Recording the World: Endangered Music

We travel faraway to the region of Chhattisgarh where we get the chance to meet tribes from the area. In this journey we are surprised all along the way. Our intention is to record a rite from one of the most isolated tribes in the area but we're advised to be careful.

We continue our journey around the region of Chhattisgarh. We manage to document the Abu Gond and record an ancient ritual chant traditionally sung during the rice harvest. We witness the ritual chants of the Ramnami Samaj cult, devotees who have consecrated their lives to adoring the god Ram, tattooing his name on their faces and all over their bodies.

We visit the sultanate of Yogyakarta on the island of Java, where we meet the music form the gamelan in the Kraton. We contact the spirits of our ancestors and see what messages they have for us; and we experience two powerful rites at the slopes of Mount Merapi, an active volcano where we witness trances and possessions by supernatural forces.

The weather makes it hard for us to move around the area. Despite this, we attend a ritual exorcism performed using gamelan musical instruments and marionettes; witness the message given by a possessed doll. We shoot some of the last remaining Buddhist rites in the temples of the island, and enter the mausoleum dedicated to Java's last sultans.

We travel to Thailand and witness a healing ritual in which a Buddhist monk is cured by invoking spirits and ancestors. We get a ritual tattoo at a monastery in Chiang Mai. We are disappointed to see how commercialized the spiritual rites of certain tribes have become and how hard it is to find places where these rites are still carried out.