Bulook Brigade
A performance of “Bulook Brigade” an exotica-style tone poem written by Randy Wong for middle school jazz band! Premiered by the Hawaii Youth Symphony’s week-long Pacific Music Institute 2009. Thanks to jazz director Ira Wong, clinicians Chad Kamei, Todd Yukumoto, Eric Kop, Travis Oh, Susan Tanabe, and Matt Love for helping the students groove with exotica.
About the composition (from the composer)
I was inspired to write “Bulook Brigade” after a dream I had while house-sitting for my auntie in Aina Haina this summer. Auntie had a large bulook (a.k.a pomelo, jabong, Pake grapefruit) tree in her back yard, and we were instructed to catch the bulooks as they fell from the tree. In my dream, she warned us not to let her dogs eat the bulook, because they’d get sick from its thick rind. The bulook tree in the dream was huge, you know, about 20 feet tall and with a hundred thousand bulooks ready to fall. My wife and I ran around the tree, trying to catch the bulooks before they fell, all the while navigating around a sea of dogs trying to swallow falling bulooks. In the dream, my wife and I were wearing white jump suits, with a giant patch over the tummy that said Bulook Brigade.
In the composition, one can hear several motifs that sound like bulooks ballooning in size, bulooks falling from trees, dogs barking, and wind blowing, just to name a few.
—Randy Wong