Press Play: Balinese CD offers many surprises By Paul Liberatore
Marin Independent Journal POSTED:   01/07/2011 09:16:00 AM PST Puspa Dewi "Bird and Flower" This world music album of Balinese folk songs by a Balinese dancer turned singer was produced by Marin musician, composer and filmmaker Kevin Bird, who recorded it in his Briarcombe House studio in Bolinas. (CORRECTION: RECORDED IN BALI, BOLINAS, CALIFORNIA, KAUAI & LA, CALIFORNIA. MIXED & MASTERED IN BALI ). Bird also wrote and arranged the piano pieces that are performed by his partner, Hawaii-based pianist Henry Adam Curtis, and interspersed between the vocal songs like New Age instrumental soundscapes among the album's 16 tracks. (CORRECTION: HENRY ADAM CURTIS NEWLY ARRANGED THE PIANO PIECES). Bird has been a mentor to the comely Puspa Dewi, a traditional Balinese dancer who graduated from the Indonesian Institute for the Arts, where she studied both traditional and contemporary arts and dance. Over the past couple of years, he guided her in her fledgling singing career as she grew into a world music performer blessed with beauty, grace, an exotic sweetness and a charming, vibrato-less vocal style. On "Bird and Flower," her sophomore CD, she sings classic Balinese folk and children's songs that Bird has imaginatively re-arranged. One track becomes a laid-back Brazilian bossa nova, another takes on new life with African grooves and choirs, another gets a South Pacific Island treatment, and yet another is re-imagined as a cool New York-style jazz tune. The grab bag of styles can be somewhat confusing. It would never make it on major labels that like to pigeonhole everything. But the diversity turns what would be a conventional world music album into one that's full of surprises. And "Bird and Flower" is a very pleasant surprise. But then what would you expect from a Balinese CD from Bolinas? — Paul Liberatore