“Bubuy Bulan” (trans. The Roasted Moon)

a traditional song from my hometown, in Sundanese, my mother tongue

Music: spontaneously sung and played on piano by yours truly in the evening of november 12th, 2020

Visual: papercut artwork by Jane Kurnadi (who spontaneously and amazingly created it after listening to my playing, thanks Jane ).

I merged them and edited the video so they’re seamlessly blended to make the papercut version of me singing and playing the piano under the moonlight gaze.Enjoy!

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… let the moon rise on the waters of your heart and I’ll play you a song about …. a roasted moon.

Bubuy Bulan is a somber love song. It tells a story of someone who is falling in love with a person who’s passing by every morning, but too shy/afraid to express it or even to ask that person, and can only imagine about being loved.”Bubuy” (Sundanese) is a cooking technique using fire woods, similar to ’ember roasting’ where you take full the heat of the embers. In this song, “bubuy bulan”—ember roasting of the moon—is poetically used to illustrate the feeling of being slowly burnt/consummated underneath a silent calm surface.

The roasted moon; toasted stars; the grilled sun.

They may sound weird in English, but in this Sundanese song, they are exquisitely accurate–visually, audibly, and emotionally—in expressing an associated feeling.