Chorus Sounds

Kecak Dance Chorus


 

This group of about seventy men are performing the kecak "dance," named for the cak -cak chirps that sound like hundreds of geckos (or at least that is what I was told by someone who also does this dance in his village).  Originally, this was a ritual performed to purify the village by communicating with the spirits.  It is the most amazing sound that goes on throughout the performance of scenes from the Hindu epic, the Ramayana, and lasts for an hour.  They move and sway in rhythm, almost at times it seems in a trance, and their bodies rise, arms waving above their heads, and then they fall back to the ground, while one man hurls a chant in what is likely the Balinese language.  I couldn't help but think toward the end that if I closed my eyes, I could be in the Trappist monastery at Gethsemane, listening to Gregorian chant.  there was something ancient and primal about it all, something I as a modern Westerner, could not quite grasp, at least not intellectually.  But the whole setting of the dimming light, the sun setting so majestically in the background, and the actors lightly gracing the scene, was mesmerizing at some visceral level.