Jakartass Home thoughts from abroad. Alien thoughts from home.

I made a rare venture to a jazz gig last night at Goethe Haus. That the gig was free and was part of the Serambi Jazz events curated by Riza Arshad were sufficient inducements. That he and ace guitarist Dewa Budjana were among the guest musicians of the Mery Kasiman Project were added incentives.

The hall was so packed, mainly with young university student types, that friend and I had to sit on the stairs, which wasn’t a particular hardship. But, oh dear, the music was. Maybe I should have read the pre-publicity a little closer.

Serambi Jazz hopes to be the learning ground of culture and a place to appreciate good quality jazz, also set as an event that can complete all the jazz events in Indonesia especially in Jakarta, the presentation of Mery Kasiman is something not to be missed.

Introducing the music of Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane to young people who rarely have the chance to hear it is no bad thing. After all, they were seminal improvisers in jazz whose inspiration spawned many great jazz musicians.

To quote Thelonious Monk: “All musicians stimulate each other. The vibrations get scattered around.”

Mery Kasiman is a mere stripling at 27, and has studied improvisation with Benny Likumahuwa, father of dynamic bass player Barry, another of the evening’s guests. Barry, along with drummer Sany Winarta and Riza, has participated in jam sessions at Indra Lesmana’s studio which enable them “to explore whatever they feel inside them in the jazz language.”

The introduction to last nights gig featured an interview with Mery; the loudest cheer was when the word “improv” was spoken.

What I had failed to note was that Mery also has “a Masters degree focusing on arrangement and orchestration”.

The ‘big band’ then took their places and with Mery conducting proceeded to play the notes on the pages in front of them. Even the solos were set out for them and to these ears, only the pianist, Ali Akbar Sugiri, injected some personality into his playing.

As friend said, “I’ve got the CD at home.”

Yep, from where we were sitting, the sound quality was excellent, yet what we were hearing were sub-Carla Bley orchestrations with none of the fire or freedom of her work with, say, Charlie Haden’s Liberation Orchestra.

I wondered too about the non-existent nods to Indonesian music. To quote Riza, “world jazz presents jazz with local/ethnic values and this is a new trend here”.

Maybe so, but emphasising “local/ethnic values” here has a history. As this National Geographic page about Krakatau, pioneers of Indonesian ethno-jazz, notes, since the 1930s Indonesian nationalists and musicians have striven to create a new classical national music that would work to bind the various ethnicities of the Indonesian archipelago as successfully as did the national language, Bahasa Indonesia.

President Sukarno gave this effort a push with his ‘War against Beatle music’.

In August 1965, the Department of Education and Culture decreed that ‘constructive’ music was to be fostered and developed whilst ‘destructive’ music was to be fought against until it was eliminated. ‘Destructive’ music was said to have, among several others, the following feature: Indonesian music whose ambience, composition and presentation is given in a jazz or beat arrangement that is unnatural and deviates from the original.
(fr. article by Steven Farram in Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs, vol. 41, no. 2. 2007.)

Well, unfortunately there wasn’t any ‘destructive’ music to be heard last night. It was so safe and unsatisfying that friend and I left and went to chat with acquaintances outside in the lobby.

One of them had a selection of Indonesian jazz sounds for me to get into and in return I gave him a selection of my bootlegs of European jazz concerts; I wasn’t in the audience of any of these gigs, but I can feel their rapport with the musicians who were driven to reach even greater mutual heights.

I hope Mery will give more freedom to her musicians in future gigs.