In Europe, one often finds plaques outside old houses in the
old parts of towns and cities ( " wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
lived here 1766-1768"). Will we ever see such identifiers
in Ubud. Surely we will. Colin MCPhee lived here ( 1932-1938).
Cplin McPhee was Bali's musical gateway to the West. He come
tp live in Ubud in 1932 and then built a house in Sayan. He was
a fine pianist and composer.
Born in Toronto, canada in 1900, he become a virtuoso pianist,
performing concertos with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, then
moved to New York where he began to compose seriously and in the
late 1920s he went to study in Paris. Just before this, in New
York, he had heard the first recordings of Balinese music, and
in them he recognized the music of his dreams. In Paris, in 1931,
he met the artist and treveler Miguel Covarrubias and his wife
Rose, who had just arrived from Bali, and they fueled and excited
his intrest.
Mcphee married an heiress and an anthropologist, Jane Belo and
together they set out for Bali, where with the aid of Walter Spies,
they built a working kampung in the adjacent village of Sayan,
on the ridge with a spectacular view down to the river Ayung,
the some river on which sits the hotel resort of Four Seasons
and Amandari. There they lived for next six years.
Mcphee became obsessed with Balinese music and in his music pavilion,
he proceeded to make an intense study of the complex music of
Balinese gamelan, so different from that of Java, and documented
the music in Western notation. His wife, Jane undertook various
publishing projects, particularly taht of Trance in Bali and published
articles and book on her research.
McPhee visited remote villages, listenening and studying the
various musics still to be found there, documenting on paper,
notes, notation, photographs and film ( tape recorders not yet
being invented!). Both he and Spies feared that the intense culture
and the arts of Bali were headed for decline, for lack of sponsorship.
They hadn't reckoned on the overwhelming effect of mass tourism
that began in the 1970s and 1980s.
As dance is inseparable from music in Bali, he took a great interest
in the symbiosis and discovered a huge talent in one of his small
houseboys, Sampih. For Sampih, he brought in some of the best
teachers, such as the great Mario and soon Sampih became a star
in his own right, eventually touring in America and in Europe
in 1952 with the top gamelan group from Peliatan.
In 1936, McPeeh took a break and in Mexico he finished composing
a work based on Balinese music, but written for a normal Western
sympony orchestra, but with the additional of large percussion
section. This was performed by Carlos Chavez and Mexico Symphony
Orchestra and later repeated in New York, conducted by Leopold
Stokowski. The work is called Tabuh Tabuhan and now is available
in many performances on CD. He returned to Bali at the end of
1936 and renewed his studies of Balinese music, sensing that time
was running out for him.
By the end of 1938, smelling war, the expatriate community of
artists began to evacuate and on Christmas Day, 1938, McPhee left
Bali for New York, never to return. His wife had left for America
a few months before.
Back in New York, in the climate of a world war, no one was interested
in the exotic music of Bali, but Mcphee set to work and wrote
articles and books. His monumental tome Music in Bali finally
was published posthumously, in 1966 by Yale University and has
become the standard reference book on the subject. His book A
House in Bali, the fascinating story of his sojourn there was
published in 1944 and in 1948 there appeared his enchating children's
book, a Club of Small Men. At this time, he become cherished as
a gourment cok, having studied in Paris at the Le Cordon Bleu
and his Balinese dinners were a treat. Colin once boasted that
he knew six different ways to serve bats! It was Colin's book
A House in Bali taht later brought both Stokowski and Anais Nin
to visit Bali.
Colin Mcphee diedin 1964, of cirrhosis of the liver. During the
1990s, interest in his music and writings quickened and now his
position in the world of music in general and ethnomusicology
in particular is assured.
Of McPhee's kampung, nothing now remains except the remnants
of the oroginal foundations and his Music Studio, which has long
been renovated. still extant, are some of the original instruments
of the Club of small Men ( now republished in a special children's
edition) and several of the small men themselves, now in their
seventies. The Music Studio may still be seen at Sayan Terrace.
But Ubud's most influential expatriate probably was MCPhee's
colleague, Walter Spies, painter, musician, pianist, writer, curator,
catalyst extraordinaire. Without Spies, Ubud's - and Bali's -
cultural life would be the poorer and very different.
Walter Spies was born in Rusia in 1898 to German parents. His
father was in the diplomatic corps, and so Walter led a privilegedlife
- the best tutors, education and connectionwith the arts. He soon
was an accomplished pianist and painter.By all contemporary accounts,
he possessed a luminous personality, handsome and attractive,
radiating charm and goodwill.
Back in Germany, as a young man he fell under the spell of one
of Germany's top film directors, F.W.Murnau, whose most famous
film was Nosferatu, and moved in the top arts milieu of the time.
In his mid-twenties, longing for adventure, bored and feeling
suffocated in the German arts scene, Walter fled to Batavia in
1923 and began to work as a pianist in a Chinese movie theater
then teaching piano to Russian emigres. He went to Yogyakarta
and within weeks he was appointed Music Director to the Sultan
of Yogyakarta and took up residence in the Kraton, living a life
of almost medieval splendor. The Sultan gave him a grand piano
and Walter set about training musicians to form a small orchestra,
as well as studying Javanese music, making piano transcriptions
and painting.
