Invented Beauty: Cirque du Soleil and "Gamelan"

Today's random tune is from Cirque du Soleil. Gamelan, along with the entire soundtrack of Cirque du Soleil's Las Vegas (Bellagio Hotel) water and stage show O, was composed by Canadian Benoit Jutras. Jutras' eclectic music combines worldbeat, classical, rock, trip hop and electronica, and the score of O is no exception, with instrumentation that includes classical Western, erhu (Chinese violin), bagpipes, African guitar, African kora (harp), Colombian guitar, cello, ancient woodwinds and a wide variety of percussion instruments. Gamelan can be found on the soundtrack for O, released in 1998. The song's title refers to a specific type of music from Indonesia, usually played with bronze percussion instruments. Many of Cirque du Soleil's lyrics are often in an invented language.

Listen to songs like this and more on the KUNM Global Music Show every Monday night from 10 pm - 1 am Mountain Standard Time. Live streaming, program information and the two-week digital archive can be found at http://www.kunm.org.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirque_du_Soleil; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beno%C3%AEt_Jutras