, an account of his wartime experiences which became a best-seller.
Dancing Out Of Bali details Coast's immersion into Balinese culture with his Javanese wife with the same languid charm that characterises McPhee's A House In Bali. Coast is enchanted by the unique dancing abilities of Balinese performers and explains how he went about creating an ensemble to take to the international stage, working closely with his choreographer Mario, a dancer from Tabanan. Coast was sure that a Balinese ensemble would take the West by storm. He was not wrong.
In 1952, he took 44 musicians and dancers to London. The day after they arrived, they performed at The Winter Garden in London's West End. One part of the performance in particular captivated London's theatregoers -- the Bumblebee Dance. The dance features a couple, male and female, dancing around each other. The female stretches her long wings to attract the male as they buzz around each other. (It always reminds me of Slim Harpo's R&B classic I'm A King Bee, for some reason.)
Raka, the 12-year-old girl who performed the dance, became a star overnight. Interestingly, the Bumblebee Dance, now known as Oleg, is a key part of the Balinese dance repertoire (what most tourists see at a Balinese dance show).
The tour criss-crossed the USA and Europe, with the ensemble even performing on The Ed Sullivan Show to an estimated audience of 30 million people. Coast clearly saw an opportunity after the tour. In 1956, he returned to London to set up an artist management agency, which turned out to be very successful; his clients included Mario Lanza and Bob Dylan (for his first tour of the UK).
If you enjoyed A House In Bali, I would recommend Coast's Dancing Out Of Bali; it is an enthralling read. I got my copy at the Dasa Book Café on Sukhumvit Road.
Coast's long-time partner Laura Rosenberg supported the 2004 reissue of the book and, two years later, released a companion CD to the book, Dancers Of Bali: Gamelan Of Peliatan, 1952 (World Arbiter), which includes a 24-page set of detailed liner notes and rare photographs. The CD is a reissue of the LP, Dancers And Musicians Of Bali, which Coast produced for Columbia.
I would also recommend Michael Tenzer's Balinese Gamelan Music (Tuttle), which includes an audio CD of gamelan music.
John Clewley can be contacted at clewley.john@gmail.com
More information at: www.johncoast.org
