warbling elephant music — chris miller

Blog: Indonesia 2005

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#6. Thursday, 30 June 2005

When it rains it pours, so the saying goes. This could be the case in places where it rains all the time, but I think most such places--Vancouver in November, for example--it drizzles more often than pours. Usually the idea is that between the downpours there are dryspells, or at least some hours of sunshine. This is the way it is in Indonesia in the rainy season, which it's not supposed to be right now, but seemingly still is. This afternoon there was a doozy of a rainstorm, and I was not so fortunate to be in a place where I could just sit back and enjoy it. I was at the Jakarta Convention Center attempting for the second day in a row to get in to see Megalitikum Kuantum, the music spectacle celebrating the 40th anniversary of Kompas. Unfortunately, for the second day in a row I was unsuccesful. Meteorologically it was very definitely pouring, but metaphorically I came up dry. (As such, I can't really say much more about the event than what I described in report #3, though I'm hoping I'll get to hear or even better see some documentation.) Yesterday I got there only to find out that the first night was by invitation only. I tried in vain to get in touch with the musicians to see if they could somehow get me in, not reaching anyone before the battery in my mobile phone ran out. I was told to come back tomorrow (i.e. today) at around 4:30 or 5:00. So I did, only to find out that it was sold out. When and how it sold out, I'm not sure. I spoke with some other (Indonesian) people about it, who went through the same thing, and commented that this was typical of such events. Apparently the president (Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono) attended last night, and the former president (Megawati Sukarnoputri) is attending tonight. So it's a big deal. It's interesting, then, that they hired an Indonesian ethnomusicologist and composer (Rizaldi Siagian) to put together the event (at least that's my understanding of who was in charge artistically), and that figures like Rahayu Supanggah, Ubiet, and Dwiki Darmawan would be featured so prominently. (Supanggah went through ASKI Solo shortly after Pak Sumarsam and Pak Harjito and got his PhD in ethno from the University of Paris. As a composer took part in the first Young Composers Week festival in Jakarta in 1979, and has worked with top-notch theater directors, most recently Robert Wilson in a production going up at Lincoln Center in a few weeks. Ubiet and Dwiki Darmawan I wrote a bit about in report #3. I can't quite imagine what the parallel would be in the U.S. or Canada--if the New York Times or the Globe and Mail were to put on such a major event (or maybe they have?), would the head of state attend? Seems more likely the headline musicians would be along the lines of Anne Murray or Bruce Springsteen. (I'd be curious how many of the Americans reading my blog know who Anne Murray is...)

After not getting in, I waited for at least fifteen minutes for a cab to come by, and then spent nearly two hours getting home in what normally would be about a half-hour trip. Nearly half of that was spent going around a single large block where the police were redirecting traffic. "Macet total" (total jam) is how it's described. When the water flows, the traffic doesn't. I treated myself to a nice meal at a good Punjabi restaurant as consolation.

The drought or flood analogy is also somewhat apt for my progress in certain aspects of research. I've been seeing lots of rehearsals and performances, and meeting lots of people, and generally getting a much better feel for what Jakarta is about, in general and in terms of the art scene here. But pinning people down for interviews and getting materials has been more of a challenge. I've been trying since my first interview with Otto Sidharta to get back to his studio to copy some of the extensive audio documentation he has of more recent musik kontemporer events, but only managed to do so today. (But then I was able to copy about 10 CDs to my hard disk in just two hours. Going back to make copies of the 20 or so DATs will take a bit longer.)

Yesterday I did an interview with Trisutji J. Kamal, a very elegant woman and very important figure in the classical end of the musik kontemporer world. She's of the same generation as Slamet A. Sjukur (he was born in 1935, she was born in 1936), and like Mas Slamet she studied in Europe in the 1960s (thus missing the political chaos leading up to the attempted coup and subsequent purge of communists in 1965). Other than that, they couldn't be much different. Well, of course they could, but as far as composers go they have pretty different outlooks and approaches. I'm very much enjoying seeing pictures of Mas Slamet and of some of the performances of his works at the archive of the Jakarta Arts Council (which is another case of it pouring, in the good sense--the staff there, in particular Pak Nasir, are extremely helpful, and the material is quite well organized). He has a considerable mop of black hair framing his mischevious grin. Andy (McGraw) reported a piece which Pande Made Sukerta claimed to have done involving a dancer and a recording of a woman having an orgasm. Perhaps Pak Pande did such a piece as well, but I actually witnessed Mas Slamet's version in 1993 or 1994. The dancer, a woman (a different woman, I'm pretty sure, than the one on the tape), was expecting a different accompaniment, and was not impressed. (Boy I wish it had occured to me to take notes back then--that was well before taking "Being and Ethnomusicologist" or any serious thought of pursuing a scholarly study of Indonesian new music. The performance was at the gallery/studio/world arts center of Sutanto, in Mendut, a small village near Borobodur in Central Java. I should have more to say about Pak Tanto in a subsequent report.)

Bu Trisutji, on the other hand, would seem to be a more straightforward classically oriented composer and pianist. She's published several collections of her piano music, including two volumes of "Indonesian Folk Melodies," arranged in a style perhaps closest to early Debussy (e.g. Clair de Lune). As my friend Michael Asmara put it (with respect), "tidak revolusi" (not revolutionary). But if she was more straight-and-narrowly classical in the earlier part of her career, over the past ten years or so become more interested in working with traditional musicians--rather than simply drawing upon traditional melodic material in work that is otherwise solidly grounded in the European classical tradition. In 1994 she started an ensemble with herself and another pianist and Balinese percussionists I Gusti Kompiang Raka and I Ketut Budiyarso. Although her major instrument is piano, she learned to play Javanese gender growing up, and studied percussion when was in Rome in the 1960s. More recently, she has become interested in integrating Islamic and Malay elements into her musical language (she was brought up in a Javanese household but in Binjai, near Medan, North Sumatra). At least this is what she describes, and what I've read--I've yet to hear any of this work, and she didn't have a CD to give me or let me copy. I did, however, buy a copy of "His Majesty's Blues", a recording of paraphrases by Bu Trisutji of the music of His Majesty the King of Thailand, Bhumipol Adulyadej.

Other stuff:

Went to a performance last night (or rather the dress rehearsal, after not getting into Megalitikum) of a dance piece with music by Tony Prabowo, collaborating with Syahrial (who I wrote about in report #4). I really liked the music, especially the first section--a slow, steady pulse on a low bedug type drum and a rattle underlying multitracked reed instruments--quite reminiscent of Japanese gagaku or Korean aak. Finally bumped into Tony, will hopefully meet with him tomorrow before going back to Solo (I came back to Jakarta last Saturday). Syahrial has done the music (prerecorded) for another dance performance tomorrow night, at Teater Utan Kayu (an arts community I believe started by Goenawan Mohammad, a very important writer and journalist). The dance was pretty interesting as well, especially in the use of masks. In addition to more or less traditional Javanese style masks (except they were all white), there were three masks worn on less conventional parts of the body. First a dancer came out with a green mask covering her buttocks, with large bulging cheeks, no jaw, revealing the red thong which went under and attached to a belt. Then another came with red mask over her crotch, this one with high cheekbones and protuding teeth, again no jaw. Pretty suggestive, in a odd, mildly unsettling kind of way. The third was simply a nose and two eye sockets worn on the chest, with--you guessed it--the dancers breasts as the eyeballs.

Last Saturday I saw a peformance of Marusya Chamber Music. I can't say I was all that crazy aboutissues with it--in putting it that way I distinguish between judgement based merely on taste and critical evaluation. I won't say any more about it at this point, except that it wasn't like anything I think most Westerners would identify as chamber music. I'm not sure about Indonesians, which is more to the point of my research.

On Sunday (my birthday) I saw a 3.5 hour theater production, the first in a quite a while I believe by Bengkel Teater, the company of Indonesia's leading dramaturge, Rendra. The music was by I Wayan Sadra, who you can read about in Andy's dissertation, but the short gloss is that he along with Pak Pande Made Sukerta are among the most aesthetically radical composers based at STSI Solo, and perhaps not coincidentally, both Balinese (which is not to suggest that Balinese are generally aesthetically radical--most arguably are not--but that not being Javanese in Solo may have contributed to their radical inclinations). Most of the music was actually pretty conventional, I believe intended to be reminiscent of or perhaps even based on Betawi music (Betawi being the Malay version of Batavia, what the Dutch called Jakarta before independence; Betawi is now the name given to the Malay culture based in this region). A lot of it was actually pretty conventionally musical, I'm guessing in Betawi style (Betawi after Batavia, what Jakarta was called when the Dutch were here, but also the term for the Malay people here). There was one particularly catchy melody with a very nice change of mode that I keep on remembering. Sadra's skill at sound-exploration shone through in sections were the musicians provided sound effects, mostly for scenes set at night.

Monday afternoon and night I was sick, I'm pretty sure from some bug I caught from eating at one of the "warung" in front of TIM before the Rendra production. There is a row of about six or so, more like sidewalk cafes, with actual tables and chairs set up both inside and under umbrellas along sidewalk along the parking lot. I've been eating at them all the time, with no problem. I should have been more picky this time, and figured that the particularly lousy service at this one place was a bad sign. My food came out and the silverware was wet. I dried them off with a serviette before eating, but I wonder if the plate was wet also. Any water you're given to drink would be boiled first, but not the water used for washing. Anyway, I feel fine now, so I don't think it was anything too serious. But it slowed me down a bit on Tuesday and Wednesday.