ABOUT MY MUSIC

Born into family of artist, his deceased father was a painter and his mother is a dancer. I Wayan Balawan or Balawan (Which means powerful in Sanskrit, Ed.) learned to paint, but unlike his siblings, who chose to be a painter or a dancer like either of the parents, he didn’t stop there. He next ventured into music, especially playing guitar. He started to learn playing guitar at eight. Then at 14, together with his big brother’s friends, he played music in a band playing Deep Purple’s and The Beatles’ songs. To sharpen his skills, he learned jazz guitar and vocas at The Australian Institute of Music, Sydney after finishing his senior high school in Bali. Because of his achievements, he was granted a three-year scholarship after one year studying there.

In 1997, after finishing his studies and experiencing the life of a professional guitarist in Australia. Balawan went back to Bali and formed BATUAN ETHNIC FUSION, a group of musicians who combine traditional Balinese music with Jazz. In 1999 they released their first album, GloBALIsm. But since this was a pure jazz album and not many Indonesians were fond of jazz at the time, the album didn’t attract much attention. Watching some rock musicians using the tapping technique in playing guitars, Balawan was inspired to learn this skill. He started to fully adopt this technique in 1999 and it has become his trademark ever since. If we pay attention to the way Balawan plays guitar, we’ll see that he plays it as if he were playing the piano. Yes, he taps on in instead of picking or strumming it. And for your info, he’s the first guitarist in Asia to use this technique.

His second album, Balawan Solo, was released in Germany in 2001. Afterwards he held q promo tour fromone city to another to promote it. Since German people had no objection to jazz, his album really received a warm welcome there.

After a lengthy exploration of his talent, Balawan felt that it would be great to be able to play the guitar and bass at the same time. Then he ordered a special guitar and bass at the same time. Then he ordered a special guitar to be made, called Stephallen Guitar Custom 13 Strings Balawan Sries with two necks, one for guitar, the other for bass. And last year, after about a year playing the two-neck guitar, he decided to make an album using this new instrument. So here comes I Wayan Balawan, The Magic Fingers.