The Abduction of the Signifying Monkey Chant: Schizophonic Transmogrifications of Balinese Kecak in Fellini's Satyricon and the Coen Brothers’ Blood Simple

Abstract

This article examines the de- and re-contextualisation of 1960s audio recordings of Balinese kecak performances in two landmark films, Federico Fellini's Satyricon (1969) and Joel and Ethan Coen's Blood Simple (1984). It begins with a historical overview that situates kecak's own history as a Balinese cultural phenomenon within broader frameworks of hybridity, schizophonic and appropriative processes, and international filmmaking, devoting special attention to the contributions of Walter Spies. It then proceeds to close studies of kecak's use in the soundtracks of Satyricon and Blood Simple from a theoretical position of schizophonic transmogrification, which is defined as the rematerialisation and thorough reinvention of people and places whose voices and sounds, as inscribed on sound recordings, have been separated from their original sources of identity and meaning and resituated in entirely alien contexts—real or imaginary or somewhere in between—for purposes that serve especially to evoke the strange, and often the grotesque and sinister as well.

Keywords:

• Kecak
• Bali
• gamelan
• Fellini
• Coen brothers
• Blood Simple
• Satyricon
• schizophonia

Notes

1. My thanks to Aaron Bittel and his associates at the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive for providing me with copies of the original kecak LP recordings of this period and for their assistance in determining dates of publication of specific recordings and other discographic details.

2. Though the concept of ‘schizophonia’ in ethnomusicology has been largely identified with the work of Steven Feld, the term was coined in 1969 by R. Murray Schafer in his book The New Soundscape and was further developed by Schafer in later publications.

3. See Stepputat n.d.; de Zöete and Spies 1939; McKean 1979; Vickers 1989; Bandem and deBoer 1995; Dibia 1996; Tenzer 1998; Davies 2000 Davies 2001 and Bruner 2004.

4. For further discussion of interlocking rhythmic structures in kecak, see Dibia 1996, 11–15. For discussion of related rhythmic structures in gamelan beleganjur music, see Bakan 1999, 64–8, 150–52; 2007, 95–9.

5. See Cooke 1998 on the influence of gamelan music on the compositional practice of McPhee and several other Western composers, including Debussy, Ravel, Messiaen, Bartók, Cowell, Britten, Poulenc, Grainger, Cage and Harrison. See also Mera 2007 for a detailed and insightful examination of original music for gamelan composed by Mychael Danna in his score for the film The Ice Storm.

6. It is likely that the inspiration to integrate a Ramayana plot into the new kecak dance-drama came from another form of Balinese drama, wayang wong (Dibia 1996, 75).

7. A ‘Music Effected By’ section in the closing credits of Satyricon lists Maurice Bitter, Alain Danielou, John Coast, David Lewiston and several other ethnomusicologists and ethno-recordists. Another section of the credits titled ‘With Cooperation Of’ lists the record companies Nonesuch, Folkways, Lyrichord, Argo, La Boite á Musique, Ocora, Philips, Le Chant du Monde, Turnabout Vox, Columbia, CBS and MCA. Unfortunately, the specific source tracks and LPs are not indicated (with the exception of one) and the recordists/producers and record companies are not linked to particular productions. It should also be noted that in addition to Nino Rota, Ilhan Mimaroglu, Todd Dockstader and Andrew Rudin receive co-composer credits for the film's musical score. For a relevant essay on Rota's compositional approach in Fellini's films, see Dyer 2007.

8. At the time of this writing, portions of the scenes from Satyricon discussed in this article could be accessed online at www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPbYzw-sTeI (accessed January 2009).

9. Behr notes that Fellini's source material for this scene was not Petronius's Satyricon, which includes no parallel scene, but was instead likely to have been Apuleius's The Golden Ass (Apuleius 2007, 45–54 [Chs. 2.31–3.11]; Behr n.d.).

10. For a very different (and much more positive) interpretation of the described episodes of Satyricon, see Burke 1996, 168–79. See also Bondanella 2002 and Burke and Waller 2002 on related matters of Fellini interpretation.

11. The original recordings of chain gangs manipulated by Burwell for these sequences were made by Alan Lomax and first released on Negro Prison Songs (reissued by Rounder Records on CD as Prison Songs: Historical Recordings from Parchman Farm, 1947-48) (Morgan 2000, 60).

12. E-mail correspondence, 10 May 2008. When I asked whether Fellini's use of kecak had influenced him or the Coens in their employment of kecak in Blood Simple, Burwell responded: ‘None of us referenced the Fellini film at the time’.

13. The complete Blood Simple screenplay may be found in Coen and Coen 1988.

14. See also other chapters in Born and Hesmondhalgh 2000, as well as the essays in Bellman 1998, Wojcik and Knight 2001 and Slobin 2008.

15. See Mera 2007, 30, for related perspectives on such matters.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael B. Bakan

Michael B. Bakan is Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology and Head of Ethnomusicology/World Music at The Florida State University, where he directs the Balinese gamelan programme and the Music-Play Project, a programme for children on the autism spectrum and their families. He is the author of the books World Music: Traditions and Transformations (McGraw-Hill, 2007) and Music of Death and New Creation: Experiences in the World of Balinese Gamelan Beleganjur (Chicago, 1999), as well as numerous refereed journal articles and other publications. He is the series editor of Routledge's Focus on World Music Series.