I once visited a site in a city on the island of Java, Indonesia, where a new gamelan music piece was being rehearsed. A numerical score was written on a single sheet of paper, and about 15 players were performing based on it, but they frequently stopped to discuss various aspects. There seemed to be a composer present, but they were disregarded. Eventually, a piece that satisfied everyone was completed. While gamelan has many famous pieces, the composer's name is almost never noted. They are fundamentally collaborative works and anonymous. As a result, there are fewer 'edgy' pieces, but I was strongly drawn to this approach of prioritizing collectivity over individuality in creation.

 I engage in collaborative creation within various communities (e.g., people in depopulated areas, people with disabilities, former homeless individuals), striving to erase 'myself' as much as possible and to listen to the voices of the people present to the fullest extent. If there are ten people, there are ten voices, but these ten are not isolated individuals; they are connected to various networks. Thus, voices from these networks also echo like an yamabiko (mountain echo). From beyond this vague and indistinct collection of voices, occasionally, a clear voice emerges, like a ray of light piercing through the clouds. I believe that when such a voice is heard, the work begins to live.

 In gamelan music, there exists a phenomenon called hidden melody (lagu tersembunyi). Gamelan is a colorful music where leisurely melodies are covered by rich ornamental sound clusters, but core listeners are said to perceive hidden melodies using these sounds as clues. Within the listener, it forms the image of a concrete melody.

 To me, the two stories above seem connected. In recent years, the practice of community-engaged art has become more active, but primarily social value is emphasized, with less mention of aesthetic value. I believe my work is to attempt to bridge this gap. In this work, too, a collaborative production method was employed, but as we could not gather due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we decided to conduct remote production. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the members of this community (Nobuhisa Shimoda, HIROS, Akihiro Nishimura, Gaku Kurokawa, Takuya Oi, Yuko Asahiyama, Kazuki Ohata, and Yuka Wada) who responded to my prompts with various musical ideas and concepts. (Makoto Nakagawa)