Radijo-Musikii Presentations Live: Mo'ong
We know J. “Mo’ong” Santoso Pribadi since he has left his native Javanese surroundings, came to Vilnius and staid. We already organised several events that stuck in the heads of those who attended. On november 20th another great opportunity awaits to listen to him performing live on “Radijo-Musikii Live Presentations” program.
Mo’ong undertakes a decolonization of his musical identity by critically engaging with the multiple musical traditions embedded within him—modern Western music and traditional Javanese gamelan—seeking to dismantle hierarchical structures of knowledge. His process is not merely a blending of these two traditions but an interrogation of their fundamental assumptions, values, and practices. This deep introspection compels him to explore his immediate environment, where he collects found objects, often overlooked in conventional music-making, and investigates their inherent sonic potential.
Rather than imposing established tuning systems or compositional frameworks, Mo’ong approaches these objects with a heightened sense of intuition, allowing them to dictate their own sonic possibilities. His method of intuitive tuning involves listening closely to each object’s natural resonances, avoiding preconceptions based on tempered scales or formalized gamelan structures. In doing so, Mo’ong allows these objects to emerge as sonic entities in their own right, free from the constraints of traditional musical syntax.
Mo’ong’s approach challenges the dominance of Western-centric models of music-making by emphasizing the primacy of sound itself, rather than adhering to prescribed forms or systems of harmonic and rhythmic organization. This act of “listening to objects” as autonomous sound producers is a profound statement against the commodification of sound and the instrumentalization of objects within typical compositional processes. By relinquishing control over the sound production and allowing the objects to “speak” on their own terms, Mo’ong transforms them from passive tools into active sound subjects.
In this process, Mo’ong reconfigures the very notion of what constitutes an instrument, composition, and performance. His works offer a sonic counter-narrative, one that resists conventional categorizations of music and instead invites the listener into a space where sound is liberated from both cultural and musical orthodoxies. Through this, Mo’ong not only deconstructs the colonized layers of musical knowledge but also reimagines a practice that is rooted in both his heritage and a forward-looking, experimental ethos.