Wayang Kulit: Ki Bagus Baghaskoro with the Oxford Gamelan Society
The World's Music at Oxford
Free entry - please reserve your space via the eventbrite website.
Ki Bagus Baghaskoro Wisnu Murti is an internationally-acclaimed puppeteer, dancer and musician, and a master of wayang kulit - a traditional form of Indonesian shadow-puppet theatre that tells thrilling epics accompanied by enchanting gamelan music. Over the course of the evening, Ki Bagus will tell the tale of Eka Cakra and the Spiced Warrior: Eka Cakra is a land terrorised by a flesh-eating giant, until one of the heroes of the Mahabharata, Bima, ingeniously serves himself as a tempting dinner. Singlehandedly, Ki Bagus gives voice and movement to a cast of hundreds of intricately painted and carved leather puppets and directs up to 25 gamelan musicians who underpin an exciting mix of epic battles, tales of love and loss, interspersed with lashings of humour.
Ki Bagus is a lecturer at the Institute of the Performing Arts in Surakarta in Indonesia. He was born into a family of traditional performing artists in Malang, East Java and his unique and approachable style combines the mellifluous and sophisticated central Javanese traditions with the high-octane sound-world of East Java with its echoes of Balinese influence.
The Oxford Gamelan Society is one of Britain's longest-established community gamelan group. The society perform and rehearse on an heirloom gamelan, named Kyai Madu Laras (the Venerable Sweet Harmony) belonging to the Bate Collection of Musical Instruments. The Oxford Gamelan Society is delighted to be joined by Ki Bagus Baghaskoro Wisnu Murti in this exciting introduction to one of Indonesia's best loved traditional art forms.
The doors will open at 6:30pm and the performance will start at 7pm.
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The World's Music at Oxford is a project run and supported by St John's College at the University of Oxford, which blends research into global musics with live performance. Our events take place at our location at St John's College and are free and open to all. We also film all our events for our audiences around the world. Find out more on our website https://theworldsmusicatoxford.com/