Memeshift

Morgan wrote his first piece of music while living in Indonesia when he was 4 years old. The song was a story about giant eagles coming to eat a castle and all the people in it and because of this rather spectacular event, many, many people – fire trucks, police, kings, queens and townsfolk – all gathered to celebrate as the castle was devoured. Morgan is also the son of an exiled Indonesian court dancer and free-spirited American writer and ship-builder, having grown up in an oil-financed beach colony on the coast of Borneo. He is also the great-grandson of a Dayak headhunting chief from Sarawak and a brutal military general from the plains of the Central United States and perhaps performs and lives as colonized and colonizer in one. After being smuggled from Borneo to live in a plantation owner’s house in Hawaii, Morgan continued experiencing the dual-sonic realities of traditional Javanese gamelan music with Western songs from blues, pop, folk and other Americana. As English was the main language spoken wherever home was, many of the lyrics for Indonesian songs were lost in his journey Eastward towards Europe. Picking up the sound cultures of techno, dub, punk and other club musics, much of Morgan’s practice lies in searching out and harmonizing resonances between these histories.