Suarasama | en

"Suarasama ("one voice") is an ensemble of Indonesian ethnomusicologists who blend Sumatran/Malay, Middle Eastern, Western, and Indian traditional music styles (everything but China.) The group has been of global interest almost since its 1995 founding - Fajar di Atas Awan (Dawn over the Clouds) was originally recorded by Philip Yampolsky in 1997, towards the end of his work on Smithsonian Folkways's Music of Indonesia series. It was originally released on RFI and is re-released now by Drag City. It's sort of crazy that an album that was world music 10 years ago is now free-folk; that one can make an argument in various directions as to whether free-folk was influenced by the global current or by American sources only points out the modern convergence of many folk traditions.

[...]

Suarasama is led by composer Irwansyah Harahap. He forms most of the songs around stringed instruments and plays three – guitar, oud (a.k.a. 'ud), and a Malay lute called a gambus. Many of the songs feature female singer Rianthony Hutajulu. There are multicultural skin drums – Malay rebana, Persian duf, and tabla. Sometimes the group reinterprets the same melody with different instrumentation and arrangement. For instance, "Merangkai Warna" ("blended color") and "Lebah" ("bee") swap tabla for cymbals but are otherwise more or less the same. The best song, "Zapin Shirat/Ghazal Ingatan Diri" is also most inventive in its cross-cultural pollination. It sets an Arabic poem in the rhyming ghazal style to the swaggering beat of Sundanese (West Javanese) gamelan."

(from an article by Josie Clowney on Dusted Reviews) .