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00:02BBC Four Collections. Specially chosen programmes from the BBC Archive.
00:07For this collection Sir David Attenborough has chosen documentaries from the start of his career.
00:12More programmes on this theme and other BBC Four Collections are available on BBC iPlayer.
00:28Bali is a small island 100 miles long and 70 miles wide.
00:33On the map it looks no more than a tiny bead on the necklace of islands that stretches from west
00:38of Malaysia to New Guinea and Australia.
00:47It is certainly one of the most beautiful islands in the world.
00:51Like every other part of South East Asia it has rice fields, palm trees and tropical flowers.
00:56But somehow in Bali these things fit together so perfectly that you feel when you come here that you have
01:03arrived in an enchanted garden.
01:18But there is one particular characteristic of Bali which makes it one of the most remarkable places on earth.
01:48Bali is unique because of its people.
01:51They are above all a peasant people and in this warm welcoming climate they live as close to nature as
01:57man can anywhere.
01:58But they are also a people intoxicated by the arts.
02:03Part of the reason for their passionate involvement lies in their history.
02:08500 years ago most of what is now Indonesia was Hindu.
02:13Ruled by princes whose courts were among the most cultured in the whole of the Orient, famous for the dazzling
02:18skill of their musicians and artists.
02:20In the 16th century however the faith of Islam arrived in Java.
02:26Most of the Hindu princes fled before it travelling eastwards down Java and eventually across a narrow arm of sea
02:34and into Bali.
02:36With them travelled their entire courts and so Bali became a sanctuary for the flower of Hindu Javanese culture.
02:43And here it has flourished ever since.
02:46Indeed these people who spend their days in back breaking work in the rice fields regard the arts almost as
02:54necessary to a proper and decent life as the very grain they cultivate.
02:58They know that the really worthwhile thing to be is either a painter, a sculptor, a dancer or perhaps above
03:06all a musician.
03:10Bali's music has only rarely been heard in the West.
03:13But when it has it has created a sensation.
03:17Debussy heard something of it at the 1889 Paris exhibition and was overwhelmed.
03:22Bartok, the fire and most recently Benjamin Britain have all been captivated by its richness of tone and intricacy of
03:30melody.
03:30To hear the best music you must go into the villages.
03:33And one of the greatest orchestras in Bali is centered on this household in the small village of Priyatan.
03:40Its guiding spirit has been for nearly 50 years the old nobleman who is the patriarch of the household, Anak
03:48Agung Gde Mandra.
03:50He no longer plays but has handed over to his son Agung Bawa and another young man, Gandra, who is
03:58now the orchestra's main composer.
04:01The Anak Agung as a young man in 1929 went with his orchestra and dancers to Paris.
04:07The visit was a triumph.
04:09And then in 1952 his orchestra was taken on a world tour.
04:14This was an even greater success and mementos of it hang round his room.
04:19In America their impresario was so delighted that he presented them with a commemorative plaque.
04:24In Brussels they were given a full diplomatic reception.
04:30In Paris the little girl dancers were rapturously received by the ballet-loving public and ecstatically praised by Serge Le
04:38Fahre.
04:39In New York the Anak Agung discussed drumming with the timpanist of the New York Philharmonic
04:44and found his technique mystifyingly simple but was too polite to say so.
04:49In spite of the fact that he's been entertained in palaces and luxury hotels in all the great cities of
04:54the west,
04:56the Anak Agung still runs his household in the purest traditions of the Balinese nobility.
05:01His daughter-in-law weaves silk cloth for sarongs.
05:05The instruments of the famous orchestra shrouded in covers stand in their special rehearsal veranda.
05:18The wall facing the main gateway into the compound is emblazoned with a great carving of the Garuda bird,
05:24a device recommended by Balinese tradition as a way of preventing demons from entering.
05:29The men of the household, like every man in Bali, nobleman or commoner,
05:34rear fighting cocks and they must be exercised, massaged and cosseted daily.
05:39From a citrus tree famous for the marvellous sweetness of its fruit hangs a cockatoo
05:45and beyond the Anak Agung's aged mother pounds betel nut
05:49and typically does so not just anyhow
05:52but with a particular rhythm echoing a particular melody in her head.
06:01and off the main courtyard in a separate enclosure the house temple
06:06where stand the shrines which mark the great events in the life of the household
06:11including one erected to give thanks for the orchestra's safe return from their world tour.
06:19Gandara gives rehearsals to each instrumentalist separately.
06:22he knows and can play the part of every instrument in even the most complex orchestral piece.
06:29Indeed, since there is no musical notation and no written scores
06:33this is the only way of teaching a composition.
06:50What is more, because he is sitting on the opposite side of the instrument
06:54he has to be able to play it literally backwards.
07:10He works with the Sametzans.
07:12He does not roll up!
07:13He does not roll up!
07:16He does not roll up!
07:17He does not roll up from its operational
07:27however he is sitting on the side of the instruments.
07:48And when his pupil really knows the passage,
07:51then Gandra will play the counterpoint on the same instrument, backwards.
07:59This instrument is the Gangsa.
08:01It plays the same role in the Balinese orchestra as violins do in a European orchestra.
08:07Each bronze key has to be damped with the left hand after it's been struck.
08:23A complete orchestra, or gamelan, may contain as many as 30 instruments.
08:28It is, in fact, the biggest musical ensemble anywhere in the world apart from a full-scale
08:33Western symphony orchestra, and Gandra leads it from the drum.
08:36The chief Gangsa player who shares the leadership of the gamelan is Gandra's father, Marilla Ba.
09:09This is the rail.
09:11the hardest instrument of all to play with evenness and precision,
09:15for eight hands must play as one.
09:41.
09:42.
09:42.
09:56music plays
10:11In an orchestra of this size, with 30-odd instruments sometimes playing interlocking parts of the same melody,
10:17there can be no room for improvisation.
10:20They must all play with the utmost precision,
10:22and that can only be obtained by dedicated rehearsals four or five evenings a week.
10:30Now, my family ...
10:30help me聞 magazine how to do some kind.
10:31I don't, I know, that's all the歌,
10:37his name, I remember some of the musicals are so Shankini members,
10:48and that song Bronx was++,
10:52which was writes throughout this live stream.
10:53My favorite thing is the einem Bachmanignal time.
11:44These are the chalons, the cellos, as it were, in this bronze orchestra.
11:49Like nearly all the instruments, they play in pairs, each one slightly differently tuned,
11:54so that when the pair are struck together, they produce a pulsating note.
12:55All the instruments of the Gamelan,
12:57which between them spans seven octaves, are tuned to a five-note scale.
13:02But the precise pitch of those five notes is the subject of great and careful debate among the musicians
13:08when the Gamelan is first formed and tuned.
13:11In practice, no two Gamelan are tuned exactly the same.
13:15Each creates its own individual tonal world,
13:18and every village echoes to splendid harmonies that can be heard nowhere else.
13:44Music is only one of Barley's arts.
13:46Just as most people seem to have the ability to play an instrument of some sort,
13:51so everybody also seems to have the talent and the urge to carve.
13:55The main outlet for their work is the temples.
13:58The stone blocks are only roughly shaped when they're first put in place.
14:02Men from the village will later carve them as an act of piety.
14:06The images they create are taken from the grotesque pantheon of Hindu mythology.
14:12But everywhere, the Balinese give full reign to their delight in exuberant detail.
14:18As the only stone in the island is a very soft volcanic ash which weathers very quickly,
14:23the carvings must be renewed every generation.
14:26So there is ample and permanent work for sculptors.
14:45Although temple carving is the main outlet for sculptors,
14:49it's by no means the only one for men of outstanding talent and imagination.
14:54Ida Baguska Tut is one of the great mask makers of Bali.
14:58As it happens, he's also one of the great mask dancers as well.
15:02And the masks he carves are used in the night-long plays
15:06that are one of the island's main entertainments.
15:09This is a demon in the form of a wild pig.
15:26A prince whose movements must be refined and elegant.
15:30In the plays, he will speak only in Kawi,
15:33an archaic form of Javanese which is almost pure Sanskrit
15:36and only understood by a very small proportion of Balinese.
15:45A low comic character, a monkey.
16:03The job of these kinds of characters is not merely to bring laughs,
16:07but to translate the Kawi spoken by the refined people into low Balinese
16:11which will be understood by all.
16:13Here's another of them, an old man, down on his luck,
16:16begging for money, but irrepressibly cheerful in spite of everything.
16:40A comic and stupid attendant from a rioter's retinue
16:44who rather fancies himself.
16:46With this character, Kutut can convulse the crowds
16:49who come to watch him whenever he performs.
16:56A deaf man.
16:58A deaf man.
17:17Of all the arts of Bali, painting perhaps was the most static and least inventive.
17:22It was tied very strictly to traditional Hindu themes for its subject matter
17:26and the colours it employed were limited to five.
17:29Red, blue, yellow, black and white.
17:31Even the manner in which the features of these gods and demons are drawn
17:35was strictly prescribed.
17:37This was the only kind of painting made in Bali until some 40 years ago.
17:42In 1923, however, something occurred that was to bring about a profound change.
17:47This man arrived in the island.
17:49His name was Walter Spies, and he was to live for 20 years in Bali
17:54and to know the Balinese more fully than any European before him.
17:57He had several homes, one in the lowlands only a mile or so from Priatán
18:02and another up in the mountains.
18:04But wherever he was, he painted.
18:15From the veranda of his mountain house,
18:18he looked across to the holy volcano of Bali, the Gunungagung,
18:22one of the most breathtaking views in all the island.
18:26This landscape, with its luxuriant foliage,
18:29the endless pattern of immaculately maintained rice terraces,
18:33populated by a handsome, graceful people,
18:36provided him with subject matter for the rest of his life.
19:08The
19:19These pictures, to a European eye, capture not merely the stunning beauty of the island,
19:24but also convey some of the haunted magical atmosphere that permeates the whole of Bali.
19:30Whether or not this dreamlike quality of species pictures was apparent to the Balinese is difficult to say.
19:37As far as they were concerned, the overwhelming effect of these pictures was to draw their attention, seemingly for the
19:43first time,
19:44to the image of their island as a subject for painting.
19:48Suddenly, everyone in Bali was painting in a completely new way.
19:52It was as though a dam had been broken.
19:56Spies himself is now dead, drowned in 1942, when a ship taking him to Ceylon was torpedoed.
20:03But a few of those painters who contributed to that original explosion of excitement are still working.
20:10Their technique and their new vision are the only European things they wish to take from Spies,
20:15and the only thing he wished to give them.
20:18And so to find them, you must go not to a European-style studio or to a gallery,
20:23but to small and often remote villages hidden away among the rice fields.
20:30Among the most talented of these painters is Ida Bagusma Dei.
20:35He paints continuously, and yet he hates to part with any of his finished canvases.
20:41Whenever anyone shows any sign of wanting to buy one, he puts an impossibly high price upon it.
20:47As a result, his paintings lie in great piles at the back of his hut,
20:51tragically vulnerable to rats, termites and fungus.
20:56The rest of the villagers say that he is mildly eccentric.
21:00He says that his paintings are his children.
21:02Why should he get rid of them?
21:18Since Spies's death, there have been new generations of painters,
21:22for the new style which he brought has flourished and spread,
21:26so that it seems now that everybody paints.
21:29Their pictures still owe something to Spies, for it was he, after all,
21:34who first introduced a full range of colours and Western-style brushes and canvas.
21:39But now all of these painters are undeniably and characteristically Balinese,
21:44painting not imitations of Spies' landscapes,
21:48but fantasies entirely of their own invention.
21:52They are, for the most part, men who, for most of their days,
21:56labour in the fields or fish in the sea.
21:58They paint, when they have time,
22:01because of that passionate, artistic curiosity
22:04that seems to possess all Balinese.
22:07...
22:21...
22:23...
22:24...
22:24...
22:24...
22:40This is another of species pictures,
22:42and one which was influential not so much with painters as with sculptors.
22:46For these grotesque distortions fascinated Balinese carvers,
22:51and soon they too were involved in the visual revolution,
22:54quite as profound as that taking place in painting.
22:57One of the first to carve in this new way was Ida Bagusniana,
23:02who has now generally agreed to be Bali's greatest sculptor.
23:06His first carvings, after meeting Spice,
23:09were very like those spindly contorted figures that appeared in Spice's paintings.
23:14Soon afterwards, however, he began to explore new styles and new images.
23:19Today, he carves only rarely,
23:21for he has withdrawn from the world to become a Brahmin high priest.
23:27But his last sculptures remain to bear witness
23:30not to the precise images created by Spice,
23:33but to the great freedom of vision which Spice first showed Jnana.
23:37he seems to be there for us,
23:50but he seems like it was a natural location for him.
23:52He looks like he and I was going to move on to the right,
23:52And that's why I was었 the gem in the right.
23:52Now, you know what I mean to do with this?
23:53So he was going to be there at the nanny,
23:57This is going to be there at the same time of a second.
23:59So I was going to look at this and say something called as part of a engineer.
24:00And the idea of the religion and the idea of the world
24:03and the idea of a man who got to do it as well.
24:04So I am the idea of this.
24:24But if there is one art which is paramount in Barney,
24:28it is the twin art of music and dancing.
24:31Just as Priyatan has one of the greatest orchestras,
24:34so also its dancers have an island-wide reputation.
24:38However, that reputation will rest to a surprising extent
24:41on the shoulders of this tiny child.
24:45She is training to dance the greatest of Barney's classical dances, the Legon.
24:50It may only be danced by little children,
24:53and the three Priyatan girls who have danced it so perfectly for the past four years
24:57are now adolescent and too old to continue.
25:00A new trio must be trained.
25:03Their teacher is Gusti Madesengok,
25:06an old lady who, in her time, was a celebrated Legon,
25:10famous throughout the island for the suppleness of her young body
25:13and the disciplined fire of her performance.
25:17Now, as she nears the end of her life,
25:19she is a deeply respected and much sought-after teacher.
25:23According to the Anakagung,
25:25she is the last living receptacle of the great classical tradition of the Legon.
25:29But she's old.
25:31No one knows how old.
25:32And she no longer has the strength to teach all who want to learn from her.
25:37So now she concentrates only on the three little girls
25:40who are to become Priyatan's new Legon.
25:43They will certainly be her last pupils.
25:52Training like this has already been going on every day for many weeks.
25:56Again and again, the children must repeat the movements,
26:00being nudged, coaxed,
26:01and sometimes almost wrenched into the correct position by old Sengok,
26:06until, at last, the Legong, to use the Balinese phrase,
26:10has gone into their bodies.
26:39The Legong
26:41of artistic talent in this one household
26:44is apparent in this group.
26:45The music is played by Madi Le Ba,
26:48the co-leader of the Gamalain.
26:50This child is his granddaughter, Gandra's child.
26:54And the child being held by Gusti Madi Sengok
26:57is seven-year-old Sari,
27:00the Anakagung's youngest daughter by his third wife.
27:03She has taken and served by
27:06her husband in her physical contact.
27:08There is now the segment.
27:09Do you really think of her,
27:13you don't care?
27:15Do you know her?
27:16Do you really prevention any new book
27:18There is no complaint matters for her
27:18but she knows her skin.
27:24She loves her hands.
27:25Don't look after her grandparents.
27:26Run away!
27:28Are the kids she intervened?
27:31Oh my god when shee she has written a story
27:42if the children are to dance the legong properly they must know the story it tells
27:47it concerns the arrogant king of Lassam who kidnaps the daughter of a rival king with whom
27:53he is at war if she will not marry him he says then he will kill her father but she
27:58still refuses
27:59so the king of Lassam goes into battle with her father and is himself killed the Anakagung tells
28:05the story prompted without any compunction by old Sengok the tale comes from an ancient collection of
28:16Javanese legends it's the Balinese equivalent of the Arabian Nights
28:39Gusti Made Sengok may be old but she still has the knack of massaging
28:44to make a child's body really suppling she still knows the precise movements that will painfully
28:50stretch a tight muscle and so loosen it that the child will become almost double jointed
28:56without this massage it will be impossible for a legong to assume the correct postures
29:02indeed this treatment is just as essential to a Balinese dancer as is really early training
29:07in class and at the bar to a young ballet dancer in Europe
29:18day after day the Anakagung and Madeleba play for rehearsals
29:39the child who plays the prologue at the beginning of the dance changes roles later to
29:43become a bird of ill omen which flies in front of the king of Lassam during the battle and thus
29:48foretells his death her appearance is the dramatic finale to the whole dance which in its complete
29:54version takes over an hour to perform in training for this character Pleiatan is particularly lucky for
30:01they have as teacher Gusti Ayuraka who during the world tour danced the part in new york with such
30:08electrifying effect that she became at the age of 11 the toast of broadway
30:13the
30:17the
30:21the
30:22the
30:22the
30:23the
30:44Raka still dances and is famous in Bali for the refinement and personality of her style,
30:50but her performance as a tiny child of the Bird of Elomen is still vividly remembered and used as an
30:57ideal against which other newer characterizations are measured.
31:02Now she passes on that insight and technique to another generation.
31:26Dancing, like music, sculpture and painting, is rooted in religion.
31:31Indeed, in Balinese terms, all acts of artistic expression are, in a sense, religious acts.
31:38But this perhaps is less remarkable here than in most parts of the world.
31:42For in truth, Hinduism permeates every aspect of life and every hour of the day.
31:48Every morning and every evening, small offerings of rice and flowers are made to the ever-present gods.
31:55Some are placed before the shrines and the house temple.
31:58Others must be put in doorways and on lintels and niches,
32:02in places where paths cross and in corners which have special magical significance.
32:08These daily offerings are small and modest.
32:11In fact, they are more in the nature of tactful reminders to the gods of the piety of the household
32:16than substantial gifts.
32:18But for important festivals, and there seems to be one every few weeks in most villages,
32:24really imposing and substantial offerings must be made.
32:28And here the Balinese love of ornament and decoration has full scope.
32:35This particular offering is being constructed around a central spine made from the soft, spongy stem of a banana tree.
32:44Into it are stuck frangipani blossoms, each mounted on a long pin of bamboo.
32:50The Balinese love of a sanctuary, everything is holy to a different plant,
33:00the sot-in-book, the sot-in-book, the sot-in-book, the sot-in-book...
33:03The train of people are sitting here, and they're still holding teeth.
33:03Oh no, no, that's the first one.
33:05This one.
33:05And they're still holding up to the ground, then they're still holding up to the ground.
33:25The streets of the village have been lined with betasseled masts from which hang penior,
33:31decorations marvelously constructed in hundreds of different shapes and designs from bamboo and coconut palm leaves.
33:44The festival is to take place in the big temple at the other end of the village.
33:49For the Anakagung's household this day is particularly important, one for which they have all been preparing for months,
33:57for they decided long ago that this festival should be the occasion on which the new Leigong would perform in
34:04public for the very first time.
34:06Other orchestras from Priyatan are also going up to the temple, for every festival must be full of rame,
34:12exuberant noise and festive crowds, so that the gods will be entertained.
34:32All day long offerings are carried up to the temple. Some are of flowers, others of pink rice cakes, fruit
34:39or roast chickens.
34:40All are meticulously arranged to look as elegant and as decorative as possible.
34:45No one of them could have died.
35:11The offerings are laid in hundreds before the
35:14priest who will take them one by one and offer them at the shrines. The gods will partake
35:20of their essence, after which the simpler smaller ones will be left in the temple to
35:25be scavenged by the dogs and birds. The more substantial and elaborate will be taken back
35:31to be eaten at home.
35:48There are no images in a Balinese temple. The gods are invisible entities who reside
35:54in wooden box-like shrines or on small stone thrones. Priyatan's temple is one of several
36:01founded by gods whose normal home is high up on the sacred mountain of Batur. This festival
36:07is to celebrate the visit of the parent divinities, for within their shrines they have been brought
36:13down in possession by men from the mountains to tour all their daughter temples. Now the
36:19mountain men themselves begin the gods' entertainment with an ancient spear dance called a baris.
36:43a baris.
36:45A baris.
36:48A baris.
36:55A baris.
36:57A baris.
37:11To the people of Priyatan, this performance is, to be candid, a little naïve, not to say
37:17uncouth. The sophisticated subtleties of the lowland music and dance have never penetrated
37:23into the mountains. A dance like this, Gandara said, was acceptable and appropriate on such
37:29a ritual occasion because of its antiquity. But he said so with the tolerance of piety.
37:35To his composer's ear, the music alone was obvious and crude.
37:47The Anakagung's gamelan is next to play. Their first contribution is also ancient ritual music
37:53and employs a type of instrument that is seldom heard these days in other contexts. Even so,
37:59they managed to play it with their characteristic attack and brilliance.
38:28As night draws on, offerings are still being made before the shrines.
38:32Outside the temple, another group from Priyatan is preparing to perform the kechak, the monkey
38:39dance. The men, in a five-part chorus, act as a vocal background to a story from Hindu mythology
38:45in which King Rama's bride is kidnapped by a giant and then rescued by Hanuman, the king
38:52king of the monkeys and his monkey horde.
39:05The men, in a five-man, in a five-part chorus, act as a jeune, the king of the queen,
39:16metal
39:16and the queen of the هkrethe. Their children, the king of the queen,esso, act as a
39:23this is the king and makes aüp Haddam O.
39:26에요
39:34yeah
39:35Oh
39:35oh
39:38oh
39:42긴장
39:44yeah
39:49people
39:50I will, will see, will, will serve, will, will see.
40:04I, I, O, man, I, O, man, I, O, man, I, O, man.
40:15I, O, man, I, O, man.
40:32I can't then.
40:39Among the others.
40:42Oh, my God.
41:12Oh, my God.
41:42Oh, my God.
42:12Oh, my God.
42:13Oh, my God.
42:15Oh, my God.
42:23Oh, my God.
42:28Oh, my God.
42:58Oh, my God.
43:07Their headdresses are made from gilded leather and decorated with freshly gathered frangipani
43:13blossom.
43:13They're very hard and extremely heavy, and the children must wear them for over an hour.
43:27Their bodies are tightly bound in gold painted cloth.
43:31Their bodies are tightly bound in gold painted cloth, their faces are whitened and carefully
43:33made up.
43:33It has fallen to them, to present their skills as an offering to present their skills as
43:41as an offering to the gods, for that indeed is the ultimate nature of all artistic creation
43:46in Bali.
43:47Their moment has arrived.
44:21The famed Griffin, who would make other one to make for a local porte-chan lilyை.
44:21They're both half and overly unfortunately told me, the land on top of the life, to be even closer to
44:24me.
44:24Yeah.