Interviews

Music as an archive of Disaster Risk reduction in Indonesia

Our Own Odysseys – Indonesian Music

November 2016. An important interview with Bryan Crump at RadioNZ about how indigenous knowledge that references natural disasters is archived in popular and traditional music in Indonesia. Just a week after our own devastating 7.8 Kaikoura earthquake, during which I was in Sumatra delivering a keynote on this very topic.

Jack Body – Composer

Remembering Jack Body in China

January 2016.”Ethnomusicologist Dr Megan Collins on participating in Body Music, a conference commemorating the late New Zealand composer Jack Body at Zhejiang Conservatory in Hangzhou.” RNZ.

Traditional West Sumatran Percussion

In Music out of Doors, Amelia Nurse interviews Megan about the small gong pots from West Sumatra, Indonesia called talempong. First aired in ‘Appointment’ on March 2013 Radio New Zealand.

West Sumatran Strings, oral tradition and pop music

For What’s that instrument? Megan plays the rabab Pasisia [violin- shaped Sumatran instrument] for Bryan Crump on ‘Nights’ at Radio New Zealand. She explains how it is used to accompany sung narratives and popular music at wedding celebrations, on the south coast of  West Sumatra.  Megan first learned to play rabab from Minangkabau master musicians in the late 1990s and recently performed in West Sumatra in 2013. First aired Friday 14 December 2012.

Silver Scrolls Gamelan Taniwha Jaya in rehearsal

Radio New Zealand’s Emma Smith takes Music 101 to a rehearsal of New Zealand Gamelan group Taniwha Jaya, at Victoria University, Wellington as they prepare to play Gareth Farr’s arrangement of Tami Neilson’s award winning song ‘Walk (back to your arms)’, with vocalist/throat singer Jonny Marks. You can hear Megan playing Sumatran fiddle and drumming. The idea for this unusual interpretation of Neilson’s soulful hit came from the Silver Scrolls’ Musical Directer for this year, Luke Buda of The Phoenix Foundation. Performed in Wellington at the APRA/AMCOS Silver Scrolls on October 30, 2014 (Original and gamelan version begin at 43.00).

Minangkabau music and culture – living in an earthquake zone.

A week after the devastating 7.6 Padang earthquake in West Sumatra, Indonesia, I talked to Bryan Crump on RadioNZ ‘Nights’, about Minangkabau music and culture and the earthquakes common to that region. 6 October 2009.