by Octavio Roca

Nonesuch Records made history in 1967 when it launched the Explorer Series. A universe of music beyond classical or pop, something older but improbably hip, suddenly emerged as a field called world music.

Now the old vinyl series released on LP between 1967 and 1984 is giving way to Nonesuch Explorers on CD, with the revival of the African recordings last summer followed in the next few weeks by the first CD release of the series' Indonesian and South Pacific recordings.

That's a lot of gamelan, gambang, genggong and songs from the Mahabharata. It's tubular bells and wooden flutes, drums made of shark bellies, jaw harps that sound like frogs. It is music used for background of theater made with leather puppets and their shadows. It is the chatter of a monkey chant, the lilt of Tahitian love songs, the insistent tapping of rainfall on an impossibly beautiful beach.

These are recordings that no less than Nobel laureate Jimmy Carter has said represent "our hope, our determination and our good will in a vast and awesome universe." It is music from what Jawarharlal Nehru called "The Morning of the World," which is also the title of the first disc in this latest Explorer batch. There is a lot of ravishing music here.

What used to be the province of sociologists and ethnomusicologists turned out to be a trove of multicultural discoveries for a generation of music lovers.

The Explorer series all came at the right time. The pioneering Steve Reich may have overstated the Zeitgeist just a tad when he wrote in 1970 that "non- Western music in general and African, Indonesian and Indian music in particular will serve as new structural models for Western musicians."

Benjamin Britten already had mined the exotic austerity of the Pacific Rim for his ballet "The Prince of the Pagodas"

and his chamber operas. That old wild explorer Olivier Messiaen, from today's vantage point, stands as a visionary messenger of world music. San Francisco's Lou Harrison has brought the gamelan into American concert music. Reich, though he later developed in radically different directions, found inspiration in the primal pulse and reassuring tonalities of ancient sounds that seemed a universe away from the modernism that was fashionable through much of the 20th century.

The Kronos Quartet recorded "Escalay" in 1990, inspired by a 1971 Nonesuch Explorer oud recording by Hamza El Din, "Nubia: Escalay (The Water Wheel)." It is fascinating to hear Harrison's intricate "La Koro Sutro" for chorus, gamelan and orchestra alongside the Explorer's "Golden Rain" from Bali. Reich's "Drumming," a seminal work in American minimalism, acquires unexpected cultural resonance in the shadow of the "Music From the Shadow Play" heard in this latest Nonesuch batch.

From Java, "The Jasmine Isle: Gamelan Music" is angelic: short, touching melodic figures layered and repeated, modulating sweetly, not once drawing attention to the complex musical process going on but rather caressing the listener into attention to the moment and nothing else. The "Ramayana Monkey Chant" from "Golden Rain" is exhilarating, the "Frog Song" a joyous mess, the elegant "Court Gamelan" strangely melancholy.

Nonesuch Explorer was a surprise hit from the start, even if it took the rest of the recording industry some time to catch up. Through these recordings,

from the late 1960s through today, music lovers have refused to recognize geographical barriers when it comes to musical sounds. The new, remastered Nonesuch Explorer should find that audience anew. Music lovers, like music itself, are no different today than they were when "Music From the Morning of the World" hit the charts in 1967. Beautiful music is always worth exploring.

REVIEW (WILD APPLAUSE)

NONESUCH EXPLORER SERIES INDONESIA AND SOUTH PACIFIC: "Music From the Morning of the World'' (Bali), "The Gauguin Years'' (Tahiti), "Golden Rain'' (Bali), "the Jasmine Isle: Gamelan Music'' (Java), "Music for the Shadow Play'' (Bali), "Court Gamelan,'' vols. 1 and 2 (Java), "Island Music'' (South Pacific), "Gamelan of the Love God'' (Bali), "Gamelan & Kecak'' (Bali), "Tonggeret: Sundanese Jaipong'' (West Java).

First six titles in stores now, the rest forthcoming in February. Nonesuch, $11.98 each (sampler CD available at $9.98), www.nonesuch.com.