Balawan: Guitar gets recognition at home

Features - February 11, 2006
M.Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Like many other geniuses who came before him, Balinese jazz guitarist I Wayan Balawan has been misunderstood by most -- in his case the uninformed public in his home country.

If well-read critics abroad consider his histrionic guitar-playing technique as an extension of the style adopted by guitar god Eddie Van Halen or renowned fusion guitarist Stanley Jordan, local people consider him a freak of nature.

Recently, the Indonesian Record Museum, the local equivalent of the Guinness Book of World Records, gave Balawan due recognition as the first person in the country to be able to simultaneously play two guitars, a veritable feat of acrobatics if nothing else.

Unbeknown to most, double guitar playing is just one of the many vehicles that Balawan uses to channel his extraordinary talent. If a regular guitarist uses one hand to press down a guitar string to prepare the note while the other hand plucks or strums a string to hit the note, Balawan has developed an uncanny method of his own. The native of Gianyar has the ability to play a special and difficult form of tapping which involves chord and bass work with the left hand and a tapped melody with the right hand, resembling piano-playing. That unique craft has won Balawan wide recognition abroad, much more than he has received in his home country.

The 33-year-old guitarist has traveled extensively in Europe, performing in some of the best music festivals on the continent. Together with Japanese guitarist Isato Nakagawa, Balawan represented Asia at the East Meets West Guitar Festival in Edenkoben, Germany, in May 2000. Later in the year, he performed with Australian guitarist Tommy Emanuel at the Open Strings Festival in Osnabrueck, Germany. In September 2001, Balawan once again represented Asia, this time at the Hell Blues Festival in Norway, where he shared the bill with Steve Morse, an axman from the Britain's legendary hard rock band Deep Purple.

At the festival, Balawan displayed his craft on a double-neck guitar so impressively that Morse asked the Balinese to give him a crash course on speed-tapping.

Acquired taste

Indeed, Balawan's technique was so outlandish that it took Sony BMG seven long years to make up its mind before finally signing the guitarist for a mainstream release. Sony BMG senior artist and repertoire director Jan Nurdjaja Djuhana said his label had a hard time finding a way to sell Balawan to the masses.

"Seven years ago, when Balawan first came to me with a demo recording, I said that his music would not sell. But later on, when he handed over a demo of pop-oriented songs, we considered it disrespectful to his talent," Djuhana said.

The recording giant finally worked out how to contain Balawan's exuberant craft and its appetite for appealing to the masses in the guitarist's first mainstream release, Magic Fingers.

Cut in six months, Magic Fingers managed to contain Balawan's extravagant craft to the point where it does not fall into the category, "experimental album". At Sony BMG's request, Balawan has even rehashed adult-oriented pop songs from the 1970s as part of an effort to boost sales.

The seemingly watered-down album, however, still gives room for Balawan to show off his craft in the shape of Eddie Van Halen-inspired riffs and licks that could turn even a seasoned guitarist green with envy. Above all, the album is a vehicle through which Balawan can achieve his ultimate objective, preserving traditional Balinese music. On the album, Balawan displays a heavy dose of Balinese gamelan-flavored chops, if not full-fledged traditional Balinese music.

"No matter how well I play jazz, I will never be 'black' enough to play the musical genre. So rather than laboring to produce jazz authenticity that I will never achieve, I decided to play music in which I feel at home," Balawan said during the launch of Magic Fingers recently.

Despite the influence of rock guitar heroes Joe Satriani and Van Halen in his later days, Balawan first trained as a traditional Balinese musician. Before he took up guitar and amps, and later drums and piano, he had mastered the skill of playing Balinese organ. In fact, it was this mastery of the traditional organ that helped Balawan develop his tapping style.

Learning to play guitar at eight, Balawan started his own band at 14. The band first played rock music in cafes and pubs on the resort island before Balawan told them to give up rock music. "I think jazz is the best musical genre, because in jazz a musician is required to compose songs on the spot, in the shape of potent improvisation," said Balawan, who still plays rock music once in a while.

After pondering a new musical direction, Balawan left for Australia to learn jazz guitar and vocals at the Australian Institute of Music in Sydney in 1992. He lived in Sydney for five years and became a familiar name on the local jazz scene before returning to Indonesia in 1997.

Upon his return, Balawan founded Batuan Ethnic Fusion, a jazz outfit that attempted to blend traditional Balinese pentatonic music and modern, diatonic jazz music. Together with the band, Balawan released two albums, GloBALIsm on Los Angeles-based independent jazz label Chico & Ira Productions, and Balawan on German label Acoustic Music Records.

In spite of these three studio creations, high critical acclaim and relentless touring overseas, Balawan is still not satisfied. "Tapping is a very difficult craft to master. I'm still learning about it," he said modestly.